There is a huge rift in the ACIM community.

It mainly hinges around a single assumption. Some people make this assumption and some do not.

Those who make it are very consistent in the consequences of that assumption, because it leads to massive level confusion. There is an entirely different interpretation of the meaning of almost everything the Course means, which arises based on that one assumption.

The assumption is this:

Everything about the course applies to "my identity" as I see it right now. It ALL applies to ME.

This is a MISTAKE!

And this happens because .... every course student has a EGO, which is a false sense of identity or self, which perceives that everything is about IT. It is an ego-centric interpretation of the course.

Here is a fact which you can deny or accept:

Sometimes the Course is speaking to and about an "individual son" as part of the "sonship." "A son", "A brother", "my brothers", "God’s children", etc of which there are many. And sometimes, the course is speaking about The One Son of God - "The son", "God’s son" etc.

These are two very different LEVELS OF IDENTITY. The scope of these levels is vastly different. What applies to one individual may not apply to another individual. What applies to the one son, does not apply to an individual son in isolation. The mind of the One Son is HUGE, it is the mind of Christ. The mind of an INDIVIDUAL SON, has its own individual free will choice and its own ability to independently deny God.

Confusing or combining these two levels, which is a confusion of identity, will lead to massive level confusion and false conclusions.

When YOU, as an "individual son", think that everything the course says about the One Son applies to YOU, you are making a massive level confused mistake! It does NOT apply to you! When you, as an individual son, believe that every teaching in the course is ABOUT YOU, as you see yourself as an individual right now, you WILL come to false conclusions. And these conclusions are radically warped in comparison to what they would be if you saw all the levels in their appropriate placement.

Some parts of ACIM are talking about an individual son, and some parts are talking about the One Son, which is a vast difference. Knowing WHEN Jesus is talking about WHICH LEVEL, is very important, otherwise you will just lump them all together and .... come to some very distorted conclusions.

To understand and accept this DOES REQUIRE that you believe that there ARE multiple sons. Some people refer to multiple souls as mentionedin earlier versions. Or the sonship, which even in edited versions talks about multiple sons. The sonship IS supposed to be a term that refers to MULTIPLE INDIVIDUALS. The sonship is NOT the One Son of God. The sonship IS NOT CHRIST.

If you confuse certain intentions of "which level of identity" Jesus is talking to or about, it will produce huge differences in what you think he means. If he says something which only applies to the One Son, and you think it applies to YOU as an individual, you will become mistaken.

This is what is happening throughout the course community. A kind of rift or difference of opinion, between those who take the course as "all one level talking about me as the only son" versus "multiple levels talking sometimes about me as an individual and sometimes as a shared single identity."

Those who believe the course always is talking at one level, who fail to see the levels or discern when Jesus refers to which identity, WILL come to the following FALSE CONCLUSIONS:

1) "I dreamed everything in the world, it’s all in my mind, therefore if I heal my mind, it will heal everyone else, because they are all part of me." —�- NO. This is only true of the One Son! It is not true of individuals. You as an individual are NOT responsible for what other individuals are experiencing!

2) "I dreamed the world myself"—�- NO. The One Son dreamed the world and you are INSIDE HIS DREAM. You are having an ADDITIONAL LAYER OF DREAMING within his dream.

3) "When the course talks about perception, he is talking about my pecteption." —� NO not always. E.g. When he says "the world IS perception", he literally means, planet earth is part of the perception of the ONE SON. It showing up is the One Son’s dreaming. You, as an individual, have your own INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTION *OF* the Son of God’s perception of a world. There are two levels here.

4) "I need only change my mind about the world to be at peace". —� NO. When you heal your individual perception OF the One Son’s perception, you will wake up IN the dream, but not FROM it. Many gurus have done this. Doing this will still result in death.

5) "If I change my perception, I will be able to transcend sickness." —� NO. If you change your perception of something which you think has been put there by someone else, in order to deal with it, IT will still stick around, proving that the One Son’s mind has not been healed.

6) "God created the world" —� NO. A person WILL come to this conclusion if they do not believe that there is a sonship of many individuals. This is because, somehow, they have to account for what the world IS or how it got there beyond their personal perception. Since they don’t believe there is a separate LEVEL of identity of the One Son, and they think they ARE the one Son at this level of individuality, they MUST conclude that the only identity LEFT who might be responsible for making the world is God! They do not see, that the One Son made the world, NOT their individual self.

7) "If you heal your perception you cannot perceive sickness in another." —� NO. This level confusion comes from believing that you, as an individual, are the one son. This means that everything you see in the world is "part of you". That then means that if sickness is showing up, like a person has cancer or some disease, it must be "part of your mind". And this leads to the conclusion - if I change my mind about this sin I’m seeing, that person will get healed. NO—�- it does not work. That other person is NOT part of your mind. You are an individual, they are an individual, and you both have free will. Believing that you are the one son of God at this level makes you delusional that a) you are responsible for other people’s sickness, b) they are sick because of you, c) if you withdraw your projection they won’t be sick. NOT TRUE. You are having an INDIVIDUAL FALSE PERCEPTION. And so are they. You are not the one son of God at this level. Other people are NOT part of your individual mind. They are part of the One Son’s mind, and that’s NOT your identity right now, not even if you reach true perception.

8) "What I project onto others affects them or is in them, so I need to take back those projections so they will be healed" —� NO. Your projections within the scope of your own individual mind, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. It only seems that these things are outside of you in another person. You have a belief in sin - an independent belief. Not the one son’s belief. This independent belief splits your independent mind. Your mind then has one area which seems innocent and one area which seems sinful. You will shift your identity to associate with the innocent part, and disassociate from the sinful part. This is internal denial. Your mind is at war with ITSELF. Your identification with the innocent part makes it seem like the sinful part is OUTSIDE of IT, but it is still within YOUR individual mind. You will hallucinate that because it seems "outside me", it is IN or belongs to or is doing something to other people. IT IS NOT. All attack is SELF attack. You NEVER attack others. Your projection DOES NOT leave your mind and go onto them. They HAVE NOT been affected by your projection! And when you take your projection back, it will NOT CHANGE ANYTING in terms of what the other person is experiencing. This is because both of you are individuals. Interpreting this whole part of the course based on the assumption it’s referring to "you" as "the one son" is a huge error.

9) "If I stop identifying with the body I will be free"�— NO. This is part of the belief that the body is there on its own, which is part of the belief that either God or the Son of God made it, and that if you just detach from it you will be free. The body is showing up because YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL are projecting it. What YOU, as an individual, use the body for, it will become to you, individually. Use it for attack it becomes sick, use it for love it is healed. This is about you as an individual son, not as the one son. You can’t disidentify from something that YOU are responsible for putting there. This includes all sickness in your body. YOU, as an individual son, made sickness and death, and therefore can abolish both.

10) "If I stop projecting sickness I will not see my brother as sick" —� NO. This is the erroneous assumption that everything "out there" is "in you". Therefore that you are the one son, not an individual son. This makes you believe if you correct your false perception of sickness, you will never again be able to SEE that someone is sick. You will think of people as just parts of your own mind, that their sickness is your own, and that therefore YOU need healing. THIS IS FALSE. You can get your individual self to a healed state and be whole as an individual, free of sickness, while other individuals continue to be sick. You will not be blind to their choice to be sick. Because at this LEVEL, they are OUTSIDE OF YOU. They are inside the One Son, yes. But you are NOT the one son at this point. Healing your perception heals YOUR perception, not anyone else’s. Accepting the atonement accepts it for you, it doesn’t force anyone else to accept it. Other people WILL NOT suddenly become cured when you see correctly. True Perception is INDIVIDUAL. You will still see the illusion of sickness other people are projecting, you just won’t believe it is real. People can stay sick in spite of you!

11) "I can be at peace with death" —� NO. You cannot. This suggests death happens regardless of you choosing the truth. Which suggests God is doing it to you. This is not true at ANY LEVEL of identity. If you are going to die, as an individual, it is because you, as an individual, have a belief in death. And it will not affect anyone else.

�—�—�—�

There are other examples but I’m out of oomph right now. We need to be careful to read the course, maybe even re-read it, knowing that there are TWO levels of identity. And we need to discern, when is the course talking about me as an individual, and when is it talking about the entire One Son. At times it talks about perception and seeing in terms of The One Son’s perception, not yours! And we have to recognize, while we’re in bodies, if we’ve awoken to the maximum limits of our individual mind, our individual identity in its most natural whole state, that mind is STILL MUCH SMALLER than the mind of the one son.

The mind of the one son can experience THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE at once. Recognizes that absolutely all individuals are part of itself. Knows that IT dreamed the entire universe. Knows that it has the power to create planets. That One Son’s mind is huge. To awake to THAT mind requires a TRANSCENDENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY where a single son in the sonship unites with God. Just like Jesus did. That happens AFTER you wake up individually in the dream! Becoming the Christ, is another whole level of awakening FROM the dream, that takes place after you as an individual wake up IN the dream. Becoming healed as an individual IS NOT the same thing as becoming Christ! You have to transcend the entire sonship to do that!

For me, the Course makes so much more sense, is much easier to understand, is clearer, more consistent, less confusing, and gives you much more relief of responsibility and guilt if you can recognize that there is MORE THAN ONE LEVEL in what Jesus is presenting. We need to learn the individual level first, then the second level later. That there are two levels in the awakening is clear, evidenced by some individuals who have woken up IN the dream, believe they are done, only to find they are NOT done. They still die. And they still do not perform miracles. Because they did not transcend the sonship yet to return the mind to Christ.

It’s a simple concept that there are two levels of identity. But failing to recognize which identity you have right now, and which identity Jesus is speaking about or when, WILL lead to huge level confusion. And many many false conclusions have come from this.

As you work on recognizing that causes are not outside of you, but that they are in your mind, please realize that there is a powerful difference between these two perspectives.

It's not just a matter of you taking back projections or you realizing that what you saw 'out there' is really 'in you'.

When you believe that there are causes outside of you, you have become DIS-EMPOWERED. You have given away your power. You have lost your authority. You have given rights to the ego to do things to you on your bahalf. You've invited an evil dream to tempt you and torment you, for you.

When you take back your power and stop seeing yourself as being capable of being a victim, and that THERE IS NO VICTIMIZER other than yourself - it was you all along, you haven't simply just transfered the location of 'the cause' of things. You haven't just moved what was 'out there' to 'in here' like it's just some object or limited thing.

Instead, you have reclaimed authority, you have taken back power, you have become strong and mighty, you have regained miracle-mindedness, and you have reclaimed ownership of the ability to work miracles. You are now POWERFUL instead of weak. Reversing cause and effect back to their proper orientation you become empowered and miraculous, not just the proud owner of a bunch of decision making.

"I am not weak but strong"

"I am not afraid but all powerful"

"I cannot see in darkness but in light"

"I am not an illusion but a reality"

etc

As a strong, powerful, light reality, you have POWER and you are miraculous because you are now flowing with GOD's WILL which has power over all illusions. As a victim you were disempowered and weak and couldn't have authority over anything.

So it's not just that you're taking things back and realizing where some kind of weak 'cause' is. You're not taking back the weakness that you projected. You're not taking back the victimhood you projected. You're stopping being weak and a victim. Which is a whole different matter. Now you are EMPOWERED.

Yes, you now see that all causes are in your mind, and therefore, that all EFFECTS are outside of you. And therefore, nothing outside of you has power over you or greater than you, or even any power AT ALL. The power is IN you. You are powerful. And what you say goes. The illusion must comply for now you realize it is just your effect and that you have total authority over it.

And now you are a miracle worker!

There are really only two modes of functioning of which you are capable. It really does boil down to a simple "this or that" decision. Either you are in love, or you are in fear. Love has only one nature, but fear masquerades as an untold number of illusions. All of them are fearful and they represent egotism. But they are all essentially a withdrawal away from love.

To love is an outward expression. It is extension. Love shines and radiates out of you towards others. This love seeks to uplift, empower, heal, nurture, strengthen, join, share, communicate, connect, give, supply, support, make whole. Love is always given/extended through you from God and goes out to your brothers and to the world. It is an outward transfer which entails you loving and joining with everything.

Love, and all expressions of love, are miraculous and healing. Love is powerful, it is happy and joyful, and it is peaceful. It is meaningful. Love is sanity. Love heals and resurrects. And love can reverse all forms of suffering. Love shines like a bright light, and as you give it, you receive it because it is shared and for all. As you give it, you shine, and in this shining you illuminate both yourself and others, and in this light you can see, and what you look upon is illuminated with love and is lovable.

The opposite of this is fear. Fear is separation, contraction, withdrawal, and inward focus. Fear is selfish, victimizing and victimized. In fear you feel afraid, angry, upset, hurt, weakened, sick, tired, stressed and damaged. In fear you pull way from others and the world, you hate and attack, you feel imposed upon and controlled, and eventually die. Fear is an attempt not to extend love, not to give life, and to be alone. In fear you will feel alone, cut off, isolated, imprisoned.

In fear you will feel like you've been taken hostage, all the happenings around you will seem like they are against you with no escape, all problems will seem insurmountable and unfair and cruel, and you will feel like you're in a dark pit of hellish despair that you can't get out of. It's as if you've been taken hostage by a tyrannical ruler who has imprisoned you and kept you in a dark hole in the ground. And everywhere you turn there will be enemies and haters and attackers and prison guards.

What it boils down to is a very, very simple difference between the two approaches to life. Each approach entails a different kind of seeing. Fear places you in false perception, where the whole world seems like a prison. Love places you in true perception, where the whole world is harmless and forgiven.

Love entails giving in order to receive. As you give love, as you shine your light, as you extend, you yourself are uplifted. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver." Even if you start out in fear and lack, efforting to love more will empower you and lift you out of darkness. To love is to fulfill your natural function. You are supposed to shine. You are supposed to radiate. You are supposed to give and extend and reach out to join with others in love. AS you do this you automatically are protected and saved and it raises you up into the light where you are happy and at peace.

When you don't do this, you must recoil and withdraw into fear. You will step back and not give. And it will now seem that the world has taken from you. A gap will form in between you and others. You will develop enemies and opponents. You will hate some of them and hate yourself for hating them. You will become weak, afraid, lost, alone, and suffer in the dark. You will feel isolated and sick and like no-one is on your side. The world will loom heavily over you as if it has power to make your life hell. And all the while you will be trying to get, to take, to have, to own, to possess, to be special, and you will feel selfish. And everything offered by love will be missing.

It really is as simple as if you have only one choice. Either you give love or you lose love. It's like there's an emotional beacon in you, in your heart, where either your heart is giving outwardly and energy and light are flowing out of you in support of others, or your heart is cold and empty and you are withdrawing and escaping as an enemy of the world. Either your energies express and extend outward, or you hold yourself back. Either you feel loving and warm and bright, or you feel hateful and cold and dark.

You get to make this simple choice at all times. You can switch on love at any time. You can feel it in your heart. Even in the midst of any other illusion of suffering. And yet the ego is expert at making it seem like there is no way out of suffering and love will not help. Can it be as simple as that your heart is not switched on? Of all the many seeming problems, stresses, upsets, emotions, can it be that simply loving more will cure it?

The ego would say no, it will tell you that each of these problems is unique and needs a separate solution. And what it thinks it needs it tries to get. And yet getting it does not make you happy. Underneath all the complicated forms in which fear arises, and all the ways you can feel unloved, there IS in fact only simple solution to all of them. Simply love more. It lifts you out of all upset feelings, it brightens you, makes you feel happier, stronger, more confident. It dispels fear and erases upsets. It heals you.

Being 'human' can seem so complicated but actually what's happening in your mind is incredibly simple. You are like a piece of machinery whose function is to extend the love of God to others. That is all. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." You are host to God and extend God. That is all. Your only choice is to continue extending God at all times, or separate yourself off into isolation and fear, in which you will experience all forms of suffering. And at any time you can switch back into fulfilling your function as the light of the world.

The only way to be happy is to fulfill your function. To love. To express love. It's completely natural and produces miracles. It is holy relationship. It is God's will. It is God's will that you love and be happy and healthy. Love makes this possible and guarantees your health and perfection. Either you extend God's love, or you will attack yourself and make yourself sick.

This is why Jesus says "teach only love for that is what you are." It's an extremely simple choice, between love or suffering. To love is to heal and to be happy. To love your brother is to uplift and resurrect him along with you. Your focus should not be on yourself and your needs, or your body. These vanish when you love your brother. Focusing on your body makes it sick because mind is supposed to extend PAST it to others. The light has to shine, to produce health. The light shines PAST sickness and bodies, because it is forgiving.

To love or not to love, that is the question. And only love can make you happy.

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of ***all illness*** because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY. "

"Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them. "

"You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE. "

"You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision, He beholds Himself. And seeing what HE is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you."

There is a pivotal moment when you let go of the ego's hand and decide to take the hand of Christ.

This can and will happen in many scenarios and many times over. And it's going to happen in your "real life" in relation to people and your beliefs about people.

Cate Grieves gave a good example of this recently in relation to her daughter where she would clash with the "ego" in her daughter, or rather, her own inner fight with her own ego projected there, but after having enough, one day she finally decided to recognize the Christ in her and to relate only to that identity, not to the ego. And everything shifted. That's an example of letting go of the ego's hand and taking the hand of Christ.

Similarly I had spent many many years believing in sickness, thinking it was real, irreversible, truth. Each time I saw it I had reactions and grief. I believed it was real. It was actually horrifying to see disability and very upsetting because I believed it was real, and how tragic it was what had been lost as a result of it. All that suffering was ego bullshit.

I had gone through many many periods of trying to heal it, fix it, rescue the person, trying to learn about what caused it, diagnosing it, figuring out why it happened etc. All of these ways that I was actually continually using the ego to try to find some kind of truth outside of me. Always it would lead me to dead ends and failing to find anything that made sense. It was infuriating. I tried and tried and tried to explain why and how the sickness happened and all that did was justify and keep it.

And this was all because I believed my own ego, my own intellect's ability to diagnose truthfully (which is impossible), and that if I would seek externally for truth I would actually be able to find it, if I looked hard enough. But this was all classic seek-and-do-not-find tactics. It was all based on me believing that the problem was real.

One day, I was getting to where I had really had enough, like, fucking hell I cannot put up with this bullshit any more. And I was starting to recognize with Jesus' help the ways that I kept trying to solve this "real problem", and He was just always trying to get me to surrender and stop doing that. When I was in 'fix it' mode my mind was just lost like in a tunnel vision of thinking that I was going to find the answer, not realizing and not having the awareness that this was fundamentally impossible. The entire basis for my searching was flawed and based in the ego, so I was trapped and failing before I even started.

Somehow enough of these events of futility and failure and gradual tiny steps in becoming aware of this, led to a moment where it started to dawn on me. I started to finally get it. This had all been based on the idea that sickness was REAL. And that also fed into an awareness that was growing in me that there just was no truth out there whatsoever. I had been looking in the wrong place - in the ego - for a truth that doesn't exist there. And that maybe this whole world had no truth in it at all.

Up until that point I'd been believing that the world was real and sickness was real and sin was real. Even if some part of me understood otherwise. And my belief that there is somehow a truth in this world just met with a total loss in finding it. That was GOOD, because it revealed to me that this ego pursuit was totally a distraction, and a pointless one at that. There IS no truth in the world. The truth is NOT out there. This really started a MAJOR shift in my awareness that has been leading to just a tremendous flood of insight and awakening lately.

But the main thing is, I had to question whether sickness was real. And that meant even going against everyone else who said sickness was real. Going against the doctors and the neighbors and the family members and even those closest to me who all believed in real sickness. I had to find enough certainty and be pissed off enough and fed up enough to finally say FUCK THAT. There is no truth there. So I decided, or at least found enough of a sense of conviction, like a ray of light peeking through the window for the first time, to open up to the idea that sickness is not reality, because this world is not reality.

This was a major turn of events because this has now laid a foundation for really huge strides forward, a foundation for hope, a foundation for miracles, and a foundation for healing. That would not have been possible had I remained in the ego belief that sickness is truth. So in this same way, I became able to let go of the ego's hand and take the hand of Christ. And because it took such tremendous frustration and desperation to exhaust the ego's bullshit and to really reveal to myself that this fundamentally major world-wide claim about real sickness was total f'ing bullshit.

So now something is different for me. It's a turning point, suddenly instead of looking at, believing in, and reacting to "real sickness", I am learning how it is an illusion, I am starting to actually overlook it, which means I am finally actually forgiving it. My mind and awareness are shifting and I'm seeing sickness in a whole different way. I'm no longer allowing the ego interpretation of it to be the limit of my belief or awareness, and instead am opening up to the Christ perspective that sickness is not the truth. It's not real, and because it is not real, it can be undone.

These shifts happen in big ways and small ways. Each time you come to question or doubt the ego and see that it's been leading you on a wild goosechase, and its claims are not the truth, you gradually let go of its hand and shift allegiance to Christ. You go from perceiving FORM as though it's real, and looking beyond it. You go from seeing people as real bodies, to no longer regarding them as "just that". Your vision no longer stops at sight of form and it starts to see a truth that transcends it. The person is not their body. The person is not their ego.

This basically means you are gradually de-coupling yourself from form, and are actually letting go of your own body at the same time. Everything in front of your eyes is an attempt to get you to see it as real, and to fail to overlook/forgive, leading to judgement. We need to learn to not believe it! It's not real. It's not truth. Form is just an effect of an idea, not a solid reality. Nor is it fixed, and nor is it identity.

Form is not the truth about a person. Their body is not the truth about them. Their personality/persona/shadow is not the truth about them. They actually are more than that. Even when they are filled with hate and rage, that's still not true about them. Their real self, holy and innocent, is still in there somewhere, just temporarily covered up. It doesn't go away! This justifies unconditional love at all times.

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

Since spirit obeys only God's laws, and Spirit is love, expressions of love (miracles) are expressions of the laws of spirit. Spirit is beyond the "nature" of the ego, and therefore miracles have a super-natural, spiritual origin. What you may not realize is that this entire world is constructed from the ego's fake laws of nature, even down to the subatomic physics.

The laws of the ego are invented by the ego. The dream, which is an effect of an "invisible" higher-level cause, does not contain any real causes. But it contains illusions of causes. These illusions of causes make it seem like one part of the same level causes effects in other parts of the same level. This is not true. All effects are orchestrated from a higher level, including the illusion that one thing causes another.

So when you study this fictional "world", and you see one object seeming to move and collide with another object to "cause" it to behave differently, this SEEMS like there is some kind of a law involved. Like the laws of physics, suggesting that actions have equal and opposite reactions.

The truth is that actions do NOT have equal and opposite reactions. Actions on this level are not actions. They are all reactions - effects, pretending to be actions. The action, and its effects, are both effects coming from an unseen dimension.

The ego has been very clever to disguise and hide God's nature and the laws of Spirit, by creating FORM, and nothing is so blinding as sight of form. The behavior and interaction of forms creates an illusion of cause and effect happening on this same level. And so on this level it appears that some things cause other things, and that this is "natural". It could not be further from natural.

What it really expresses is the fact that what is not love is murder, and every part of the ego thought system (of which this world is a part) is murderous. The ego thought system believes that what applies to one thing does not apply to another, therefore there are differences, therefore you can cause (attack) without being attacked (affected).

This is why so-called "causes" in this world seem to escape the effects they inflict on other things. It seems possible to throw a brick through a window without damaging the brick. But since what applies to the brick does not apply to the window, this is an illusion based on differences, and is an expression of a murderous idea. The brick "gets away with" (murders) the window because the so-called properties of the brick (the laws applying to it) are "different" to the properties and laws of the window. It is not "natural" to be murderous, and so this "law of nature" that the brick will break the window is NOT being governed by a natural law or the "laws of physics".

The truth about this universe/world/planet is that it is not run by laws of physics, there is no such thing as physics, and in fact it is run by the mind from a higher level. And it doesn't really exist because it is just a dream being projected and dreams are fictional. This is why "there is no world."

Since all true causality is in the mind, and all of the mind is "above" the level of this world and its effects, when the mind decides to exercise its ability to cause, it can "modify" the content of the dream, or rearrange it, in order to demonstrate and prove that it is NOT really governed by the ILLUSORY LAWS, but by the laws of spirit.

Since spirit is love and love's expressions are miracles, these "acts of love" demonstrating the true laws or "true nature" of existence, MUST DEFY AND BREAK the illusions of horizontal laws that the ego assumes are true.

If a child is playing with a train set and the train is traveling around the track "on rails", seemingly by itself, following physical laws, it can only go where the "laws" seem to tell it to go. However, if the child reaches down and picks up the train and positions it in a totally different section of track, all of those laws are completely defied. Indeed, another child may complain that "you're not supposed to do that" because it breaks the ILLUSION of the game they were playing at PRETENDING the train is going around the track on its own.

The mind of the dreamer is what dictates what shows up, where it shows up, how it shows up, and how it behaves. Any so-called "interactions" of objects are FAKE. The objects would completely pass through each other and occupy the same space if it were not for the MIND deciding to make it seem like they collide with each other and perform a cascade of so-called "reactions". There is no such thing as a real reaction. Spirit creates and extends, it does not react.

This whole world and everything in it was designed to conceal the nature of God and His laws, behind a smokescreen of fake laws and fake nature. To present an illusion that one thing depends on another or causes effects in another, thereby expressing the ego's insane idea of un-equal laws or finite laws which apply only some of the time to some objects. After all, not all objects are causing something to happen at all times, and even objects which are affected turn around and become causes soon after. Are they causes, or effects, or both, or neither?

Nothing in this world has the power to express the laws of Spirit on its own because "form" is the form of ERROR, and error is all about separation and powerlessness and fake causality. Miracles HAVE to express something which is BEYOND the nature of this world, in order for them to be miracles at all. It is not a miracle for a car to drive down a road. It is a miracle for the car to disappear and reappear 50 miles further along in a split second. It is not a miracle for a tree to catch on fire. It is a miracle for the tree to avoid being burned in the midst of a raging forest fire where everything around it was incinerated. Ego laws MUST be defied in order for it to be miraculous.

Miracles obey the laws of Spirit, not the laws of the ego. For a miracle to express, something which the ego APPEARED to establish as true is shown to be FALSE, and is demonstrated to be false, by completely defying and breaking and overriding the ego laws to produce effects which are outside those laws. This would include for example giving someone new eyeballs after they were born without any eyes. Or re-growing a missing limb. Or turning water into wine. Or walking on the top of the ocean without sinking.

If this nature-defying, thus super-natural element is missing from miracles, and if miracles in ACIM are not super-natural, then what are they? There is nothing super natural or ego defying or ego-law-breaking about shifting perception. There is nothing ego-law-breaking or capable of demonstrating that the laws don't apply, in correcting some thoughts. There is nothing that's going to change the direction the world spins when some old emotions are released. There's nothing particularly powerful about any of these efforts at purification. They are just clearing away belief in ego laws to make way for Spirit to express itself.

At first we believe physical sight is perception. And everything the body's eyes look upon is taken as real. And thus we learn that the world appears to be an inherently bad place. Regardless of trying to be optimistic or positive, bad shit happens frequently. And people seem to die.

Assuming that everything we see is real, we might not realize that there is a flexible component to perception. Our mind gets to actually decide what to "make of" the images that the physical eyes see. It categorizes them, projects meaning onto them, and decide what they are for.

This is because only the mind really sees, and it is looking upon the images the body shows to it of the world, as pictures of reflected photons bouncing off blockages. And the mind can decide what this means and what to project onto them, choosing what to see in them, God or ego.

What this means is the world you initially see is a combination of "the physical world" and the overlaid projected junk in your mind. The dirt on your lens. The baggage and self attack and sense of sin and guilt which you see in the world as if it's outside of you.

What you have to learn, is that what the world is, and the sense of it being a negative hellish place, are two different things. It's easy to hate the world, be angry at it, mistrust it, fear it, and want to escape it.

You can easily get into a mindset that if you will get away from "that bad place" through some spiritual means, you'll be better off. You can judge and demonize the world and decide it is a hell you want nothing to do with. But this isn't escape. It really is just making it real to yourself, which keeps you trapped.

The real solution is to develop true vision, which allows you to look upon whatever the world "is", without your projections of baggage. Without your distortions of meaning. Without your judgements. Without your sin and guilt seen in it.

But to do that, you have to in a way give "the world" the benefit of the doubt, or a kind of second chance. A possibility of redemption. Because somehow you have to be able to get to where you forgive the world, where you shine a light of love towards it, and where it no longer appears to threaten or upset you.

It may have taken a long time to build up resentment towards the world, which bound what the world is to a negative, false perception of the world. And in this confusion you thought the world was inherently a bad place. But now you have to be open to the idea that the world is not inherently bad. That there is another way to see it.

This entails the recognition that if you will change the component of your mind that gives meaning to the world, you actually can redefine what it means to you. Instead of meaning hell, or indicating sin, or proving guilt, or producing fear, the world can be seen in a much different light.

What the world IS, isn't what you see in false perception. That's the unforgiven world. That's Earth with your self hate and belief in sin projected onto it. It actually makes what the world IS appear to be a hellish place.

What the world IS, is nothing more than a simple thin veil of illusions injected in-between you and yourself, or you and Christ and God. Kind of like a wall, or as Jesus calls it "the granite block of sin." It takes on various forms of error, and depicts sin and attack and guilt. But without the meaning of "sinful", "attacking", "guilty" projected onto it, what's left?

The world is really just a thin illusory world, a whisp of smoke, a faint remnant of an idea of separation, and a strange area of nothingness pretending to be something. It does not have any meaning. This is why Jesus tells you that the world you see is a meaningless world which God did not create. It is devoid of meaning, in its false-viewed form, because love is the only real meaning.

As you forgive it, as you lift away guilt from yourself, as you have no sin to project onto it, as you recognize your own innocence, the dark heavy shadow of guilt which makes the world seem SOLID, is lifted away from it. Like a heavy curtain or a thick wall, it thins out and lightens. And eventually without any judgement upon it at all, it is recognized only as a light veil of illusions swirling around.

It is not positive, or negative. It is not alive, or dead. It is not really anything. The world, the veil, being illusions, is nothing at all. It is not loving, it is not holy. It is not even really there. And eventually when Christ Vision is fully accepted it vanishes completely.

Just prior to that, however, you reach "the forgiven world." A forgiven world is always an illusory world, because forgiveness overlooks illusions, not reality. It looks beyond bodies. It looks toward the light. So as you forgive the world you are learning to look past it to the light of the real world. And this causes the world to appear thinner and lighter and less burdened with guilt and the reality of sin.

It should over time look less and less sinful, less and less serious, less and less threatening, less and less solid even. Christ Vision is practically similar to having x-ray vision. It literally bypasses matter, as the spiritual eye can see anywhere and with no regard for distance or obstacles. It is not blinded by perception of form and its sight does not stop at physical surfaces. It is not deceived or blocked by what they appear to be. It sees through them.

As the world becomes forgiven, due to you forgiving yourself, what used to be "world + negativity", becomes "world + holiness". Your holiness or the meaning of love, is projected onto it. It is seen WITH love. This does not make it love, it is still nothing. And in fact this love causes it to disappear even more. But if you do see it still, just short of going home to God, it will appear beautiful and lovely in its sparkling forgiven state.

And so what once seemed like a world of inherent hell, reflecting hell and showing signs of attack and death everywhere, your view or perspective on it changes to one of spiritual love. And from that vantage point of true perception, there is no longer a belief in real sin projected onto it. And being made of sin, it is therefore recognized as fake sin, and not sin at all. The world is simply recognized as false, not sinful. And just as it is about to be seen as a perfect reflection of heaven, it disappears, revealing Christ.

And then you go home.

"He (God) did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way. God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven?"

God did not make two minds. One mind has produced the creation of Heaven, some "other mind" has produced the result of "Earth" (yes literally planet earth).

If BOTH of them exist, God must be SPLIT MINDED and would have to have created TWO DIFFERENT creations.

Since Jesus tells us clearly "Earth.... which is heaven's opposite in every way". So earth is NOTHING LIKE heaven.

Therefore, either God is split minded and has two entirely conflicting creations, which is absurd and can't be true, or ONLY ONE of the two "results" can really exist (be created).

Heaven is God's ONLY creation because God is SINGLE MINDED and whole and only creates heavenly creations.

Therefore, simple logic folks .... THERE IS NO EARTH.

Earth has not been CREATED. It does not exist.

This is the meaning of "there is no world."

To claim God created Earth and that it therefore is real and exists, is to claim that God created both heaven AND earth, and therefore does NOT create in his own likeness, and therefore is a dougnut salesman. There's a pretty big HOLE in that logic! ;-)

By the way, Earth is hell.

"There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well."

The physical planet, Earth, was made by us as a place of "hell", in an attempt to make a world which is totally opposite to Heaven in EVERY way. The problem now is that we don't recognize HOW it is opposite to Heaven, or why it is not like Heaven at all. So let's take a look at the "laws" that run this world.

This world was based on the separation idea. This idea includes death, sacrifice, loss, scarcity, attack, competition, murder, suffering, lack, darkness, etc. This idea has created LAWS, the ego's laws, which has produced space-time, and has invented the "laws of physics". The physical planet is founded ON and BY these laws, and without these laws it could not maintain its form or function or exist at all. "Fear has made everything you think you see".

Look closely at what happens with physical matter. When two objects come close to each other, they never touch. Contradictory forces of attraction AND repulsion pull objects near and then push them away. If two objects were to touch, they would cause an atomic explosion and annihilation. That means when anything tries to join, or share, or "be one", it results in DEATH. How more opposite to Heaven can this be, that joining is death, and being separate is to "be alive".

Then consider what happens when you try to share an object. Let's say you have an apple and you want to "have" the apple, but you also want to share it. You could give it to someone, but now you have LOSS. And loss induces grief, and represents LACK and SCARCITY. To give, is to SACRIFICE. This is ego law, and totally unlike the laws of Heaven in which to give is to increase and allows you BOTH to SHARE everything.

Try to give the apple without losing it, it is impossible. Another's gain is your loss, and so you are now in COMPETITION. And the apple represents the idea of finite, LIMITATION of amounts, rather than unlimited supply. "God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

There is no INCREASE when you give, as there would be in heaven, and it is impossible for you to BOTH have the whole apple. You can try to COMPROMISE, which is a law of SACRIFICE and SUFFERING, by having half an apple each, meaning neither person get's the whole and you both are EMPTY. And so there is no real sharing. These are the ego laws that run this world.

Also, because all objects are separate, nothing can ever share the same space with anything else. Objects cannot overlap, or they would DESTROY each other. To join or be "one", to unite in any way, results in death and destruction. This is the complete opposite to Heaven's laws, whereby when two things join there is oneness, harmony, peace and life. And so anything physical, any form, including human bodies and the planet, can never join or be one. Every single particle of matter is kept apart, separated off and different to the rest.

There is also no consistency of properties among particles of matter. While some things seem to act similarly, nothing is identical. While in God's world everything God creates is created in His perfect likeness and image, and all sons of God are perfectly EQUAL and identical in their nature, in the ego's world its "nature" is utterly UNNATURAL, CHAOTIC and NOT LIKE the rest. An apple is not an orange, or a banana. A house is not a car. A human is not a fish. Water does not behave like rocks. It is all made to be different, meaning there is NO EQUALITY.

Differences also mean that no two things can AGREE on anything, producing a state of PERPETUAL WAR, conflict, tension, disagreement and imbalance. Nothing is WHOLE within itself, everything LACKS what other things have, everything is only PARTIAL and finite and limited, and nothing has everything. This also means that no PART of this world FULLY exists.

Chemicals which are present in an apple, are NOT present in a screwdriver. The screwdriver LACKS what the apple has, sees the apple as having stolen part of wholeness from itself, and wants to destroy it to complete itself. This is all outlined in the ego's "laws of chaos" whereby we perceive that special love has been stolen by other people (ie you lost your SELF and they have what you LACK), locked up in their bodies, and we are willing to kill them to get it. Every object in the world is fundamentally in a state of LACK, LOSS, EMPTINESS and DESPERATION, producing compulsions to "seek and do not find."

And this isn't even half of what the purpose of the world is.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to oppose God, to shut out his NATURE, and to make it seem like he DOES NOT EXIST. Physical matter, is MURDEROUS. (what is not love is murder). The world didn't simply take on the form of a planet "just because". It was INTENTIONAL, to make a place governed by laws NOT OF GOD, which opposes and is UNLIKE Heaven in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE.

God's nature is that he is omnipresent. This means that God is fully present everywhere. This doesn't just mean God is really big and stretched out to cover the universe, but it also means ALL of God's being, is in EVERY location. The fullness of God is here, and there, and over there. This is utterly impossible according to ego laws, because if God were to be "fully over here", there is no God "left" to be "fully over there" simultaneously. Yet this is God's nature.

The ego, and its WORLD, including the Earth, was designed to create a PICTURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF GOD'S SON, in which God has been obliterated from existence. It does this by the physical ego laws. If you look at an object, you'll notice that this object is not the same as another object. If it's an apple, it is not the same as a television. This means, there is some of the possibility over here in the apple, and some of the possibility over there in the television set. Neither of them contains "everything". They are separate, distinct, and kept apart.

What this does, is it presents a physical "picture" which is trying to STATE, to affirm and assert, that "nothing contains everything" "no part of the world contains all of it" "there is no everything in any single object". THEREFORE... because "everything" is nowhere, and NOTHING IS WHOLE, THERE IS NO WHOLENESS ANYWHERE, SO GOD, WHO NATURE IS TO BE FULLY PRESENT EVERYWHERE, DOES NOT EXIST *ANYWHERE*! This picture then forms what you think is "nature", which is the UNNATURAL laws of the ego world. It was made to COMPLETELY OBSCURE sight of God, to make it seem like God's NATURE does not apply here AT ALL, and therefore that God is dead.

THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE WORLD AS THE EGO MADE IT. "The world was made as an attack on God." If you BEHOLD IT, ie see it, with your eyes or mind, you CANNOT KNOW GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God." Because simply, if you are looking at this picture of "God cannot exist", it is distracted you and blocking you from seeing that "God does exist." "You cannot see two worlds". Either you are in Heaven with God, or you're dreaming of planet Earth and trying to be dead.

This is why Jesus says "there is nothing so BLINDING as sight of form." To SEE FORM, to see the Earth, is to be BLIND and to NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL. The body's eyes were made to look on SIN and DEATH and believe they are reality. You think you are here observing a real world, when in fact your head is buried in the sand and you do NOT HAVE VISION. The body's eyes were designed by the ego, ON PURPOSE, to make it seem like you are sensing and looking at something that exists, but in fact is a hallucination, stuck in a box, in the dark, looking at nothingness. It's designed so that you WILL NOT SEE GOD.

In every way, the underlying FUNCTION of this planet, is MADE OF, based on, run by, and dictated by, the idea of separation and DEATH. It is a state OF death, because life which is eternal and of Heaven does not change. "Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals".

The world also is a state of DENIAL - it is the physical embodiment of the denial of God and reality. It is a state of UNCONSCIOUSNESS and death. And Jesus says "a world that denies its own existence does not exist." "There is no world."

"From knowledge and perception respectively, two distinct thought systems arise which are opposite in every respect. In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. The world of perception, however, is made by the belief in opposites and separate wills, in perpetual conflict with each other and with God. What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real."

"When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."

This world, Earth, is the ego's world, nothing but a dream, a fiction of OPPOSITION TO HEAVEN, designed to attack God and separate the Son and kill the Son of God. Or at least to create the illusion that this is possible.

Now. You can, with the Holy Spirit, change how you look AT and INTERPRET this world. "Holy Spirit is the great reinterpreter of the world". You can join His way of looking, and learn to SEE and RECOGNIZE, that this world that you think is so special and lovely in all its ways of death and murder, even at the subatomic level, IS NOT REAL. That it is showing you a picture which is FALSE, or not true. That its very FORMS, its separations, its objects, are a FANTASY about murdering God.

This leads you to True Perception and the "forgiven world", aka "real world", which entails the ability to look at THE WORLD *YOU* MADE, hell, this Earth, WITH the truth, to look at and admit to the ways that IT IS NOT LIKE HEAVEN AT ALL. The truth will show you the ways that it is in fact SO unlike Heaven that it could not possibly be created by God, it could not possibly be real, it cannot exist, and it is MADE OF LIES.

Correcting perception and approaching True Perception is STILL going to show you apples, different from oranges. Humans, different from fish. Objects colliding with each other. Plants growing and producing flowers only to die and rot. Bodies in various states of sickness. BECAUSE ITS BUILT INTO THE LAWS THAT THIS WORLD COMES FROM. You can perceive it in a loving WAY, or in a better light, but you're still going to be seeing all the shit you made up, FUNCTIONING according to the same physical laws of death, and still DOING what it always did. The fact that the "Earth" remains a "planet" at all means it is STILL built on sacrifice, loss, lack, attack, rejection, separation and death.

You can look at this death hole in a heavenly way and see a reflection of Heaven BEYOND it, or IN SPITE OF it. But forgiveness OVERLOOKS the world and the body. To say that you are forgiving when you are MAKING THE WORLD REAL, is NOT FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness looks and recognizes that this world is OPPOSITE TO REALITY. It is not real, and it doesn't really exist. THAT is what forgiveness shows you. You don't look AT bodies and AT the world - you OVERLOOK them, rendering them non-existent!

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"It is the world you see (with body's eyes, Planet Earth) THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE."

A glimpse of reality, which shows you that everything about this world right down to the smallest particles, is operating on FALSE LAWS, and that those laws are fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, and NOT OF HEAVEN, and therefore must NOT BE REAL. And this will merely prepare you to realize, that "this world is not my home".

And this is why you go *SOMEWHERE ELSE*, to another realm, another world, the world that GOD CREATED as your home and inheritance. You leave behind what Jesus calls "the bleak little world", in which "everything in the world is little because it is made of LITTLENESS" (rejection of the grandeur of heaven), and go to Heaven. Heaven's laws are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the laws which the Earth runs on. In Heaven there is TRUE sharing, oneness and overlap is possible, you can truly merge and join with others, you can share space, you can be TRULY intimate in communion, and you can be ACTUALLY ALIVE. "There is no life outside of Heaven."

If you can recognize the way that this world is SO unlike Heaven in every way, and realize that Heaven's laws are NOTHING like the laws this world is based on, even when reinterpreted with Holy Spirit, you MIGHT be wiling to see that this world - Earth - that we MADE, in a state of insanity ("the world is the DELUSIONAL SYSTEM of those driven MAD by guilt"), is not only NOT HEAVEN, it also CANNOT BE heaven, or turn into Heaven, because it is fundamentally the idea of OPPOSING Heaven and reality. It will NEVER be Heaven. To be Heaven requires laws which simply do not support FORMS of any kind, and that includes bodies and planets. All forms are forms of error, and Heaven contains no mistakes.

So we can keep trying to glorify and spiritualize this world, to try to make it special, to pretend God would've created it, even though its cruelty and meaninglessness are utterly opposite to His nature. We can learn to forgive the hell we made, and "love it", and be at peace about it. But this does not MAKE IT heaven. It does not turn it INTO your home. It doesn't make it an appropriate SYSTEM, or state of functioning, in which the Son of God is best suited. You are a fish out of water here. "This world is not my home." "You are a stranger here."

The world now, seen through the Holy Spirit, is ONLY there as a teaching device to bring you Home, which is beyond this world. The body, is only a teaching device, to show you that the body is utterly unnecessary. Perception, which is a state of fundamental judgementalism and instability and uncertainty, was made only as a result of a rejection of reality. It will never contain awareness or reality or God and once its lesson is learned perception has NO USE. All of these things we MADE, will end, because they were never really begun. They are illusions. A fantasy of an attack on God and an attempt to destroy ourselves. "You do not want the world." "This world holds nothing that I want."

"You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost". Heaven is my home, not hell. And "heaven on Earth" is still a dream, and a poor substitute for the direct experience of Heaven itself. Earth cannot BE heaven. Its laws are totally opposed to peace and life. It was made to kill. You don't want it. You can view it in a heavenly way but you can never turn it into heaven just because you see it lovingly. Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS. Earth is NOTHING. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach." You will give up nothing, this world, and gain everything, Heaven. And that is God's will.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

Bodies always express limitation. All bodies are limited. The very fact that a body has a perimeter or surface where it stops, it a limitation. The fact that it has a certain size and shape and color and style, is a limitation. It does not share some of the attributes of other bodies, which is a further limitation.

If bodies goes into states that we call sickness, these really are not a special category - they are just more limitations, or different limitations. Even if the body goes towards a death state, this again is just another arbitrary configuration of physical parts that look a certain way.

Physical sickness and death are only considered to be those things because we make comparisons and slap labels on them. We decided to call it death when a body takes on a configuration of certain functions ceasing and certain decay setting in. This is made up. We decided to call it sickness when certain parts are malfunctioning or damaged, but again this is a made-up category.

All body states are limitations, and there is no real difference between what appear to be what we call healthy states versus more deathly states. Even a seemingly healthy body is still a picture of limitation, which is inherently an idea of being "less than immortal", of attacking the unlimited, and is therefore an idea of death. At best it can appear to be what we decided to call "life", or at worst death.

No matter what the condition or configuration of the body is, it isn't an accurate depiction of who or what you are. In fact nothing about the body is really what you look like in reality. Not even peering into the eyes. The body is a surface shell covering up the mind, designed to be different and unalike and deceptive and a disguise. At best is it a lie, and at its worst an attempt to murder you.

The states of the body do not represent your souls perfection. Your soul is always in a state of absolute immortality and invulnerability, incorruptibility and health. Even if the mind has mangled the body in attempting to pretend to be a body, in attempting to pretend the body as the son of God has been attacked, the soul is unchanged. The body in all its states is a lie because we made it to be a separation device and a way to deceive ourselves. Deception devices don't EVER represent the truth, except perhaps symbolically when they are "more whole."

If you look to the body and are convinced that it is a person, and therefore that something is wrong with the person, you have fallen into the trap. If you regard the body as a person, you have been deceived. The body is made to cover people up and hide their reality, to oppose their unlimited nature. The body is not natural at any time.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning." UrT23C20

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life." UrM21A5

"Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die." UrT23D6

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." UrT6F8

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced." UrT3F17

"The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison-house which keeps His Son from Him. For it DEMANDS a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding-place where none is welcome but your tiny self." UrT24C13

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on." UrT20G11

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?" UrT18I1

"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. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present." UrT18H3

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 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. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality." UrW96L4

WHAT ARE THE LEVELS?

1. God is the primary level of reality. God "causes" the 2nd level.

2. Creation, heaven, Holy Spirit, Sonship. This is a permanent pre-separation state where many children of God live in harmony. Each child has a mind, and some of those minds chose to believe in mis-creating another level.

3. This universe, including Earth and all human bodies. The "purest" way to experience this level is in true perception, a reflection of heaven, the face of Christ, once-removed from Heaven. Being in this world you still have a choice whether to be in true perception or false perception. The making of this level introduced or came from "level confusion".

4. False perception produces hallucinations and distortions of imagined worlds laid on top of or as a "perception of" the world. This is the experience of hell on earth. The world itself is still an illusion shared by the many sons of God, so now there's illusions on top of illusions.

In ACIM Jesus is NOT always talking about the same level. Each level is a different CONTEXT, and each is kind of "inside" the one above it. So if he's talking e.g. about your perception of the world, he's talking about you being in false perception and transitioning to true perception. If he talks about "the world IS perception" he's now talking at a higher level than that - level 3. If he talks about "there is no world" he's talking even higher than that, at level 2.

If you read ACIM believing that there is "only one level" or that everything it says is "true everywhere" or in all contexts, you WILL become confused and mistaken. All kinds of false conclusions come from this.

Another very common mistake is "hopping around the levels" during mid-sentence in order to try to justify or justify-against something being true. We've all done this ;-) For example "the body isn't real so why bother healing it" or "the world doesn't exist so why perform miracles". That's an intellectual straddling of two simultaneous levels and trying to make the truth of one override the other. That is an error in logical reasoning. Some people aim straight for higher level non-duality kind of truth being the only valid level, which produces profound denial and level confusion.

WHAT IS LEVEL CONFUSION

The first level confusion occurred when we as God's "effect" (creation) turned around and pretended that we, on a "lower level" could be the CAUSE of the higher level that caused us. Our attempt to "cause God", or to will against God, or affect God (sin), is the authority problem, and it is also level confusion.

So level confusion means that someone is confused about which level causes which other level. What is cause, and what is effect. A common way this plays out is someone takes something Jesus says at some higher level, and then attempts to "apply it to" a lower level context, in order to "explain away" there being any relevance to anything said about the lower level. This is a classic intellectual defense, and an error in reasoning.

An example might be, the course says I am not a body so I will stop eating. Or, the course says my hobbies are not real so I am not going to do them. Or the course says I'm not a body I am free, so when anyone says anything about bodies I'm going to overrule them and trump their claims by *switching context*, ignoring the context of the conversation, and pretending that the higher truth is the only one that applies here - this is intellectual arrogance.

Confusing cause and effect leads to the belief in magic, which is the belief that something which is actually an effect, is causing you, and producing effects in you. It also means you have turned yourself from "cause" into an effect. It also relates to how you see God, believing you are the cause of Him and therefore can produce effects in Him (sin) - which leads to the death wish.

And as Jesus says, "all sickness comes from a confusion of the levels." Which means, ALL forms of sickness (body or otherwise) show up when you believe that you are NOT the cause, and instead something BELOW you is the cause of you, making you its effect. It's the same thing as believing the BODY causes the MIND and can make itself sick against your will. It's as if you have switched the higher and lower levels around. Jesus also talks about how MIRACLES restore the "order of the levels". Ie, they put causality where it belongs (e.g. in the mind) and effect where it belongs (e.g. the body/world).

Fixing a faulty perception of cause-effect rearranges the levels into their natural order and prevents you from seeing yourself as "at the effect of the world I see." It places you back in the driving seat of recognizing that nothing happens to you against your will. Your mind is on one level, your body is on another. Similarly, your mind is on a level BELOW or WITHIN God's level. Your mind is also below the level of your soul (the soul never leaves the sight of God, each soul has their own mind which can choose whether to accept God's will or not).

So level confusion began with the separation idea. And it will continue until you are in the atonement. Until then, you likely will continue confusing levels and seeing things "backwards".

This is why we have to learn to discern WHEN Jesus is talking at one level, and when He is talking at another.

It can SEEM as if Jesus is contradicting Himself if He says one thing and then later says another. But these two things would ONLY contradict if they were on the SAME level. When you realize they are NOT on the same level, it makes more sense. For example when He says the body is not real and God did not create it, that is a higher level truth. When he says the body can be used as a communication device to extend love, that IS on a LOWER level. And therefore it IS confined to and limited to the context of having a body, and all the truths Jesus teaches about the body's unreality/inimportance/nothingness are STILL true. So you have to beware of which level he's talking at and when.

Just even realizing that the course HAS levels was really eye opening for me a few years ago. Until then I just lumped everything together. When you realize Jesus is teaching at and talking in different contexts, it really really clarifies a lot of things. Many people struggle with this, and it's why a lot of the course didn't seem to add up for me for many years.

One final note. When we use higher level concepts to "dismiss" the validity of anything at a lower level, that too is level confusion, and a form of denial. e.g. "there is no world, why bother healing people" is level confusion. Within the context of the world, WHILE there is a world, we ARE to heal people. UNTIL there is no world level, it's not our experiential truth that there is no world. AFTER the world has disappeared, there will be no more need for these miracles. You have to remember what is happening WHEN and where you actually ARE in the context of levels. Otherwise the result of this is just more split mindedness and denial.

To be awake in the atonement is to have NO level confusion. That means you realize you are the CAUSE of everything you experience. It means you know NOTHING can happen to you against your will, and never has. It is the secret to salvation - that you must have done it all to yourself, and you now choose again. It also means you now have POWER OVER THE LOWER LEVEL, which makes you a MIRACLE WORKER who can now break and override ALL of the ego's laws, including laws of physics, time, space, biology, etc.