Ego is identification with form. That means, first believing in separation, so that there can be different things, and thus forms. And then attempting to be ONE WITH those things, so that they become associated with what you ARE, as part of you.

This begins with the denial of self, which is also the denial of God. We place within ourselves a belief that we are LACKING self in some way. That we are not enough, that we have been diminished, that we have experienced a loss of self.

We attack and hide from and distort our view of ourselves and thus believe we are a wretched wicked evil monster, sorely lacking and impoverished and powerless and lost.

“Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost.”

The belief that you lack in some way, produces a sense of being “not enough”, and that something is missing. Therefore you Are lacking and “in need.” This in turn produces a compulsion driven by a NEED to get what you are missing. What you are missing is ENOUGH SELF, or wholeness.

But with the belief that you are not enough of a self - or unwholesome/unholy, at the root, this belief is not questioning. Instead we accept it as true, see ourselves as lacking love and identity, become very much “in need”, and then feel compelled to fill those needs. By not knowing who we really are, and seeing ourselves as empty of self - as if nothing at all - we then start to try to DEVELOP a self - to get a self.

This produces DESIRE, which is “wanting to get” what you do not have. The more the ego sees itself as lacking, the more it wants to get, and thus the greater its desire. It’s a kind of psychological mechanism where we’re trying to rectify a problem - a lack of self - by trying to get it from somewhere, to alleviate the feeling of dis-satisfaction, not being enough, not having enough etc. This can become desperation.

This intense wanting turns into seeking. We will seek to find self or identity or value anywhere other than where it really is. It really is buried underneath the belief that we are LACKING in some way - sinful, guilty, diminished. But the ego mindset doesn’t want to question the denial of self, it wants to keep that in place. Effectively, the ego mindset then WANTS to LACK self, AND wants to gain self, at the same time. And thus it can never reach a point of satisfaction.

From the strong drive to “find yourself”, and driven by the sense of lack of self, you feel a compulsion for MORE. You need more, of everything. You need to gain. You need to make up for what you seem to be lacking. You need to fill the gaping hole of emptiness within. And so this produces GREED and SELFISHNESS, because we now seek to get more and more and more to try to satisfy the emptiness. Even though we don’t really want to satisfy because we want to deny self.

The way by which we then attempt to GAIN SELF, or to get MORE SELF, is to IDENTIFY WITH form. To identify with separate things. Things which we think are valuable or important. Things which differentiate and make us unique. Things which, by way of association, rubs off on us favorably and gives us a sense of being MORE than we were. The ego thus identifies WITH OBJECTS, with bodies, with thoughts and feelings, with the mind, in an attempt to increase its sense of existence - of being a self.

We thus literally identify with a country, a culture, a body, a relationship partner, their body, valued treasures, objects and toys, buildings and land and vehicles, money, sex, and all kinds of things. We identify with them by trying to ATTACH SELF to them, to in a sense posses them, by trying to equate the object with our sense of self, to suggest “this thing is the SAME as me” or “I am the same as this thing.” It’s an attempt to find ONENESS WITH FORM, ie oneness with separateness, which is impossible.

Ego is amplified by an increase in a sense of “setting it apart” from the whole, by which it reasons that it if can become a more significant SEPARATE thing, it is more established and exists more and thus has more identity - more self. It in a way wants to be the whole, such as to be the OWNER of the world, but it also thwarts this fundamentally by its belief that it MUST be less than whole in order to seem to “be something.”

Psychological ownership, psychological possession, psychological attachment, identification, trying to be one with form, trying to gain more self, forming a self image, trying to enhance the self, trying to improve the self, trying to make the things that ego is identified with be in themselves better so that it rubs off on us and we can take credit for it, are all the SAME method of trying to BECOME something we are NOT, in an effort to become a real self that “we are.”

Since all temporal things, all different things, all forms, all objects, all thoughts and feelings, are transient and temporary, they fundamentally do not last. The ego knows this in a way, and is constantly in a state of dissatisfaction that it not only never has enough, it aways feels a compulsion to become MORE SELF. This is due to the deep belief in having NO SELF, which it MUST maintain in order to seem to be relevant.

But temporary things come and go, and so the ego then experiences a sense of LOSS. It now loses the things it wants, as those treasured things leave its existence. Whether it be a person’s body that dies, or some family member falls ill, or a possession becomes broken, or some toy is lost, or money is wasted, or whatever, there is a disappointment.

But it’s not simply a matter of feeling that something valuable has gone away, it actually it is much more selfish than that. Loss is driven by the recognition that the things which you were IDENTIFIED WITH have gone away, and therefore PART OF YOUR SELF has gone away. Through the loss of idols and favorites and possessions and things we have owned and become attached to, even things with sentimental value, the ego is not upset about the THING being gone - it’s upset about ITS SELF being gone.

And so loss is really experienced by the ego as a reminder of the loss or lack of self, a reminder of the inner emptiness that was there before the compulsion to ”seek and do not find.” It is a triggering of the sense that you have lost YOUR SELF, and now you are diminished, and now you are lacking, and now you have less, and now you are not enough.

This produces what we call a feeling of loss or grief, but it’s not REALLY a grief over the loss of some valuable thing or person or place, it’s a much more selfish upset that what you wanted from your neediness has been lost and so your very IDENTITY has been lost. And then you are sad because it is YOU that has died again. Ultimately all sense of loss over external things are just reflections of the inner sense of the loss of a real self, driven by self denial.

What needs to take place to undo all of this madness, this impossible seeking for something that does not exist anywhere except underneath the self denial, is to undo the self denial. To stop denying that you are a fully created and WHOLE self, that God created, and that you are still the whole of that self.

It requires a shift in IDENTIFICATION, in which your sense of “what am I” stops being attached to and possessing of things like the body and thoughts and feelings and objects, and instead recognizes self to be one with the spirit - the soul, the Christ holy self. But not only that, but the identification with and as the WHOLE KINGDOM OF GOD, in which identity is SHARED and whole and one, because it is NOT based on separation or lack.

And this will require what will seem to be the dismantling of the false sense of self, rooted deeply in lack and imperfection and the absence of identity - an insecure and impossibly unhappy and deprived self. This self is BASED ON self denial, so the denial has to be lifted and the mind has to re-identify with spirit. Fundamentally this requires the recognition that your real self is NOT lost, nothing has happened to it, it can never be changed, and you are still as God created you to be forever. You are Christ, not anti-Christ.

When there is no self-denial, there is no lack of self, and so there is no neediness, and thus no wanting, and thus no desire, and thus no seeking externally, and thus no drive to get or to attach or own or possess, and thus no attempt to ADD MORE SELF to yourself in an effort to BUILD a self to overcome the shortcomings of the one you hate.

Self hate and self denial and self attack and self destruction all have to end, as you open up to accept and recognize the real self that you really are. Without the belief in being anything other than God created you to be - and which in truth you STILL ARE, there is no basis for the ego whatsoever, and so it cannot exist. This ends with the return to simply knowing yourself as you really are in reality - the whole of yourself which needs nothing.

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."

All unforgiveness is based on a belief that you are separate from others. If you are separate, what applies to them does not apply to you, and you are different instead of equal.

If you are separate, what you give is separate from what you receive. What others give to you, they do not receive themselves. What you receive from them, you did not give to them.

If they can give you something that you have not given yourself, it is seen as being given against your will. And since they give without receiving, only you seem to receive the effects. Now it appears that "they have done something to me against my will."

This lays the basis for all experiences of being "hurt" or suffering at the hand of another. Fundamentally speaking, the mere belief that you are separate IS a choice to experience yourself AS hurt. If you are not equal, you MUST be in a state of separation, and separation is fundamentally a state of conflict.

We can say then that when we are in a state of mind where we see ourselves as separate, we ARE being unforgiving. We are either unforgiving or forgiving.

To be forgiving we have to see ourselves as not separate from others, as cause is not separate from effect, and giving is not separate from receiving. If you are one with others, you cannot accuse a "separate person" of doing something to you without you being included in the giving.

To accuse someone of doing something against your will, is to claim they have given what you did not give, and you have received what you did not give to them. Thus is such a broken given perceived as an injustice, which then incites anger and revenge. How dare they give you something you did not give to them? Something you did not want or ask for choose.

Being in this state of mind of "I am hurt by you", which is the victim state, is entirely rooted in the separation between giving and receiving. To see yourself as not one with others is to see yourself as attacked and unfairly treated. You become fundamentally a victim so long as you consider yourself separate from others.

You cannot accuse anyone of anything if you were included in the giving. If you received what you gave, you also cannot accuse anyone. If someone gives and receives what they give, you can clearly see they are doing it to themselves - ie as a call for love. And when you recognize you are giving what you are receiving, you take responsibility as in the secret of salvation.

The big question then is always, what am I giving and what am I receiving, and is there a difference between the two. If there is a separation between the two, I am being unforgiving, and am inducing fantasies of victimhood and unfairness. If there is no separation between the two, which requires that I be one with others, then I have no basis for unforgiveness whatsoever.

Unforgiveness therefore goes totally hand in hand with separation. You can only be unforgiving if there is a separation. If there is not a separation you can only be forgiving. Ironing out the separateness and re-joining with others as part of your shared identity, is the only way to become forgiving towards them and towards yourself.

In ACIM the idea of evil is defined as 'ego', more or less. Not just individual egos but also a collective one.

The ego uses temptation to distract you from the truth. It is capable of creating scenarios in which it seems like you want and enjoy things which you would normally not want or enjoy.

It is also very cunning in that it can use your very own weaknesses against you. If you think that some person or project or activity might be 'the answer' and that it will save you, even though it's not true, the ego will encourage you to pursue it. And it knows you are likely going to go along with it because you yourself are the one who is believing it will work, or is what you want.

I have only recently discovered that my own ego has been 'playing me', using my own self deceptions to lure me away from the truth. It's particularly bad if I am very mistaken about something, like I think I'm onto some kind of solution or really great thing, but really it's another ego bullshit wild goose chase which will have me 'seek and do not find' for a long time.

In other words, if I choose to believe in an illusion and I give it faith and am convinced of its supposed value, this becomes a blind spot in my awareness. My ego comes along and says "why don't you do that thing, you know you want to, you know you like it, you know how appealing it is". And then I'll be all gooey eyed with hypnotic spirals spinning in my eyeballs while I salivate over this very appealing, attractive opportunity. All the while, my mind is completely distracted from God.

Notice though that the ego thus really has no power of its own. It can only use the things I have agreed to as a way to tempt me away from the truth. If it weren't for me getting gooey eyed over some new piece of technology or some amazing movie or some pathway that seemed really enticing, the ego would have no way to deceive me. I have deceived myself, willingly, and that is all the ego needs.

It can trigger off a memory of these tempting offers just at the right moment, knowing that their allure will particularly hurl my awareness off in a different direction, like some rat in a maze that just caught a glimpse of a big chunk of delicious cheese. Suddenly all my senses are ignited and the unfinished business I have with this 'promising savior' has captivated/captured my attention. I fall for my own traps.

It's good to be aware the ego is actively tempting us in this way, using our own mistakes against us, and trying to get us to reinvest in anything other that what we really are. There is nothing guilty or bad or wrong with enjoying life, but if we are psychologically using it as a false savior, then we will fall for temptation - the temptation to believe the truth is not true and God does not deserve our attention.

Watch out ... for yourself :-) You are the one who gives the ego the fuel it needs, and you thus hire it to serve your false interests. It is merely a reflection of your own self deception. It is not against you but for you. You want it. But you need to want God instead.

You may believe that you need to get love from someone important. Maybe a spouse or a friend or a child or parent.

But this love that you think you need from them, is a substitute for the love of God.

Your attempt to need or depend on their love is a way for you to claim that you need to get love from outside of yourself, because you lack it, because God doesn't love you.

You'll be upset about how your need for love is not fulfilled by others, and why they are supposed to fulfill it, and why you feel so lost and empty because of their failure to do so.

But this so-called "need" that you have, is really your own belief and assertion that you're not lovable, an attempt to avoid being loved by God, and a way to hide from love.

The external seeking for that love when then look like a really deep desire to be loved and to want love, but it's really in truth a cover-up for an attempt to not want love to be inside of you.

So long as someone else is tasked with providing love for you, and so long as you keep them in that role, you are in denial and are trying to stop yourself from being actually loved.

You do not need other people to love you. You do not need to get special love from them.

Your "need" is a belief in, a choice for, and attempt to bring about, a lack of love, because it's part of your ego's defense against God. For it to then seem to yearn for love externally is a fake motivation, a cover-up story, to pretend to desire love very strongly, as a way to always move away from where love really is.

This so-called "need" for love is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that as soon as it's put into place, it stops love from being present. It's an avoidance of love, and an assertion that love does not exist. To then proceed to seek for love based on this is to guarantee you will not find it. "Seek and do not find" is your ego's primary mandate.

The only way you are going to experience love is to let all those people off the hook, to stop expecting or needing them to be the ones to love you, to recognize they themselves need love because they are resisting God, and that you need to get your love directly from God within. And the only way to do that is not to fulfill your need for love, but to get rid of your neediness because it's actually what's blocking you from love's presence.

You need to instead open up to accept and allow God to love you directly, to receive it, to experience it, to let it be true, and to be filled up with it from the inside. It means dropping your belief that you can't be loved or that it's someone else's job to do so. You need to learn to love yourself, and in so doing, allow God to love you also.

It's God's love that you really want. It's God's love that is the only real love, anyway.

In attempting to forgive the hell in the world, we might really be trying to make it real and then make it go away. This is an attack. The problem is that we have combined what the world IS (an unreal illusion), with a sense of reality, and now they appear to be one thing. This makes the world seem real.

To forgive or undo it, seems to entail getting rid of it entirely, in order to remove this illusory thing, and the reality gets thrown out with it, because the sense of reality seems tied to the world. As if you can't be free of the world without out also being free of its reality. So you try to throw the whole thing out at once.

But it is not actually the world that's real, and the sense of reality must NOT be thrown away. Instead, focus on allowing the world itself to be UNREAL, and let it "remain" as unreal, yet recognized as unreal, while you lift away from it the sense of reality. Give the realism back to God and let the world just be unreal. Take away the meaning you gave it and allow it to be meaningless world, because meaning belongs to God.

Let the world be an unreal world on its own, separate from the reality, and just reassign the reality to where it belongs. This allows you to not ATTACK the world or to effort to make it go away. It is merely re-framed it in the proper light - as the awareness of dreaming, in the recognition that the world is just a dream.

This awareness paves the way to allowing it to disappear naturally without force. Because when an illusion - an unreal world - is recognized AS an illusion, it must disappear. First take away its reality, then watch it vanish on its own. You must un-bind reality from the unreal world and take back the power you gave to it, first.

Look upon it as unreal, as without reality and without power, and then you are recognizing it for what it is. Recognizing it as unreal, given that you are still lingering in it for now, allows you to be in it but not affected by it. If the whole thing is unreal then it has no power, no will, no mind, no life, no meaning, no cause, no existence and no threat.

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

What if the world is really a highly malleable dream, not some fixed objective place, and our minds have the power to change it at will? Then this perhaps redefines physical miracles.

If the state of objects, the events that happen, the people that show up, the things that happen, are all chosen and consented and actually put there by the mind, then the mind is in a position of orchestrating, arranging, organizing and putting in place the contents of the dreamworld. Literally projecting physical matter.

This then means that if the mind is changing, its current state is going to project and manipulate and steer the dream in different directions. If it is in fear and war it's going to produce more conflicting nightmarish dreams, and that literally means causing the physical world to have more fights, arguments, conflicts, and so on. Not merely that you're interpreting such events in a more negative way but literally the physical number of problems increases.

Then if the mind is moving into a lighter, higher perspective, it is projecting a broadcast of more tranquil "surroundings", it will outwardly picture its inner condition and make a world in which there literally is less conflict. Less fights, less arguments, less wars, less attacks. Not merely that wars and attacks are now looked up in a more loving way, but that literally the count of them decreases.

This would then mean that someone who is anti-miraculous will be tending to mis-create life scenarios, events, occurrances etc which are generally more conflicted and upsetting. And someone who is more at peace and in line with God will produce life scenarios which are literally, on the physical level, calmer and more cooperative and easier to deal with.

A miracle worker would then be someone of a high mind who literally "manifests" a more healed world. Not merely healed as in, on I'm looking at the same world in a happier way, but that literally a higher world is projected and made. A higher world is hallucinated. Not a projection onto the world, but the ACTUAL world itself is a higher kind of world, with more peace and less problems and less sickness and so on.

For example, Jesus speaks of this:

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?"

Jesus isn't merely speaking there of interpreting a warzone AS IF it were a beautiful garden. He is saying that literally it transforms INTO a beautiful garden, a physical garden. How else does "all around the signs of life spring up" when miracles fall like drops of healing rain?

We have to now ask ourselves, is Jesus referring here to vision being some kind of just "happier way of looking at the same stuff", in which there are still wars and conflicts and so on but you "read into" them more positively? OR is he LITERALLY saying, that terrifying scenes, harmful arrangements of objects, frightening events, and so on, are literally erased, and replaced with a different kind of "reality" where there is now literally a beautiful garden instead of a warzone? Not a warzone reimagined or reinterpreted, but a warzone REPLACED by a garden?

What if our attempted understanding of perception is totally fucked up, and Jesus is actually NOT saying that you have "perceptions about" a separate world "out there", but instead that there is NO objective world, there is only a wishful-thinking dream projection hallucination of a world, which takes on different literal FORMS, depending on the content of your mind? Because now we're talking about mind literally changing the physical content, the events that transpire, the people that interact, how relationships go, problems that arise etc, and not merely looking at them in a different way.

Perhaps Jesus has thrown out the idea of there being an "objective world" entirely, and is speaking solely to the fact that our minds are literally PROJECTING A WORLD in realtime? That the reflection of hell on earth isn't merely a darkened interpretation of earth, but an actual projection of a warring world? And that vision or true perception or sight of "the real world" may actually be a way to project a heaven-like illusory world where there is no more sickness or death or suffering? Not a heaven ON earth, but a dream of heaven replacing earth?

When you go back and re-read many of Jesus's statements about perception and what you see and so on, perhaps they take on a different light if you consider them as NOT referring to an objectively separate world. Such as when Jesus says "The world IS perception" and "The world is false perception." Perhaps he is literally saying that when the mind is in false perception it projects planet earth, and when it is in true perception it projects the real world which REPLACES ENTIRELY the "actual world"? That perceptions of the world are always SUBJECTIVE hallucinations.

There is no world to really project onto. There is only an outward picturing of your present inner condition. There is no perceptions "about" the world as such. Changing how you feel about the world actually changes the world, itself, into a different form of a world, a different dream.

You see, when Jesus says that your self is ruler of the universe and nothing happens without your consent, he's not giving any exceptions to that. He's telling us that nothing happens unless we consent to it. That means the events, the happenings, the people, the encounters, the relationships, etc are actually orchestrated by the mind. Not merely interpretations of a world. The mind IS the world. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

So now when you are a miracle worker, turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, these are not merely perceptual reinterpretations of things. Jesus didn't look at lazarus's body in "a happier light". He transformed the FORM of his body from a dead decaying corpse into a living healthy active form of a body. That is direct reality manipulation. That is mind over matter. That is changing the dream world with the mind. That is what we might call a "physical miracle".

I'm really starting to lean more now toward this idea that there is no objective world here, there is only a dream, and it does not exist without our mind dreaming it. Therefore its content is entirely mind driven, mind chosen, mind consented. What happens is what we desire. If the world is going to pot its because we're making a world that's going to pot. If events are improving its because your mind is improving. And this leads to the notion that eventually we will actually orchestrate a world state which is actually somewhat like "heaven on earth", before we ascend. Where things are PHYSICALLY more harmonious.

What if the world is not a mirror or a screen or something to project onto. What if it IS the projection? And what if there is no world without such dreaming? And what if you as the dreamer can dream any kind of world, and have it become physically manifest?

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"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 apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and ***you maintain the world within your mind in thought***."

"***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which sets him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable, and therefore true. And each establishes this for himself, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies."

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The truth is not something that we make up, decide upon, invent, have to "believe in", or have as a kind of personal preference. The truth does not come in a billion forms. There is only one truth, and that truth is set in stone forever by God. God is the creator of actual reality and no-one else. Not even His creations, his souls/sons, have the ability to change reality or to define what the truth is.

This means that when we are in the business of accepting the truth, we must also be in the business of putting aside personal opinion, a desire for a special or different or exclusive viewpoint, and in fact even the ownership of "this is my view". Beliefs only take you so far and are too personalized.

In this ego world, we are very accustomed to everyone seeming to have their own opinion. This is because everyone with an ego stands like a gatekeeper in between the truth, acting like a filter or go-between or authority, with a need to "approve" of anything being claimed. This is because the false ego authority wants to constantly define the truth, invent it, change it, decide what it is, author it, distort it and basically make-believe whatever it wants to.

As we move towards atonement, what HAS to happen is the relinquishment of this egocentric ownership of opinion making. The truth is true all by itself. We cannot define it, our only options are to either a) accept it or b) deny it. When we deny it we attempt to invent the truth ourselves, to reinforce it through beliefs, and to play at being God. This is egotism. But as we SURRENDER the ego, we are also becoming willing to give up on being the AUTHOR of the truth.

What this then leads to is that you become wiling to "take on" the "off the shelf" truth that God has established, to accept it, to allow it, to align with it, and to integrate it as "your own". Without changing it, we give up trying to fight with reality and instead settle in to accepting it. The reality as God has defined it, that is - the nature of the Kingdom.

This absolutely means that as we become more attuned with the real truth, the entire idea of "having an opinion" is being dissolved. Personalized, "everyone has their own truth" bullshit is dissolved. We become representatives of a truth that we did not invent. We become spokespersons for a truth that isn't an "interpretation". We allow the one truth to function through us and to organize our mind.

That means that over time, as we continue to awaken, the things that we express, the words we use, the statements we make, the documents we write, the various expressions that we perform, cannot be logically attributed to ourselves. When we express something we can no longer say that this is our own opinion. The truth, God's truth, is ONE truth, and it is FACTUAL REALITY. It cannot be argued with, it cannot be changed. As this truth becomes our truth, we stop being the "sole owner" of truth, of a personal opinion, and we instead become a reflection of God's truth.

So we then start to express things which are factually true, which are not an opinion, and which others can also either accept or deny. In many cases people will mistake your expressions for you having an opinion, it being just your beliefs, just your interpretations. They will argue that you are trying to be ego or right just because you have a sense of certainty. But the fact is that when you get with the facts, which HAS to be possible, and you are in accord with God's truth, you ARE CORRECT. Because you have accepted correction.

Some people will not like this especially when they have an ego and especially when they do not understand how any kind of truth could be "impersonal". The truth is something to be shared and joined with, not something to possess and control. As representatives of God, teachers of God act almost in the same way as the Holy Spirit who is the Voice for God. He speaks FOR God because He is "the same" as God and has no "different" opinion of His own. We listen to Him because we trust that the truth for Him matches God's truth. As a corrected individual, we too become voices for God, correctly representative of what is true.

It's important to then realize that because we are surrendering artificial truths, interpretations, opinions, beliefs, playing God, authority problems, false exclusive ownership etc, being spiritual does not remain a "personal" exercise. Moreso it means that you are becoming a salesperson for God, peddling His wares, sharing His contributions, relaying His messages, being His eyes and ears. You take on the eyes of Christ and cease to have "your own" separate viewpoint.

So when we are evaluating whether someone is just having a belief, or whether to listen to them, or whether it's all just opinion, or whether everyone's truth is different, we should remember also that those who DO have alignment with ACTUAL TRUTH, will appear to the ego to be egos claiming total righteousness, when in fact all they are doing is being a medium through which a truth BEYOND themselves is being expressed.

In the factual truth there ARE no opinions. There is no wiggle room. There are no exceptions. There are no loopholes. There is no uncertainty. There is nowhere that some kind of "maybe" comes into it. There's no room for interpretation or opinion. The truth is either true or it's not.

The entire realm of having opinions is founded on the idea that something is open ended and doesn't make sense and is not factual. Which leaves everything open to interpretation. And where there is interpretation, there is hallucination and insanity and a complete breakdown of any kind of factual consistency.

There is no room for having a different viewpoint in God's Kingdom. We are to accept the truth that God has GIVEN and to make it our own, and to then express that same truth without distortion. This erases the ego and leaves no doors through which it can mangle and distort and personalize the facts. In God's logical system of thought there is no error and everyone is in perfect agreement. There is one truth, and we are to accept the Holy Spirit's message, in accord with it, without question.

It is obvious that in this world there is very little agreement. Everyone sees to still have an ego and an opinion. We can barely agree to what the course says and means. Each person has their own interpretation and viewpoint. There is a tremendous amount of mistakenness. Yet Jesus states that teachers of God truly should all share ONE truth and agree on EVERYTHING. There should be a single reflection coming through all such persons which is the same in all of them, not thousands of different versions. One truth, one voice.

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? "

"As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."

There are two sets of tools. The ego has a set of tools, and the Holy Spirit has a set of tools.

When we are paying attention to the ego, in any given situation where we think something is a problem, we will reach into the ego's toolkit and pull out our favorite tools. We'll use them almost without question. For some reason, we think they will work, even though they usually don't. And we will apply them without even realizing we're doing so.

We might use denial, or rationalization, or justification, or aggression, or conflict, or attack, or projection, or scapegoating, or intellectualizing, or fear, or victimhood, or a guilt trip, or blame, or whatever it is, to try to find 'salvation' - to be saved from the problem.

The trouble is the ego's tools don't really work, and even though they say on the advertising they will solve the problem, they don't. They usually make the problem worse, in the big picture, while making it *seem* like they're working in the little picture. But they're very sneaky because the marketing hype is incredibly convincing and they're never what they appear to be.

We need another set of tools. We need the Holy Spirit's toolbox, and we need to be willing to reach for those tools when things are going to shit. But this might not seem easy. We are accustomed to almost habitually reaching for the ego, to 'use' it, to solve our problems. It's our trusty toolkit, we rely on it, we depend on it, we believe in it, we're attached to it like a favorite, and we don't want to part with it because we think it's valuable.

It's really up to you, do you want to use the ego, or use Holy Spirit?

Which one works?

Which one actually accomplishes a solution that you can live with and feel good about, which restores peace and brings a smile back to your face?

Part of the problem here is that we do not recognize what the tools are. We don't realize what tools we are using, yet alone whether they belong to the ego's toolkit or not, and yet alone knowing that there's a whole other set of tools at our disposal.

This is why we need to a) learn what the ego's tools are and how they operate, b) learn how we use them and why we use them and notice when we use them, c) look at whether they actually work - what the results are and whether we really want those results and why, d) what the Holy Spirit's tools are, e) what the results might be of using Holy Spirit's tools, and then f) actually learning to say no to the ego's tools and reach for the Holy Spirit's tools instead, especially in times of stress and upset.

Denial is an attempt to get rid of something, make it go away, place it anywhere other than here, push it outside of conscious awareness, and to disassociate from it. It’s an attempt to pretend it does not exist. This is a psychological act.

When there is denial, the "displacement" of what is being avoided appears to become separate from where it is (in you) and is sort of "pushed away" from you. Thus you push it outwards - outside of yourself.

So where there is denial, there is a pushing away, ie projection.

You can often experience this happening if you are ever around someone who represses their feelings. Regardless of how they feel, they will attempt to pretend they’re not feeling it, or they try to hide the feeling from themselves in an attempt to hide it from others. They think that if they are not aware of something, others won’t be aware of it either.

This is quite funny really and is similar to how we hide from God in order to pretend that God is not there. It’s also why we hide our secret sins and hidden hates, to KEEP them but pretend they are not there. Out of sight out of mind, but it doesn’t work.

What then happens is these people, because of denial, broadcast their stuff outward quite intensely. The more the denial, the more they project. This can especially be true of more intellectual people who do not like to feel emotions. They become loud broadcasters of what they do not want to feel. They are trying to get rid of it by projecting it away from themselves. They think that hiding it from themselves makes it go away from everyone, but it does not. Their feelings, pushed onto others, are even EASIER to see by others.

If you are sensitive or empathic you will likely easily pick up on these broadcasts and wonder why you are suddenly flooded with confusing feelings. Being around "projectors" can be quite toxic. They are emotionally irresponsible people who want to maintain a persona of everything being okay all the time, instead of being authentic. People-pleasers do this too.

This is also how we project stuff in our mind. Projection makes perception. Or you could say, denial makes projection. Upon "not wanting to see" what is being denied, it will be projected outward and then seen even more intensely. The only difference is there is a disassociation and a denial that it is inside yourself or has anything to do with you.

Always, being more responsible for everything you experience and feel will put you much more in touch with who you really are, give you strength, make you more aware and loving, and you will be much more authentic. You will also then stop sliming everyone else with your garbage disposal system.

Just recently I've been rediscovering an increased awareness of love, which includes receiving love from God and experiencing it within myself - in the heart. When I feel this, any sense of loss and grief disappears, I feel literally more whole, more awake, more myself, and happier.

I've been dealing with the loss of my wife since 2024 and it's been difficult. But it's also been an education and has inspired a lot of insights. What suddenly dawned on me this morning is that maybe I've been seeking for a love that is missing within, outside of myself, because of some kind of lack within.

Maybe even when she was still around, I had certain senses of lack and unlove - a lack of self love - and she seemed to become "an idol", a seeming symbol of love, a source of love, and a way to get my needs met.

This is what ACIM would call "special love", which is driven by lack and need. First we look within and believe that love is missing, which can only happen through self-condemnation and judgement and a general lack of love (denial of God/Self). Then we go seeking externally to find salvation through someone else. Someone who seems to "do it to us and for us."

We might then form a sense of or degree of love toward a person, but it is often then a conditional love with strings attached. You start off with a neediness within, the other person seems to make up for some of your shortcomings, they support you and prop you up, and you seem to mostly cover up your internal lack. It feels like love because some degree of love is there, but there are also conditions involved - a narrowing of love and freedom to the limits of form.

Two people can then "cling" to each other in the storm and support each other and grow together, but at the same time the underlying "need" forms dependency, which we might also call "attachment". I see this attachment also as the attempt to associate love with form/physicality, such as believing you love a person "as a body". This narrows the love to the limits of form and makes it more exclusive, "attaching" love to something physical.

The problem comes when the narrowed form-based love interest goes away, you believe that LOVE ITSELF goes with them. ie if the body dies, then the love dies with it, attached to it. Then there's a belief that love is lost, and a sense of despair ensues. This of course makes sense because if love is dead and you lack love within, there is nowhere to get love and you must despair in darkness.

I see also that despair comes from the sense of unresolvable lack/need within. If I lack love in some way internally, and I "need" to get it from anywhere other than within/God, and begin to "seek and do not find" with the ego - seeking for it in some external source, and that seeming external "solution" to the lack/need goes away, the mind is left holding the needy compulsion.

When you are in a position where you have a need, and you have no way to meet the need, or when you have a problem that cannot be solved, or you depend on someone to fulfil some role or function for you and then they stop doing it, your mind sees no way out and becomes lost and hopeless. And this then produces a sense of horror and rage and despair and loss. Or, what ACIM would call, "special hate." The rage of the ego comes out as an unhealable wound gushing all over the place.

The underlying lack/need comes into awareness and is experienced as unresolvable, and then continually creates more loss as it wants, needs, depends on and expects that which has gone away externally. This shows up like the withdrawal symptoms of an addict. Similarly, the mind remains "dependent" on the external thing for its source of salvation, and keeps seeking it for a solution, but the thing is gone and isn't providing what it once was, causing the mind to feel a sense of loss, deprivation, abandonment, etc.

The thing that's been dropping in for me now is that this so-called "loss" that seems to be focused on the "death of" an external figure, is actually a PROJECTED FORM of an internal lack of love. I thought perhaps I was "getting love" from some external source and needed to do so, and kept continually trying to do so even after the external source was gone. In other words, the internal "lack of love" was not addressed, and trying to solve it externally just kept reinforcing it. "How unloved I am" became the source of despair.

But what really needed to happen was to realize that this was a second-hand solution. Loss, or "hankering for the idol that died", was only a secondary solution to the internal lack of love. And when there is a presence of love within, the mind no longer needs to seek without to get its "needs" met. A loving mind HAS no needs, and it is only "needing someone" that produces loss. And need is not love.

I've been finding that if I connect with love within, receive love from God, allow myself to see myself as loved by God and lovable etc, then it seems to automatically switch off the loss. The loss can't even "go there" because it has no foundation - no guilt/lack/sin/hate of self to feed from.

In effect, I saw that it wasn't so much that I had loss about a person dying, but that I really believed that LOVE ITSELF had died. As if part of God had died, was nowhere to be found WITHOUT, and therefore could not be felt within either. When I affirmed that love was not dead but still alive, as God, as my SELF, this seemed to lift me up to a whole new level of wholeness.

What I've also found is that having more love within seems to automatically alleviate the entire foundation of that part of me that seems to want to "seek for" the missing person. The part that is very emotional which felt attached and yearning for and needing the person to be there, which asks "I want them, where are they", wondering where they'd gone, wanting them to come back etc... was a sort of deflected projection of a deeper internal lack of love.

In other words, the loss of a dead partner isn't really the cause of a sense of loss. It's not even their absence that causes it. It's what the absence MEANS for your attempt to solve the problem of lacking love within yourself. What it means for how you will get your "needs" met.

It's much more to do with the dynamic of special love, the sense of a lack of love within for yourself, and the attempt to "attach to" the person as the symbol of the love that's missing, to milk them for all they're worth. As if only they can provide what you lack. As if only their presence can console you. As if you need them just to exist. As if without them you are dead and hopeless with no way to resolve your lack. And dependency isn't even really the issue because it's just HOW you tried to resolve your lack by tapping into a seeming source.

Perhaps the bigger truth then is that if I/we had love within ourselves, from and shared with God, and would allow ourselves to BE loved more, we would actually have far less of a sense of "I need you", or "you complete me", or "I depend on you", or "I want you back" etc... which is the psychologically twisted attachment that forms when you are IN NEED. If we are not in need, within, internally, then we are more whole and no longer seeing ourselves as "dependent on" someone else for happiness, wholeness, identity, or anything else. We get it all from God in our creation.

As I find an increasing love within, and allow myself to BE loved more, to receive and be grateful for love that God has given already, the sense of loss is greatly reducing. I literally feel a letting go of that psychological external dependency, that emotional reaching out, that longing for what's not there, that wanting what I cannot have and then thinking that there is no other solution to my "problem". The problem of a lack of love.

There IS another solution to loss and death. The solution is LOVE. Love heals and restores and maintains the wholeness of what we are. Without love we ARE lost and are in a constant state of loss, and in that loss we project the cause of it and try to fill the hole using another person externally. We may partially love them but if our love was whole we would not NEED them, depend on them, or be "attached" to them. That's neediness is a special relationship rather than a holy relationship.

A holy relationship would be rooted in internal wholeness and a lack of needs, such that we feel and experience wholeness and happiness within ourselves BEFORE the other person even enters into it. We then come from love, instead of coming from neediness and lack and selfishness. We bring and give and extend love, instead of trying to take it, and receive it from God as our supply.

In loss, the ego is like a little child that cries because its favourite toys have been taken away and it wants them back. It is a self-interest of seeing oneself as deprived and lacking (lacking love, self, identity, God, other), and therefore dependent on external things to seem to complete us. But we can't even really be completed by external things, they just cover up the continued lack within. And while they may be loving us, we may be failing to fully love them.

I think in the bigger picture the lesson long term has been more along the lines of learning to love myself more and letting myself receive God's love more, and finding love here and now within myself AS myself, rather than trying to get it from somewhere else as a bandaid. An opening up to a more unconditional love, and lifting love away from being attached to physical objects or conditions. An expansion in my sense of love and identity and realising that love is not physical. And what is made of love can never be dead.

I think in particular that I spent many years trying to be a caregiver and helper and fixer as a form of love, but there was still an underlying lesson of not really getting my own needs met and not loving myself fully enough. I gave extremely but would not let myself receive much. And the more externally focused my life situation became the more I became lost and unhappy. My source of love was gradually taken away and so I've been having to learn where to find the love again, and whether it even exists.

Fortunately I do now feel a movement toward finding it WITHIN, rather than without, and this is a whole new adventure in discovery and opening and awakening. Realising that what I sought for externally is actually inside. Realising that the whole spiritual path of seeking has been the problem all along, and lifting out of that toward a focus on recognition, acceptance, and awakening to a pre-existing love that God has given is a massive shift in orientation and "problem solving approach."

It's been like a 180-degree turning point, shifting from the seek and do not find approach to life, to more of a "finding and not seeking" approach. And truly I have to say that finding and FEELING love within is the biggest revelation - I am still discovering the depths of it as if I forget it was even possible. The more I feel love within the happier I feel. It makes me literally feel more whole, like I have more personality, like I'm being me more. And all my "energies" and emotion seems to be returning to a much more centred and whole state rather than all over the place.

But the major "reward" of it all, is that it is making the terrible LOSS melt away. A loss which felt like it would never end. A loss which ultimately is caused by moving AWAY from love. Because in truth, loss is a desire for death, and is a belief in it, rather than a belief in love and life. And loss can only seem to be experienced as the loss of something separate from you. It's part of the separation idea and the ego. Yet where there is love, there is nothing lacking and no needs and no deprivation.

Love is the answer. Love is the atonement. Love is the undoing of death and despair. We must learn once again that we are very, very loved.

"I am sustained by the Love of God. - Here is the answer to every problem that confronts you today and tomorrow and throughout time."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today."

"Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead."

"Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now. It is the gift of God and not the world."

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."

"Your holiness is the answer to every question that was ever asked, is being asked now, or will be asked in the future. Your holiness means the end of guilt, and therefore the end of hell."

"Forgiveness is the ANSWER to attack of any kind. So is attack DEPRIVED of its effects, and hate is answered in the Name of Love."