The world of separation, of space time, including planet Earth and all bodies, all forms and objects, is NOTHING AT ALL.

This is the simple teaching of A Course in Miracles. There is no body, there is no world. It is NOTHING. It is not a thing, it has no attributes, it has no inherent nature, it isn't good or bad, or holy or evil, it is absolutely nothing. It is an illusion of nothing pretending to be something, but is in fact nothing when recognized. This is why when you recognize illusions for what they are, they disappear, because they are really nothing.

The world is nothing. This is all we have to learn about the world. It has nothing to give, and cannot take anything away. It cannot live or die. It cannot do anything. It cannot bring oppression or make you sick or dead. It cannot hurt you. It has no value, and has no meaning. We did not create something in the making of this world, we opposed everything, which resulted in nothing.

God has guaranteed that opposing his will, wills nothing. And that trying to create without creating, has no effect. And that nothing real or serious can come of tiny mad ideas. That nothing has really happened, and all events are nowhere. The body is not something, it is nothing. The planet is not something, it is nothing. It is when we try to give it egoic meanings that it does not have, that we induce sickness and suffering. We give it power over us because it has none.

When we replace the egos projected meanings with God's projected meanings, the world is seen in another light, in which its nothingness IS RECOGNIZED, at the same time as seeing it with love. The love we give to it is the only reality that we seem to experience from it, because the love BLINDS us to the world's nothingness. The nothing is temporarily interpreted by the mind as a REFLECTION of heaven on earth, and then the earth disappears entirely. It was never really there to begin with, it was never really created, and it has never really lived. There is no world.

"There is no world."

"The world is nothing in itself."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real."

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

"Today's idea is true because the world does not exist."

"But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

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

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"

""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?"

"The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth"

"This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection." "Pragmatically, what has no real effect, has no real existence. Its REAL effect, then, is emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to projection."

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and WITHOUT a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would TRY to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to ATTEMPT to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily BECAUSE it is an error. The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"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."

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick."

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized."

"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real"

"Dreams are dreams, and every one is equally untrue. This is the only lesson to be learned. Yet will fear linger until every one is recognized as nothingness, and seen exactly as it is and nothing more."

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven."

"A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness is impossible. Nobody has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some of everything."

"What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. How could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"

"Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, NOT in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? What CAN be safe which rests upon a shadow?"

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."

"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly."

"Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."

"There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness."

"To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived."

"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."

"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made."

"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."

"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."

"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS. From HERE, it seems to be outside, and ACROSS the bridge. But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this, YOU GAVE UP NOTHING!"

The secret to salvation is that "we are doing this only to ourselves". This means taking full responsibility for everything we experience, all of our feelings, all of our reactions. It means owning everything about who and what we really are in truth, being in truth, being whole, surrendering all ego, and stopping all victimhood. This is the goal, the atonement, the awakening. So we're all working on moving towards this.

Now, as you work on realizing that you only do things to yourself, sooner or later this idea will pop into your mind as well - that other people are only doing things to themselves. And this also means, they are not doing anything to you, which helps you with clarifying the fact that you are not a victim either.

But the reason why this is difficult to 'get', is because of the way things appear when someone else 'attacks you'. But as we'll see... even the idea of 'attacks you' is completely false and is a mistake in our own perception of ourselves. It's part of us not admitting that we only do things to ourselves, and therefore we cannot be attacked.

So let's take for example some person you know who appears to be attacking or upset in any way. This person has an ego. Because of the ego, they have separation in their mind. The separation means they have a split mind, or they are "in two minds". When someone goes from having one whole unified mind to having two minds, something very weird happens.

The person retains one part of their own mind and thinks of it as the acceptable part, which they identify with, and think is all of who they are. Even though they have this whole other part to their mind which they deny. The part they keep is what we call the persona. Then, a profound denial and separation and unconsciousness is happening in between this part of their mind and the rest of their mind. They use denial to repress the rest of themselves and to relegate the rest of themselves to unconsciousness, hatred, darkness, and everything that seems to be 'not who they are'. They disassociate from this other part of their mind and think of it as 'not me'. This is what's called the 'shadow'.

Now, where is mind? Mind is supposed to be everywhere, inside and out, and is supposed to be the same everywhere, and it's also supposed to be whole and unified. That means that what is outside of you is also inside of you and is the same in all areas. This is what it means when the Course says "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" i.e. the same experience is out there and in here and its all one joined-together oneness.

So when the ego splits the mind like this, the part it seems to keep becomes our own body and our persona, and the part it rejects (which is still part of that person), becomes the shadow and the projection of that. So everything seemingly 'outside' the person's body houses everything the person believes they are 'not', and everything inside their body houses the part of their mind they think they 'are'. And because of this intense repression of the 'what I am not' part, it *SEEMS* in a very distracting apparent way, that a) only what is inside the person's body is the whole of the person and there are no other parts, and b) everything outside the person has nothing to do with what person.

Of course this is not true at all. But this is how it shows up. People are walking around in two minds, one inside the body and one projected outside and disowned/denied. And, here is a law or rule, which applies all of the time no matter what kind of mind you have: You are always in a relationship with yourself. This is always true, no matter how you see yourself, and it also is part of the truth that you only do things to yourself.

So a person with a whole mind is always in a relationship to themselves as a whole mind and sees wholeness everywhere. A person with a split mind/ego is still always in a relationship to themselves, but it shows up as two parts - the inner/me and the outer/other. People only ever talk to themselves! People only ever relate with themselves! People only ever interact with themselves! People only ever see themselves! This is true at all times no matter how aware the person is.

Now this is where we get lost. We get lost when WE have an ego split mind ourselves. Only when you have a mind that is WHOLE, can you recognize when there is a split mind and can identify that both parts of the split are part of ONE mind. If your mind is not whole, and is split, then you are too unconscious to recognize or see this. And the result of that, is that you will believe in a separation between what is inside the person and what is outside. And that means, when someone comes along expressing 'split mind' in your general direction, you will fall for the appearance that the 'outside parts' of their relationship with themselves are in fact NOT anything to do with that person, and are to do with you. You will take that to be personal, and about you, instead of about them. And so will begin your experience of being a VICTIM.

You will be a victim whenever you do not remember that you can only do things to yourself, and that other people can only do things to themselves. You will be a victim when your own mind is split and therefore you perceive other people's splits as 'real', and take the split-off part of what other people are doing to themselves and believe that it applies to or does something to you. The other person's disassociation from this part of their mind makes it APPEAR that they do not own and are not identified with it, and therefore it really MUST be about you.

So when someone comes along being an asshole to themselves ;-) and they come up to you, and they call you an asshole, here's what's going on.

They are having a relationship with themselves and to their own mind in its entirety, so they are calling themselves an asshole. They are seeing a reflection back in a mirror of their own self attack. They have projected their separation/split mind onto the outside environment, which randomly happens to include you, and now they are attacking their own projected externalized part of their own mind using words. And because they believe that they are NOT this other part of their mind, they will 'frame' the attack in such a way as to believe they are not attacking themselves, but instead that YOU are the one they are attacking. Like, "hey Paul, you asshole". No, the person is not talking to me. They're talking to themselves.

If a person has an ego, they do not see you. If a person has a split mind, they cannot recognize your wholeness. If a person has a split mind, they are having a hallucinatory experience in a private reality that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and are projecting their split outward, and it's getting confused with what's out there, and so the person thinks that YOU have something to do with the hate they SEE, but the hate they SEE is their own hate toward themselves, which they are USING in order to maintain their split mind.

Hate and fear are tools and devices which create the illusion of disassociation and disownership and irresponsibility for the content of guilt in that person's mind. So if someone has an ego, they do not love you and they do not recognize love in you and they literally do not SEE you clearly. They do not recognize you as love, because they do not recognize themselves as love, because their mind is not whole. Love is wholeness. And if they were to have a whole mind, they would see you with wholeness and also recognize not only themselves as love but recognize you as love as well, regardless of your ego, and would see that the two of you are ONE.

So we get lost in this a LOT. I know I do. This is the main issue that keeps us being a victimized. The ego split in our own mind makes us buy into the ego splits in other people's minds. We keep taking personally expressions that other people are making, in a split mind state, toward themselves, which they project outward and make 'other'-oriented. It's still all about that person. It's still them attacking and doing this to themselves. It's still them accusing you of THEIR sins. And so other people never really accuse you of YOUR sins. And so other people are never really talking about YOU when they attack you or call you names. It's not about you.

This is really important to remember and to hone this skill of seeing with wholeness and recognizing the split minds of others and how it manifests as expressions of attack on 'otherness' (i.e. you) when in fact that person is really just at war with themselves. It's NOT about you. It's not you that they are really attacking. You have to learn to overlook the appearance of this. The form it takes, the words they use, the direction they aim it in, it's all part of their delusion.

So if someone is telling you they don't love you in some way, it's not true. They'r not even telling you that they don't love you. They are telling themselves that they don't love themselves. That's all. They're in a private world. They don't know what they're doing. Taking it personally and thinking that it is about you is a major error that YOU are making because YOU have a split mind that needs healing. Your own split is what causes you to be upset and hurt by other people's blind, impersonal attacks. So if there's someone in your life somewhere that seems to not like you or is your enemy... they don't like themselves. They are their own enemy. And no matter how it looks on the surface or how they express it, and no matter how much they seem to make it about 'you', it is NOT ABOUT YOU.

Remember the secret to salvation - you are doing this to yourself, and they are doing this to themselves.

If other people only do stuff to themselves, and if you only do stuff to yourself, and if nobody ever does anything to anyone else, then you are invulnerable, right?

When someone seems to do something to someone else, they are actually going into withdrawal, not attack. What looks like attack to us is a recoil. It's a withdrawal away from oneness. It's taking steps back away from love. It's hiding. Attack is hiding is the dark. Attack does not exist in the light. So nobody actually has any effect on anyone else. This is how God is unaffected by our attempted attacks as well. God doesn't even need to defend Himself because any kind of attack is a RETREAT away from love even if it takes on a form that LOOKS LIKE it's a forward attack. Attack is always a contraction away from love. So if you are love, you know that attack is always a form of avoidance. And that is complete truth, metaphysically and experientially, and it's built into reality.

So quite literally, you ARE invulnerable, and immortal, and cannot be attacked by anyone else, and have never been attacked by anyone else. You can only attack yourself and play with illusions of stories of how you attacked them or how they attacked you. None of that story is true whatsoever. We are all PERMANENTLY INVULNERABLE, and we are all completely, totally, wholly INCAPABLE of actually attacking anyone.

Nothing can assail the Kingdom of God. Nothing real can be threatened.

I recently had to struggle through a period of intense emotional release, coupled with a lot of crying. It was triggered seemingly by father's day, inducing a grieving period and sense of loss, but it seemed to also move into some release relating to childhood abuse.

With such heavy feelings I became quite caught up in it, lost and immersed in ego. Also during this period I lost sight of the course teachings and of forgiveness. I felt too overwhelmed and upset to want to add more ego-challenging stress in the form of extra course stuff.

It also then became very annoying and frustrating that there was so much emotion, and that it wasn't stopping. I was forced to rest a lot. But it started to make me question, why do I keep having to have so much emotion coming out? Is there really a benefit to crying and releasing it? Is crying a part of my real self's healing or is it just some aspect of the ego and the body?

When I considered that I've had hundreds if not thousands of cries in recent years, and that I tend to throw myself into it, I also couldn't fathom how there could be so much to feel through. Why did things from 40 years ago keep coming up? Why did it require so many releases in order to make such slow progress? Was this really necessary and important in my spiritual path? Yes the crying does seem to move me past hurts and on to deeper stuff but is it really necessary?

I also recently started to consider the idea in ACIM of there being two levels of mind, higher and lower. Real thoughts shared with God produce the creation of spirit, and unreal thoughts shared with the ego produce intellect and physicality. So that made me start to realize, there are higher and lower parts to my mind.

I think this is a kind of turning point of "there must be a better way" because I'm also now starting to step back from the lower mind more often. I'm asking myself, is this feeling or perspective really a part of me as a higher-self, or is it coming up from the depths of a lower ego self? Even to the extent, are these hurt emotions, emotional pain and loss and grief and so on, really coming from or about "me" or is it part of the ego? Is it perhaps the ego that cries and is constantly upset?

Today perhaps for the first time, with a continued oozing out of further emotions, I started to assert the idea at the end of my rope, that "these feelings are not mine." Who and what I am seems to somehow be stepping back from or dis-associating from them. This seems pretty radical to suggest that any upset feeling is not really a part of me, is not mine, and is not part of my identity. It makes me realize I have been identifying with these things for a very long time.

The ego is pretty relentless in its morbid suffering. The body, if it holds certain emotional pain or energies in itself, certainly is also a repository of suffering and pain. It seems to me that every single little upset about anything ever is somehow stored somewhere and has to seemingly be released. But I'm also realizing that who and what I am does not have to be consumed by it, lost in it, playing along with it.

I don't know if this is some kind of attempted denial or repression, but it seems that there is some part of my sense of who and what I am which is detaching from these "lower" experiences and is identifying with something higher and lighter. All pain and misery, all upset, all grief and loss, all sense of shame or guilt, all fears, all hurt and suffering, surely cannot be a part of who or what I am as God created me. There can't be unhappy feelings in God's son. They cannot be real.

As I sit here and I still am having waves of emotion wanting to erupt and release, there's also some part of me now that feels stronger, and does not want to lose myself in it, or have it at all. When emotions become strong and overtake the mind, it can really become immersive and it starts to feel like "I" am the one who is feeling it and is hurt by it. I become centered in it. The emotions seem to describe me. I believe this is identifying with them, and thus with the ego.

As I remember that my identity or self is not these feelings, I immediately feel a deflating effect. The ego is always attempting to inflate things into a huge drama of intensity, especially at the emotional level. I think that identifying with the emotions and feeling like I'm the one who they are a part of, or am "the one" who is hurt, is all part of being lost in the ego.

I recall also some things which Eckhart Tolle has said about "the pain body", which is the ego's emotional body of pain and suffering. He said that this emotional pain body remains dormant a lot but sometimes it erupts into awareness and attempts to flood the mind with negative thoughts and memories of the past, trying to get the mind to identify with it and lose consciousness. I'm asking myself now if all and every single upsetting feeling "from the past" is really this pain body erupting and the ego trying to use my dependency on, and identification with feelings, as a way to keep me bound to it.

It seems weird to say, because what I'm really saying is that suddenly it seems that all my "lower" emotions are not really true of me. All hurt feelings are not really about me as God created me. All emotions that erupt from the bottomless pit of despair are not a part of my self. How can they be if God created me perfect and permanently happy? How can any kind of unhappiness or loss or shame or guilt or anything else be a part of my identity or my experience?

I feel like I've been battling with this emotion-monster for decades now. Years upon years of crying about the past. With the recent intolerability and obnoxiousness of it, it just became too much to a kind of breaking point, and now I feel like I'm snapping out of it. Like I"m done with it. I don't want to feel this crap anymore as though it's something I have to go through, or can't stop, or have no power over, or am destined to feel. It's not God's will for me. And it seems like all of it is a part of illusion.

As I look at it now, and as feelings threaten to "come up" again and flood my experience, I watch as they just emerge out of nowhere, from below, and seem to want to tempt me to believe that I am the one who is upset. But if I recall that I not these feelings, then somehow it seems fairly easy to "stay out of it". And that stepping back also deflates them and seems to cause them to simmer down again.

I think this is another thing that I have just been doing to myself over time. There is some drive in my psyche/personality to just hurl myself into full exposure to any and all emotions. But by identifying with them and believing they relate to me, or are part of me, having no boundaries with them, I have only been burying myself in them and feeling sorry for myself like a victim. Not to mention how much it consumes me and pulls me far away from higher thoughts.

I see Jesus in the course telling me to have more vigilance to protect the higher mind and to have more vigilance against the lower mind. The lower mind is run by the ego and wants to just turn everything into a life-or-death separation drama. I don't want to be a part of that anymore.

While at first I thought my whole self was the lower mind, and the higher mind was much higher, I now see that I'm moving up into the higher mind and the lower self is indeed below me. The ego wants us to identify with it and believe that all its perceptions of suffering are our own. That we are the body and its pains. That we are the suffering self. That's now who or what we are. The pool of misery doesn't seem to have an end. It seems the only thing to do with the desert is to leave.

The truth must be, then, that any unhappy feeling cannot be a part of my real self, cannot be true, cannot be real, and cannot be happening. My real self cannot be upset, cannot suffer loss, and cannot be hurt. It is extraordinary to think that I have lived as "a person" who seems to have suffered and felt hurt and upset so many times, and that not once has this suffering been true. But this is what ACIM is telling me. Only the thoughts and feelings that I share with God are real, and all the rest is ego noise, one of its many forms of the opposite to love.

"You hate it (the body), yet you think it IS your self, and that, WITHOUT it, would your self be lost."

"The ego is also in your mind, because you have ACCEPTED it there. ITS evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does NOT love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of EVERYTHING it perceives, because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best, and viciousness at worst."

"the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that BELIEVES in it, and gives existence TO it. Yet it is ALSO your mind that has the power to DENY its existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey it sets you IS."

"The ego is quite literally a fearful thought."

"Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"The ego is expert ONLY in confusion. It does not understand ANYTHING ELSE. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and TOTALLY CONFUSING."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"Jung was right indeed in insisting that the ego is NOT the self, and that the self should be regarded as an achievement."

"To identify with the ego is to attack yourself, and MAKE YOURSELF POOR. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego FEELS DEPRIVED. What he EXPERIENCES is then depression or anger, but what he DID is to exchange his self-love for self-hate, MAKING HIM AFRAID OF HIMSELF. He does NOT realize this. Even if he is fully aware of ANXIETY, he does NOT perceive its source AS HIS OWN EGO IDENTIFICATION, and he ALWAYS tries to handle it by making some sort of insane "arrangement" with the world."

"This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE."

"That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It does not exist."

"All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things should HAPPEN to the Son of God, WITHOUT his will."

"The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness."

"For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

"Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions"

"Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. "

"who is sinless cannot suffer pain"

"The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer."

"The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe."

"You have enslaved the world with all your fears, with doubts and miseries, your pain and tears, and all your sorrows press upon it, and keep it a prisoner to your beliefs."

"And God Himself shall wipe away all tears."

"Be not afraid of Love. For It alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dreams of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His."

"Repeat God's Name and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace. The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world."

"And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again."

"Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's JOINED with His."

In A Course in Miracles there are hundreds of references to FREEDOM scattered throughout. Freedom is also contrasted against its opposite, which is imprisonment, enslavement, being bound to the ego, to the body, to darkness, suffering and death. The whole course is geared towards you reclaiming your freedom, and giving freedom to others. Through your miracles you are setting others free, and releasing them from the chains of imprisonment you held them in before.

"I am not a body I am free."

"Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear."

"I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want."

"It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom."

"I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, UNLESS I WANT TO

USE YOU TO IMPRISON MYSELF."

"But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE."

"For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it." "When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."

"They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus."

The idea of freedom really goes back to your creation as a free-willed being by God. God has absolute freedom, being free from all limitation. God is unlimited. He who is unlimited can only give complete freedom, because he knows not of imprisonment. God does not create by imprisoning, he creates by giving freedom. All his children are not only free, they are fully free. It is because they are completely free ... in a sense, free from God .... though still sharing freely with him, that they are established as truly cooperative co-creators in heaven.

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless."

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His."

Any attempt you make to imprison another, to attack, to judge, to condemn, to blame, to project, to hurt, to destroy, to make guilty, to accuse of sin, to be victimized by, to victimize, to narrow to a body, to induce suffering of any kind, is actually an attempt to take away the freedom of others, AND to deny your own freedom. You cannot be a victim or suffer in ANY way if you acknowledge your total freedom. But in order to gain your own freedom, you MUST acknowledge that everyone else is also free from YOU, and you from them. You are not bound BY your brothers, any more than they are bound by you.

Dwell for a moment on the feeling of "keeping to yourself", in the sense that you ALLOW everyone to be free FROM YOU. Acknowledge that everyone is completely free. You are free from their tyranny over you. They are free from your tyranny over them. Let go of all manipulation, expectation, wanting others to be a certain way, or resisting their choices. Withdraw all your efforts to control and coerce, to blame and accuse. Let go of everyone. Let the whole world be itself. Settle back into your own inner freedom. You are free from enemies, free from attack, free from the choices of others, free from the body, and free from the world.

The course is in fact leading entirely to your TOTAL FREEDOM. Claiming your freedom is the restoration of your birth right. You cannot however claim your total freedom if you are imprisoning others, because the attempt to do so is an attempt to reinforce the idea that freedom doesn't exist. And thus you imprison yourself. It is said that your brother can set you free, or is the key to your salvation. By GIVING him total freedom, you give it to yourself. By recognizing he IS FREE, you recognize YOU are free. Try it.

Atonement is all about claiming freedom for yourself and the whole sonship. It is an act of setting everyone free from imprisonment. It releases you and everyone from slavery, bondage, body identification, death identification, and from all forms of suffering. You cannot BE affected by forces outside of you. The world cannot make you imprisoned or take your freedom away. No-one can deny your freedom for you. Not even God can decide whether you are free or not. He established you as free forever, and only you can deny your OWN freedom by denying it to the whole sonship.

When you acknowledge that you are COMPLETELY FREE FROM EVERYTHING, you settle back into your soul, you lift your hands away from the territory and lives of others and you set everyone free. In so doing you BECOME free yourself. You can feel it inside you, an acknowledgement of your own freedom, and it makes you feel happy and safe. You are safe from all attack because you are claiming your freedom. You are even save from suffering and death and from all the forces in the world. Nothing can imprison you or act against your will, but your will itself. When you stop imprisoning, you stop imprisoning yourself.

Below is an extensive collection of quotes from ACIM on the topic of freedom.

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free."

"And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will."

"No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found."

"But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"Only in dreams is there a time when he appears to be in prison, and awaits a future freedom if it be at all. Yet in reality his dreams are gone, with truth established in their place. And now is freedom his already. Should I wait in chains which have been severed for release, when God is offering me freedom now?"

"I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to look to find it. Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me. Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in God alone."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."

"We sound the call of freedom 'round the world with this idea."

"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom."

"In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well. Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body."

"For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."

"Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance."

"For as we offer freedom it is given us. And we would not remain as prisoners, while You hold out our freedom unto us."

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom"

"That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom"

"The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God."

"Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy."

"Father, I thank You for today, and for the freedom I am certain it will bring. This day is holy, for today Your Son will be redeemed. His suffering is done."

"Thanks for today, my Father. I was born into this world but to achieve this day, and what it holds in joy and freedom for Your holy Son, and for the world he made, which is released along with him today."

"Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world."

"Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any laws idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God. He is not bound except by his beliefs. Yet what he is is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom."

"But those who are FOR freedom, even if they are misguided in HOW they defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which IS true."

"And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own."

"Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God."

"Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS."

"And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"Forgiveness, truly given, is the only way in which your hope of freedom lies."

"Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom."

"The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace."

"For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand."

"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true."

"In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him."

"This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is."

"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father."

"Only the function God has given me

can offer freedom. Only this I seek,

and only this will I accept as mine."

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice."

"It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me."

"Can I lay limits on the Son of God, whose Father willed that he be limitless, and like Himself in freedom and in love?"

"So will YOU learn the freedom that I taught, by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you RAISE to freedom, and bar my way to YOU."

"So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own."

"Today's idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom."

"And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them."

"All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom FOR you."

"Accept this key to freedom, from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, YOU do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER."

"You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it."

"Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom, for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's attraction."

"How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value MORE than this? For here is YOUR salvation and YOUR freedom. And it MUST be complete, if YOU would recognize it."

"But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me."

"The mind that is made willing to accept God's gifts has been restored to Spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own."

"Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave."

"Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge."

"Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you."

"Thus do we lift the chains which bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals."

"Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.

"He would only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom."

"The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered you through the grace of God."

"It contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve."

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds."

"LOVE IS FREEDOM. To look for it by placing yourself in BONDAGE, is to SEPARATE yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you BE released."

"The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the REAL lure in the special relationship. You do NOT recognize that this IS its REAL appeal, for the ego has taught you that FREEDOM lies in it."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

Let me accept the strength God offers me

And see no value in this world, that I

May find my freedom and deliverance."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

I seek my freedom and deliverance,

And this is not a part of what I want."

"And think how holy HE must be, when in him sleeps your OWN salvation, with HIS freedom joined."

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home."

"It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for BY his freedom will you gain your own."

"He HAS no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him."

"But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom."

"The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."

"In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom."

"Practice GIVING this blessed instant of freedom to all who are ENSLAVED by time, and thus make time their friend FOR them."

"Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God." "Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now. Deny him not. His Father's Love for him belongs to you."

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."

"It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace."

"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real."

"But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself."

"The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."

"For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form?"

"You have denied HIS freedom, and by so doing, you have denied the witness unto YOURS. You could as easily have FREED him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him TO it. And in HIS freedom would have been your OWN."

"Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation."

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU."

"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone."

"You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these."

"In the name of MY freedom, I WILL your release,

Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.

So will the year begin in joy and freedom."

"For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace."

"Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom."

"A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last." "Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world"

"Where COULD his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free ALREADY? And who could bind him but HIMSELF, if he DENY his freedom?"

"Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS."

"Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies."

"Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different."

"Today escape from madness. You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace."

"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse."

"Give joyously to one another the freedom and the strength to lead you there. And come before each other's holy altar, where the strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads you home."

"His is the Voice of God, and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear."

"Whom you forgive is GIVEN power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto YOU."

"Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit, for BOTH of you. And be you free together, as you offer TO the Holy Spirit this SAME gift, and, giving it, receive it OF Him, in RETURN for what you gave."

"Offer each other freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."

"Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety."

"It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son."

"There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom."

"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."

"Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them."

"Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."

"And what they see upholds their freedom FROM imprisonment and death." "Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's Saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and RELEASE from suffering to everyone who NEEDS a miracle to save him."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." "We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own."

"Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace."

"Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it."

"We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom."

"What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your Savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours."

"Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are."

"It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you"

"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom. "

"The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt."

"Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless."

"You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your Father loves you."

"The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood."

"I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world, for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom."

"He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you." "Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."

"Your special relationships will remain, NOT as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."

"The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it."

"For faith can keep the Son of God in chains, as long as he believes he IS in chains. And, when he is RELEASED from them, it will be simply because he no longer BELIEVES in them, WITHDRAWING faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom INSTEAD."

"Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it."

"He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his."

"My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way."

"Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire."

"Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the word "atone" really means "undo."

"In this phase of learning, working miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you."

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS."

"To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you HAVE accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you OFFER the gift of freedom from the past, which you have RECEIVED." "Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here."

"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."

"Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds."

"For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was NEVER absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice."

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it."

"And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him."

"The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES."

"You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear."

"Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by HIS Being."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free."

"Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower."

"In the service of the "Right Mind", the denial of ERROR frees the mind and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY free, it CANNOT miscreate, because it recognizes ONLY TRUTH.

In ACIM the term "solid" or "solidity" obviously refers to what we recognize it to mean..... things which seem solid to us. Physical matter, heavy objects, solid materials, walls, bodies, planets, all things which science would tell us are in a solid state of matter. Hard, tangible, measurable, biological, chemical, physical. Planet earth.

The course goes on to tell us that these things which appear to be solid will eventually be seen as transparent, like a shadow, or a smoke-screen, or a veil of illusions. And that these solid things stand in front of the face of Christ, initially blocking its view entirely but later moving aside and fading away to reveal the true light of the real world. That the "world", ie the solid earth, is nothing but a wall of illusions standing in the way of reality.

Christ vision becomes able to "see through" solid matter, kind of like x-ray vision. This is because it is forgiving, and "to forgive is to overlook." To overlook something is to not see it, which is why what you forgive must disappear. By forgiving the physical material solid world, therefore, you become able to see through and past and beyond it to the light of another world. A world which is not earth and is not the physical solid material plane.

In fact, Jesus says that it is the guilt in our minds which makes the veil of illusions - earth and spacetime - appear to have solidity. It is guilt which drags our mind down into false perceptions, blinded by perception of form, looking through and believing the body's eyesight which is completely incapable of forgiving or looking past the solidity of matter.

It is our belief in guilt and sin and fear and death which locks us in to the prison of solid matter and makes it appear opaque to our minds. It is only because we are not forgiving that the world appears to show up at all as "solid". And once we forgive completely, the whole world must disappear, and that does mean the solid physical world will fade into nothingness, leaving behind only the light of heaven, because the world IS nothing but a veil of illusions we made to cover up reality.

The physical material solid world literally was made as a kind of curtain or screen or wall to come "between" you and yourself, between you and God, to hide God and block out heaven. It is like a layer of dirt covering over what should be bright and obvious, a stain upon the creation of God, a shadow of darkness. Belief in it causes the body to be lit up and made to seem real and solid, emphasizing the rift of the gap of separation which contains the entire separation from God in the split mind.

Christ vision looks past this world to the light. It does not mistake the body for the son of God. It does not fixate on physical forms. It does not believe the world of separate objects is real. It doesn't merely look upon and regard it as unified, it looks fully beyond it entirely. It glances at the disappearing thin veil of nothingness as it leave the mind's awareness and opens up fully to perceiving only the light of reality. Then it is game over for the world, which was nothing to begin with.

This is then the end of solidity, the end of matter, the end of the physical, the end of the world of shadows, the end of darkness, the end of separation, and the end of death. The world is at first forgiven, seen past, overlooked, and ignored, and then ultimately returns to nothing at all which it is. There is no world, and only heaven remains.

"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this. For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay."

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. "

"Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see."

"And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. LET it be lifted! Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now."

"Standing BEFORE the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

"The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. And now they go to find what has been given them to seek. Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. Yet everything which they report is but illusion which is kept apart from truth."

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and WITHOUT a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would TRY to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to ATTEMPT to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily BECAUSE it is an error. The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality which can be seen and justified and fully understood."

"This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion."

"Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all arise in your imagination, and FROM the clouds, the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all THERE. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's "make believe.""

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds, and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there, transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them. Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see."

"If you are not a body, what are you? You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind. You need to feel something to put your faith in, as you lift it from the body. You need a real experience of something else, something more solid and more sure; more worthy of your faith, and really there."

"The world you see is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall."

"The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself."

"You who believe you walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning CAN be found, consider this: These ARE the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These ARE the principles which makes the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it IS here you look for meaning. These are the laws YOU made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven that you prefer."

"This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God."

"The actions of the body are perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you, and thus of him as well. By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past EVERYTHING you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes."

"Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far BEYOND the body, SUPPORTING vision, NOT obstructing it."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

There is a simple law about health that you need to know about, as described here:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

If you do not regard yourself as an illusion in any way ("I am not an illusion but a reality"), you do not see YOURSELF as an illusion, and therefore you do not SHOW UP AS an illusion. Instead, you show up as INVISIBLE. As if you have no body. You do not need a body, and the body would not be an accurate identification of what you think of yourself.

The body is always coming from your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Always. It is always being projected outward. It never has its own condition or its own state of being or its own mind or will or power or thoughts or anything else. It’s purely a projected mental image. It is YOUR mental image about what you think your identity is. Or, what you are made of. Or, what you think is true of you.

If you think it is true of you that you are less than as God created you, pure spirit, wholeness, having no form or need for form, you WILL materialize - ie mis-create - what appears to be a body out of nowhere. The mind makes the body. And the mind can make as many bodies as it likes. As Jesus said in the special notes to Helen, here are his exact words where he describes exactly what I’ve just said:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

His body disappeared because He had no illusions about himself, his identity. He did not identify himself as dead, or made of separation, and so He stopped showing up as that. He stopped imagining himself as that.

Note he also says, the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. The mind MAKES the body. And it constantly is projecting a body when it sees itself as limited. It is projecting the body at every moment to sustain an illusion of a constant self. But the body is always an effect, never a cause of anything. So if the mind wants to believe something else, the body MUST change. It has no will to stop the mind.

Now, a very important thing to realize is, the state of the body, being a mental picture of "self", directly corresponds ALWAYS to how a person’s mind is seeing itself. What it believes it is. So if it believes it is sinful or guilty, the mind will attack itself, thus attack its own image of itself which will show up as a body infected by or attacked by guilt and sin. This will make the body appear, ie be projected as though, it seems to be "sick". It does not "have" a sickness, it IS a sickness.

It will REMAIN showing up as sick for as long as the MIND decides to be sick. It will have no ability to heal itself. Bodies DO NOT heal themselves. The immune system is a bullshit ego concept. It is an illusion. Bodies does not heal anything. They do nothing. Only the mind orchestrates stuff happening.

When the mind says jump, the body jumps. Literally. When the mind says, I am sick and separate, a body will be projected which shows signs of sickness and separation. When the mind says, now is the time that I am well and joined with God, the body MUST show up as a picture of a body that is in perfect health.

You have to realize, the body has NO ABILITY to counter the choice of the mind as to how it wants to identify itself. It IS the mind’s attempt to identify itself as an illusion. There also IS NO OTHER CAUSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD that can do anything to the body. It cannot be made sick, or hurt, or damaged in any way, unless the mind is believing it is damaged. And then the MIND puts the damage into the body, not the world. As Jesus says here clearly:

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself ... No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

That means there is NO CAUSE outside of you, at all. Ever. The body CANNOT be caused against YOUR will. Ever. However it shows up, is how you are MAKING IT show up.

There is nothing in the world that makes your body do or feel or adjust or change in any way at all. Any appearance to the contrary is some illusion the mind is putting in place to pretend it is irresponsible. Sickness IS irresponsibility. The mind however is ALWAYS in charge even if it makes an illusion of death. Death cannot happen to the body unless the mind destroys the body itself. "No-one dies without their own consent".

This also means, that if the body is showing up as sick, SOMETHING IS WRONG with the mind. Guaranteed. 100%. If the body is sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. This is metaphysical law with zero exceptions. There can be states of mind reached which seem like awakening, but where the body remains sick. In such states, the mind HAS NOT awoken from the dream of death, as proved by the fact that the body still seems to die, because the mind STILL BELIEVES it does not deserve eternal life, and so accepts death - an illusion of giving up all will and causality. An attempt not to choose at all.

Rather than see this as some kind of condemnation or guilt-inducing statement that, if you are sick, it’s your fault, which the ego would love to indulge, instead see it as perhaps shocking or upsetting at first, to have to admit that YOU are responsible for making your sickness. This is not always welcome news, often producing ego reactions of guilt and fear and so on. But it is also revealing to you a POWER that you have. A power and a CHOICE, a FREEDOM, a HOPE, in which IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, you NEED NOT SUFFER.

This does not EVER mean, that if you change your mind, you will transcend sickness and death and not care that it "happens to you". This is 100% missing the point and a total bastardization of the teaching. No-one can be at peace with death because peace is evidence you do not believe in Eternal Life. Sickness and death DO NOT happen to you. YOU HAPPEN. Sickness only happens in your body beacuse it’s a picture of YOUR MIND’s sickness. Death only happens in your body because YOU DESTROY YOURSELF. This has to be owned up to before you can claim the right, and power, and freedom, to EXERCISE your FREE WILL choice to NEVER SUFFER AGAIN.

It does mean, on the one hand, you HAVE to admit to being responsible for causing ALL of the suffering you have experienced, it was ALL you doing it to yourself, and no-one and nothing-else EVER caused anything you’ve experienced. That can be a big chunk of crap to swallow. BUT.... it also opens the door to the POSSIBILITY, that you still have this power, and can CHOOSE AGAIN and therefore produce a state of NO SUFFERING.

You MUST demonstrate a body that is invulnerable, cannot be hurt, cannot be damaged, has no sickness, does not show any signs of attack, and PROVES that your brother and the whole world has done NOTHING to affect the Son of God. OTHERWISE... you WILL attack yourself, and you will suffer, by your own hand. No-one else will be doing it to you but yourself. This is the SECRET TO SALVATION! YOU ARE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF. And because you are - if you OWN IT - you can choose simply to NEVER AGAIN be sick or dead or suffer in any way. Claim your IMMORTALITY!

There is no power in all the world that does anything to you against your will, other than YOU. There is no cause in the world whatsoever to produce effects in you or your body that YOU do not put there yourself. Worldly causes are cover-up jobs for your mind to pretend its irresponsibility is someone else’s fault.

There is no form of sickness, even DEATH, that cannot be reversed, if the MIND decides to no longer believe in it. Whatever you believe about yourself, IT WILL SHOW UP. It must. Mind is cause. Form is the effect of believing in illusions. Your mind has power over ALL MATTER. "My self is ruler of the universe".

So realize this. While you have a body, your body ALWAYS EQUALS your state of mind. So long as you THINK you are a body, YOU WILL MAKE ONE. So long as you think you are separate from God, you will PRESENT A PICTURE of what you believe for all to see. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"!! But there can also be a totally transparent depiction of what’s going on inside of you, if you fully accept atonement.

If the body is showing up as sick, your mind *IS* sick. You ARE responsible for it. No-one else is. The world is not. The body is not. Having mastery over form REQUIRES extreme, absolute ownership and responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing, down to the atoms that make up the body. YOU are putting them there. If the body is not doing well, it’s because you keep attacking yourself. Period. Don’t let this induce guilt or worthlessness. Instead forgive yourself and choose again.

If you can recognize this correlation between mind and body, you will realize that *IF* you change your mind, THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW. It is guaranteed. It is a depiction of your "Self" as you see yourself. This is why when you shift into a miracle, you temporarily move into INVISIBILITY. "Miracles are temporary shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal." Invisibility (of form) correlates to having a mind which is CLEAR and FREE OF SEPARATIONS. You can see through it because it has become transparent and UNBLOCKED. This movement into formlessness heals the mind and thus the body MUST follow.

This also means, as Jesus has said, *IF* you get your mind into a state of perfect clarity and truth, and given that you are temporarily still projecting a body, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE because YOU ARE, it cannot BE sick for ANY reason, because you are not sick, and IT CANNOT DIE because you see yourself as immortal spirit. Or at least a glimpse of that. Jesus assures us there is a divine protection that the body will experience IF we will be purely vigilant for the truth. Your body CAN be indestructible, free of aging, weather, the need for food and water, and so on. "I am sustained by the love of God all through the day", goes to the extreme!

And He literally means this..... IT CANNOT be sick. Sickness is IMPOSSIBLE where guilt has been removed. Sickness CANNOT RETURN where guilt has been removed. A guiltless mind cannot produce a suffering body. And why would it. A suffering body is an attack on your brother and yourself, due to a belief the world is causing you. Sickness is NONSENSE. It is a portrayal of a victim who believes they are sinful. But everyone is free to choose. You can choose whatever you want, but you cannot escape the consequences of your decisions.

You are cause. This is a course in cause, not effect. Choose health by choosing to heal the mind of its misperception of itself, and it will automatically take care of projecting a healthy body in the short term. This is the same as saying to seek first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight.

Your whole life, since you found yourself in a body, you've believed that your self is SEPARATE from other people. That you are isolated and alone INSIDE your body, and no-one else is in there with you.

You have believed that everyone else is excluded from you, is not a part of you, and exists outside of you, stuck in their OWN bodies. And that therefore they are NOT you. But this is completely untrue and unnatural.

In heaven, the whole Kingdom of God, which is the Sonship, comprises many beings. But all of these beings are SHARED. They share all of themselves with each other. So much so that a part of each being is IN and AS other beings. They are all one. One brother is all brothers, every mind contains all minds. So the sense of "self" really means, "I am myself AND I am everyone."

In the separation from God, bodies were invented as separation devices to IMPRISON each self, to cut it off from others and to NOT SHARE with them. This produced a sense of a self which is only you, and not anyone else. A self which is alone, isolated, separate, exclusive, and DOES NOT SHARE with others. This self appears to be trapped inside a separate body, kept apart from others by a gap of space, and confined.

So now you grew up believing that anything that refers to you, refers to the "only me" that is inside your body. The sense of self that EXCLUDES everyone else. Me, and NOT you. Only me. Only MY self, and NOT your self. That's what your sense of yourself has turned into. A self which shares nothing, a self which is special and exclusive, a self which is alone, and a self which is DISCONNECTED from others.

But what you may not have realized is that, in applying the imprisonment of bodies to your unified self, you actually split the mind and separate off PART of you into your body, and LEFT OUT the part of you that is IN OTHERS. The part of you that is them, became seemingly disconnected from you. You were "separated out" from the shared group collective mind. And it's still true that PART OF YOURSELF IS OUTSIDE OF YOU.

So whereas before, your whole experiencing of how to receive something was to bring it INTO you from the outside in, to "get" from the world, to possess something ONLY for yourself, what needs to happen in truth is that you realize that the parts of you IN OTHERS have to also receive in order for YOU to receive. Because, literally, you ARE in them and if you exclude the part of you that's in them from receiving then you are literally deprived.

So now your whole sense of "who and what am I" has to EXPAND and become MORE INCLUSIVE. It has to go from "only me by myself" to "me including everyone else". That you ARE everyone. You are the whole sonship.

"The sonship is your soul." "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

So now the dynamic of giving and receiving has to change. To your separated self, giving has been interpreted as LOSS, because to give away to someone NOT yourself is to LOSE what you had. And this is how the ego - the "me alone" sense of identity, sees it. And receiving was only ever seen as you GETTING for yourself and depriving others of what you have, so that they are the one sacrificing.

In truth, if you ARE everyone, and part of your very own self is IN them, then when you give to THEM, you are STILL INCLUDED, because the part of you in them receives it. And therefore to receive anything, you have to give it to YOURSELF AND OTHERS simultaneously. And the word for that is SHARING, or joining. Or even oneness.

It will seem odd at first, and counter-intuitive. It will seem ridiculous to suggest that you have to GIVE to someone "else", in order to receive. That whatever you want for yourself, you have to give it to someone else. That if you want to be healed, you have to give healing. That if you want to feel loved, you have to GIVE love. It will seem like you're being fooled, that someone ELSE is going to get all the benefit, and you will be left hanging. You'll be wondering to yourself how YOU are going to benefit at all if someone ELSE is getting all the stuff given to them.

But as you practice this and SHIFT your sense of self away from "I am only me" to "I am us", which is true sharing and natural oneness, you will realize that it does in fact work. When you do give love to another, you DO become elevated. This is why "miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver". Giving love makes YOU feel loved. Giving healing brings healing TO YOU. Making someone happy makes YOU happy.

This is actually the only way that miracles can be given to others. Because "miracles unite you with your brother" and "healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." This is also where shared interests come into it.

If your SELF really encompassses and means, "You plus them", and you really start to develop a sense that YOU ARE IN THEM, then whenever you are thinking of your "own" interests you actually think of what is in the best interests of BOTH of you. You think of how you can BOTH BENEFIT and BOTH RECEIVE equally. You start to be your brother's keeper, because it is on your own best interest to do so.

The course also says that when you do this, when you start to see yourself as IN others, shared with them, which results in you looking out for your MUTUAL interests, you can now call yourself a Teacher of God. Because you are now TEACHING something BEYOND separation, beyond isolation and exclusion. You are teaching inclusiveness and sharing, which is aligned with God's nature.

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's."

It can feel strange at first, but as you start to practive this, you realize that you need to "target" the you that is in someone ELSE, in order for YOU to really receive anything. And that when you try to target the you that is ONLY in your body, you end up being deprived. After a while you start to actually expand your sense of identity and self to INCLUDE other people. You start to feel like, references to "ME" are references to "US". That you start to ENCOMPASS others like a kind of umbrella.

Whatever is truly given is therefore given FOR you and TO you but also FOR others. This is why the light of God is given to you in order to move through you TO others. This is how miracles are working. Because we're really talking here about the basis of a holy relationship, a relationship in which "my selfish self" is being put aside and my sense of identity is transcending "just me" and is opening up to INCLUDE others.

That means you are becoming more WHOLE, or having more "self-fullness", because the whole of you really is the whole sonship. You ARE the Kingdom of God. You INCLUDE everyone in yourself. You are christ just as everyone is. So to be whole, you have to be everyone. Otherwise you exclude huge portions of yourself by excluding your brother.

You can't be seeing other people as "NOT ME" if you are to be spiritually awakened. Atonement is the TRANSCENDENCE of separation.

"Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy, feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction."

"But NEVER you alone. This world is but the dream that you can BE alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body."

"It is not true that you can make decisions BY yourself, or FOR yourself alone. No thought of God's Son CAN be separate, or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"You communicate with no-one, and you are as isolated from reality, as if you were ALONE in all the universe. In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself ALONE."

"You BELIEVE that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would NOT share, and that Salvation lies in keeping your thoughts TO YOURSELF ALONE. For, in private thoughts, KNOWN ONLY TO YOURSELF, you think you find a way to keep what you would HAVE alone, and share what YOU would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you, and with God, Who surrounds ALL of you together."

"Salvation needs your help as well as mine. Do not forget you do not answer for yourself alone."

"You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are NOT alone. And His answer is only for what you ARE."

"Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is BECAUSE I learned for YOU, that you can learn of ME."

"You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is a re-statement of INCLUSION, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God."

"The idea for today is obviously the reason why your seeing does not affect you alone." (I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.) "WITHOUT His guidance, you will think you know alone, and will decide AGAINST your peace, as surely as you made the wrong decision in ever thinking that Salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God GAVE it FOR you."

"The ego teaches that your strength is in you ALONE. The Holy Spirit teaches that ALL strength is in God and THEREFORE in you."

"And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared."

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."

"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its UNholiness kept it as a thing apart, its HOLINESS will become an offering to everyone."

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"This you COULD spare him AND YOURSELF. For reason would not make way for correction in you alone. Correction cannot BE accepted OR REFUSED by you, without your brother."

"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."

"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE. Born as a gift for someone NOT perceived to be yourself, it has been given YOU. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for BOTH of you."

"Neither of you alone can serve at all. Only in your JOINT will does healing lie. For here YOUR healing is, and here will YOU accept Atonement. And in your healing IS the Sonship healed, BECAUSE your wills are joined."

WORLD IS STILL HELL EVEN WITH FORGIVING PERCEPTION - YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE IT AS A FORGIVEN ILLUSION OF HELL - AND LOOK PAST IT TO HEAVEN.

In the following statements, Jesus talks of how even in a state of true perception, or christ vision, this world is still seen as containing hellish things happening. Not that they are regarded as real, and in fact they are dismissed as unreal. But this doesn’t mean things aren’t still going wrong in the world. There are still sick bodies seen, there is still suffering and death happening, bodies are still attacking each other, murders are still happening.

The point is, just because you forgive the world it doesn’t mean it turns into a place where nothing bad happens. Nor do you become blind to people’s suffering. The important thing isn’t whether or not the world has "improved" in its events and happenings and problems, the important thing is realizing NONE OF IT IS REAL. Those who are expecting to see "heaven on earth" with everyone getting along, are in for a long wait. True perception and forgiveness cannot show you that. Perception is an effect, not a cause.

We will learn to recognize this world is an illusion. We will learn to disregard what seems to be happening in the world. We won’t dress it up in wishful thinking that everyone suddenly is getting along just because you are waking up. True perception is accurate perception, not rose colored glasses. The world, Earth, always remains as it is. Shit still happens in it. People don’t suddenly all start loving each other. Earth, a world of forms of error, cannot be but hell. It is illusion, a dream of everything going wrong.

Your corrected mind must OVERLOOK this world. Forgiveness means not believing this world is really happening. The forms in the world are still going to be in conflict, competition and attack. You can’t stop that. But you CAN come to see that it is NOT TRUE. Everything the body’s eyes report is a lie. Your mind has to learn to disregard these images. To not believe them. To not see the sin and think it real. A forgiven world, however, cannot last, because forgiveness UNDOES IT.

You have to look PAST the world of sin with forgiving eyes and not see "real sin" in it. You must see it as meaning innocence instead. But this DOES NOT stop it from having totally shit things happening in it. You will still see sickness and death, but reinterpret it as JUST A DREAM. Not real. Not heaven. Nothing. At the same time, you are to look PAST IT, through it practically ignoring it, to a LIGHT which is FAR BEYOND IT.

The light is where Heaven is. The light is where love is. It is BEYOND the illusory veil of matter that coves your sight. Your task here is to SEE THE WORLD LESS, and SEE HEAVEN MORE. To tune OUT of the world, and tune INTO Heaven. The aim is to no longer see the world AT ALL, and to ONLY see Heaven. You cannot see both worlds. Sight of one denies the other. More Heaven, less world.

Eventually the world disappears into the nothingness from which it came. All that remains is Heaven, and Earth has left no trace at all in its going. It was always just a dream, always an illusion. It could never be heaven. There is no world. Only Heaven is real. The world is barely even a thin veil across your sight as you look BEYOND it to the face of Christ. It may well seem forgiven and lovely but it is not the direction of your FOCUS. Your eyes are on Heaven, not on the world, and that is why you OVERLOOK it, and that is why you give it NO REALITY, and that is why it looks devoid of attack. That "holy world" is essentially NO WORLD. Only God’s creation has reality.

In summary, corrected perception/Christ Vision shows you:

1) the physical world is a thin veil illusion regarded as UNREAL and ILLUSORY, which appears to be a "beautiful illusion", a forgiven world that is, nevertheless, FAKE. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the forgiven world IS 100% DREAM ILLUSION, and so once the healed mind recognizes it, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot keep the world AND SEE IT CORRECTLY. You cannot keep the world AND BE FORGIVING. You cannot keep the world and SEE GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

2) sight of something BEYOND the image of the world, beyond forms and bodies and worlds, a light of Christ. The face of Christ, which shines BEHIND the appearance of physical matter. Seen shining behind the transparent veil. Sight of THAT is what makes you happy. It is because you are looking PAST the illusory world TO reality - a world of light - that you are at peace. Not because the world itself becomes heaven. If you believe what the body keeps showing you, you will NOT SEE the face of Christ. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one (Earth) denies the other (Heaven). You have to choose one. Heaven is your home. It is the only sane choice. Earth is nothing, isn’t real, and doesn’t exist.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"...When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. 8 And so it is with healing. 9 The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.

M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

"It is impossible to see two worlds." (And there are two)

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. 5 Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 6 If you are physical, your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. 7 If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen . 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. "

"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. 2 Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. 3 It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. 4 Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. 5 What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. 6 The definition of reality is God's, not yours. 7 He created it, and He knows what it is. 8 You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion."

"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer."

"Son of God, be not content with nothing! 2 What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. 3 God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. 4 You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. 5 Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. 6 Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. 7 You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. 8 Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. 9 By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. 10 But it is not there . 11 And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself."

"The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. 2 Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. 3 Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. 4 And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. 5 Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. "

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? 8 He is invisible in such a world. 9 Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. 10 Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes."

"Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. "

"The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there."

"Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality."

"Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. 6 The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. 7 Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see."