"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

What this means is that God, who is Himself WHOLE, when He creates, He must create another WHOLE. The Son of God, or Sons of God, must be whole, in and of themselves, because they are created in the likeness and image of God. God only creates wholeness, he only creates fully (wholly), and whatever He creates MUST be whole.

This means that by creating a Son, God has added a second "whole" to the first whole. There are now at least two wholes in reality. The whole which is the Son, is a PART OF, the whole that is God, and yet the whole that is the Son, is in and of Himself, a WHOLE. He is complete, not lacking. This also continues on with the creation of all God's children, AND their creations.

The presence of multiple wholes in reality, wherein each whole is in and of itself a full complete whole, and yet also therefore MUST share with all other wholes in order to BE whole (oneness), is the natural state of the Kingdom of God. A wholeness of being, which encompasses additional whole beings.

If the idea of "many wholes" sounds like it makes no sense, it is because it makes no sense to THE EGO, who cannot comprehend whatsoever that there can ever be more than one whole. But what makes sense to the ego is nonsense, and when the ego sees nonsense it is truly sensible.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (are whole as individuals) and want to share it to increase their joy".

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

"The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE. "

"Holiness created me whole."

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole. Wholeness"

"Every Soul God created is part of you, and shares His glory WITH you."

"He was created that YOU might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's Completion, Which created you."

"And God has NEVER forgotten what makes Him whole."

"Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

"And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole."

"If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships."

"You will be made whole as you MAKE whole"

All of spacetime, and everything within the realm of relativity, is contradictory, impossible, insane, self-defeating, lacking and unwhole.

The reason is that it was made entirely by denying God, denying the absolute, denying wholeness, and trying to bring about something completely impossible - an opposite to God.

But as soon as you lack wholeness, you have things like separation, specialness, scarcity, contradictions, differences and lies.

The problem with such a system is that it contradicts itself. For example, anything separate seeks to destroy other things and to be different from that, so that it can stand out more and be distinct and exist.

It's the same with the ego, the ego wants to separate off and exclude and isolate, because the more contrast there is the more it has a seeming identity. Its identity is then made from the walls of separation.

The problem then is that even though the ego and the world define themselves based on what they lack about other things - what they do not have, and through the attempt to attack everything, they simultaneuosly need those things to exist in order to have any contast.

You can see this with ecosystems for example, where you depend on plants to create oxygen so you can breathe and yet you also eat the plants, thus depriving yourself. If you were have a population explosion that eats all available food, suddenly you would have mass extinction. So now "total life" contains "total death."

The reason is that a relative world is a denial of God's law of the golden rule - that giving and receiving are one. In relativity, this is denied and the rule is now that what you give you lose.

So each time you go to do anything at all in spacetime, you simultaneously get the opposite. Any gain is a loss, any advancement is a retreat from something else, anything you try to destroy you need for your own survival, if you don't share you end up with nothing, when you give what you have you don't get to keep it, etc.

Ultimately the binding rule in spacetime is that every single thing you do is thwarted by the fact that its opposite is also included. You literally cannot have wholeness. You have to choose what you stand to gain, and what you stand to lose, at the same time.

It's an extremely frustrating system because it means there is no whole truth, you can't win without losing, you can't gain without loss, you can't choose one thing without sacrificing the other things, you can't even breathe without reducing the oxygen that you depend on to live.

It's a totally self-defeating, self-destructive, contradictory, frustrating, impossible, nonsense, bullshit system in which nothing can really work and nothing is as it seems.

This is encapsulated by the idea of yin-and-yang, in which there are seeming opposites or polarities, but also you'll find some trace of the other opposite with each. As one increases the other decreases. As one is gained, the other is lost.

Basically, it means that no matter what you do in a relative system you can only partially win, and you must also partially lose, because every gain contains some loss, and every loss contains some win. Nothing is just one thing, nothing is just itself, and nothing is whole. It's all a mixture.

And that means on a physical level everything is a compromise, and a sacrifice, and a limitation. It means you can't have your cake and eat it. It means you can only ever partially succeed at anything, all the options available to you are lacking in some way, there is no way to pick one thing and be totally satisfied with it, and everything is broken in some way.

The ego depends on separating off from and attacking others in order to reinforce its sense of being special and different and unique, of existing at all. Its whole identity is increased by contrast. But at the same time, the very thing it attacks it needs to exist, and if it were to destroy it there would be no contrast and the ego would have no definition. So it cannot fulfill its own goal and must be frustrated in its entire functioning.

This is also why making choices in this world is utterly ridiculous, because no matter what you choose there will always be something lacking and missing, because nothing is perfect. You can't get the whole of anything ever. You pick one thing and you get that sinking feeling that you should've picked the other, because the other has some valid parts and yet not all the parts. And yet the other thing if chosen lacks these parts as well, and so you can't decide. Because every single choice the world offers you is between partial success and partial success, and never does it offer you a choice of completion, totality, wholeness or satisfaction.

How frustrating and stupid is such a system, founded on a belief in the impossible, an attempt to bring about the contradictory, and a state which totally denies itself in every way. While yin-yang is supposed to be a symbol of balance, it's really a symbol of complete dis-satisfaction and impossible inequality. All it really means is that every single thing is equally unwhole, not itself, contradictory and against itself.

"God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 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."

The passages below are pretty intense (each is from different parts of the course). They're basically saying that EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS DESTINED TO DIE. And that isn't an easy thing to comprehend yet alone accept. And if you CAN accept it (the meaninglessness of the world), perhaps you will be willing to go home?

The main reason we don't accept it is because it SEEMS as though, in the short term, some things live. That there can be seeming gaps in the dying, or sometimes paths will seem lighter and easier, even "pleasant" and enjoyable, and yet, NEVERTHELESS, even these brief vacations from death ultimately TURN INTO DEATH.

Even the lovely fresh bouquet of flowers, withers and dies and rots. Even the newborn baby, grows and ages and wrinkles and malfunctions and dies. Even the planet is born in the cosmos and evolved over billions of years only to be destroyed when its sun explodes. No matter what it is, no matter what you look at, ALL the things of this world are DESIGNED TO DIE, sooner or late.

This is the sense of the inevitability of death in this world, that "the world of bodies is the world of sin" and, therefore, since "the wages of sin is death", ALL types of bodies must die. And please note that I am not being negative or pessimistic here. I'm taking a square look at some facts. Facts that we like to avoid and pretend aren't true.

Such as the fact that EVERYTHING in the world eventually breaks down, goes wrong, malfunctions, decays. Yes it might take a while, and in the meantime it may seem that there are signs of life, of positivity, or purpose and meaning, activity, reasons to live, things to do and places to go. Which is sort of temporarily true. But then what happens eventually? It all goes to shit. Bar nothing.

Not one single thing in this world lasts forever. Not one single thing is permanent. This means the world cannot offer you safety, it cannot offer you freedom, it cannot offer you relief from problems, it cannot offer you life, it cannot offer you happiness, and in fact it really cannot truly promise ANYTHING, because ultimately everything is designed to die. Which means the world really has NOTHING TO GIVE. And that is because IT ONLY TAKES AWAY.

This is why, the only real salvation is found by TRANSCENDING THE WORLD, going within, rising above the battlefield, overcoming the world, moving beyond the earth, opening up to another world, returning to heaven, and waving bye bye to the dream of death. You can't find salvation outside of you because outside you there is only death and illusions of life. And this ultimately means, THERE IS NO WORLD. When will we be done playing with lifeless toys and dreams of mortality?

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"I see only the perishable.

I see nothing that will last.

What I see is a form of vengeance."

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

Before the ego existed, you had a self, created by God. Just as everyone did. In the separation, you denied your self. The denial of self, was an attempt to destroy your self. But you had to have something to identify with. So you shifted your sense of "what am I" away from your soul, towards an ego that you invented.

The ego is really the idea of the denial of life, of God, and of your soul. It is the attempt to eradicate you, which is why all its efforts lead to death. While the ego seems to be a self, it really is a lack of self. It is the absence of you and the rejection of mind. It masquerades as a self, when in fact it is the opposite of having a self.

Having identified with it, when people talk about oneness and non-duality you might feel frightened, as if it means that YOU are going to end. So long as you are identified with your ego, which is a false and second self, you will interpret any movement towards God as threatening.

The ego does not understand union or oneness and interprets it as death. This is also why you have ego rebounds and feel afraid and offended when you try to move into the truth. It's not really that YOU are under threat, it's that the ego is. But having identified WITH it and believing it to be what you are, you interpret ITS fear as your own.

So then the idea of returning to oneness, seems threatening to your ego, because your ego indeed cannot exist in oneness. And if you think that your ego is your self, YOU WILL not want to wake up. It will seem to threaten you. Especially the idea that the ego does not exist at all, is taken by the ego as an attack, and YOU will experience this as an attack upon your very existence. But only IF you believe the ego is your self.

The truth is that when the ego is undone, this happens as a result of YOU dis-identifying with it. Or to put it another way, you reintegrate yourself, identifying with your soul/spirit, reclaiming your mind, and dis-associating from the ego. This means you stop believing that the ego is your self, or that you even have an ego. Once you can recognize that your self, and your ego, are two different things, you are no longer threatened by the idea of undoing it.

A return to heaven is not really a return to no self. In fact, the ego is the state of no self. It is the state of self denial. It is a denial of life and a denial of existence and of identity in Christ. Returning to heaven is a REUNION with your real self, a re-identifying as a soul or Son of God in the Sonship, and a reclaiming of your true nature. You actually are returning to HAVING a self. That's why this is all about RESURRECTION.

The self God created you to be is permanent and will always exist in reality. Your Holy Self is God-given and cannot ever be destroyed. It's only your identification or sense of "who am I" that has become confused. Shifting your "who am I" from the non-existent ego to the permanent soul, can be nothing but reassuring and authentic.

Some people interpret the course to mean there is either a oneness or a duality, either God alone or many egos. And that undoing egos results in God being alone again. But this is not sufficient or accurate. God created you as a real living being, and it is you IDENTIFYING WITH ego that produces the ego and the separation, NOT the creation of an individual identity. You were an individual (who also shared everything) before this all happened.

Returning to God is not the annihilation of your individuality, it is the reclaiming of your individuality. The ego is NOT individuality, it is the rejection of having any real identity at all.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

Look at all these clear statements by Jesus testifying that you can either be IN HEAVEN, or ON EARTH. They are TWO WORLDS, two places, two locations if you will. You can be IN heaven, or ON earth. When you are on earth, you are not in heaven. The two worlds do not overlap. One is real, one is illusion.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heavens peace."

"earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. "

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. "

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."

"God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."

"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here."

"Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven."

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected."

"So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. "

"Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven."

"It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."

"For there is nothing in Heaven OR earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you CANNOT find it, because it is NOT real."

"The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete."

"And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. "

"On earth, it is your ONLY function, and you must learn that it is ALL YOU WANT TO LEARN."

"Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that YOU HAVE DECIDED AGAINST YOUR FUNCTION IN HEAVEN, and consider carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

God has one law. It is very simple.

God can only create in his own likeness. He doesn't know anything else. He creates beings - sons or souls - who are all identical to Him, and therefore are identical to each other. What applies to each one of them, applies to all of them equally. What is true of one, can be said to be exactly true of all of them.

This sets up "The Golden Rule", which is the primary law of God's creation, that everything applies the same to everyone, everywhere, at all times. The law simply states that what applies to you applies exactly the same to all brothers.

This law is always in effect. It is permanent. You cannot escape it. The law is in effect whether you like it or not. The law is in effect regardless of whether you are awake or asleep, aware of Heaven or suffering in the dream of spacetime. The law is the truth.

Our friend "the ego" is nothing other than the attempt to DENY that the law is in effect. It is an attempt to be outside of the law. The ego is nothing other than the belief that something DIFFERENT applies to one son versus another.

If the law of God means UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, since all sons are loved equally, then the ego means CONDITIONAL LOVE or "special favor", in which some sons are to be treated differently and unequally from others. Special love is a lack of love and so the ego is a thought system of lacking equality and unconditionality.

When you are trying to be "in the ego", you are in denial of the law. That doesn't mean the law stops applying. Denying that it always applies is suicidal. What happens when you try to operate outside of the law is that you will hurt yourself. You will believe that you can do something to others that you yourself escape the consequences of, and yet you will not escape those consequences.

When you do not treat your brother as a perfect identical equal, you will think you can get away with murder by getting away with attacking them and avoiding the effects. But you will not escape the effects. What you attempt to do to him you WILL do to yourself, because the law is always functioning. You cannot attack without being attacked. You cannot treat someone in a special way without withdrawing from love. You cannot attempt to hurt without hurting yourself.

The Golden Rule - the one law of God - also applies in the dream in terms of bodies, sickness, and death. The Course teaches clearly that if you show your brother a physical body which is sick, you are accusing him of sin and are attacking both of you. When you use the body for attack it becomes attacked and weak and sick and dead. This is a consequence of denying the law of God.

Simply, what applies to you always applies to others. So when you go into attack, attack is the idea that you can be different to others and have special treatment. This differences drives a wedge of separation between you and your brother and attempts to assert that what applies to them does not apply to you, or that you can attack without being attacked. This is the basis of all projection, where you try to project blame onto another as if to say "that is true of you, but not true of me".

When you do this, you are in denial of the law, and the law is still functioning, and so you will experience a split mind and are attacking yourself. You cannot cause your brother to be treated separately without treating yourself separately. Separation comes BETWEEN you. The body comes BETWEEN you as a separation device. You cannot have something apply only to him and not yourself.

Sick bodies are accusers. When you try to make your body sick you are accusing your brother of sin. That means that in your attempt to "make plans for him" you inevitably end up hurting yourself. You cannot accuse him of attack without being attacked. And so as you try to make out that your brother is a sinner, you are accusing yourself. It applies to you as it applies to him. And this hurts you. You will experience the consequences. It seems to be to an unfair consequence or something you did not want, but you literally did it to yourself. Whatever you try to do to another, you WILL do to yourself.

The Golden Rule also works in your FAVOR when you comply with it and recognize it and work WITH it. Recognizing it is the secret to salvation. That means you must be willing to have the truth be the same for everyone, all are treated equal and no-one is special. And that means moving into unconditional love. Here, the Golden Rule actually supports you and helps you, because it ensures that giving and receiving are one, therefore as you treat others with love you receive love. As you give miracles, you receive miracles.

When you acknowledge the law is in effect and you COMPLY with it, it ensures that you will be treated with unconditional love, that you will have access to sharing the entire treasure of God's creation, and that you will recognize your brother as your identical equal. "Healing is a thought in which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad". This means that the two minds recognize the law, know it to be true, see that they are identical children of God, and celebrate their equality.

A Course in Miracles is entirely based around this law. All of its concepts about how what you do to others you to do yourself, how giving and receiving are one, how you attack the body, how you become sick, how you must demonstrate a BODY THAT IS FREE FROM ATTACK, and how you must overcome death, is all based on the law of God - the Golden Rule. This is why Jesus says that either everything lives or everything is dead.

When the rule applies and you acknowledge equality, you are recognizing that anything God creates must be like him, and since He is life, everything He creates must live. And that means ALL that He creates is alive forever. And in this acknowledgement you are acknowledging that YOU are alive and cannot die, any more than anyone else can. Acknowledging life is the resurrection and in the resurrection the curriculum ends, because it's there, in the atonement, that you acknowledge and receive the unconditional love that comes from ALIGNING with the law of God. Accepting the truth.

When you comply with the law, everything is peaceful in Heaven. When you oppose the law, you make yourself suffer. Denying the law is ego and is suicide. Accepting the law is heavenly and protects you perfectly in eternal life.

To put it simply, the nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body. Mind is of God, bodies are illusions. Mind functions naturally in a state of sharing, union, extension and oneness, driven by God's laws. Bodies function according to unnatural ego laws of separation, as separation devices, designed to imprison mind and completely oppose the mind's natural functioning. This is also why the notion that the mind is "part of the brain" is preposterous.

"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."

"The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of ***one mind is meaningful***, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

"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."

"The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it."

"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."

To attempt to APPLY a body TO a mind, imprisons the mind. Confusing mind and body, to suggest the body is the mind, or that you have no mind at all, leads to the mind identifying with the body. This makes the mind run completely opposite to its nature, and induces all suffering and sickness.

To again put it simply, if the mind in any way associates itself with the body, or allows or uses the body to define itself, the mind becomes sick and attacks the body. Bodies are prisons, and minds are freedom. Bodies are exclusive, and minds are inclusive. Bodies separate, minds join. They function totally differently, so trying to make the mind function LIKE the body, arrests the mind's natural function and induces illness.

"Thus is the JOINING of mind and body an INESCAPABLE belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice INVARIABLY a means for limitation."

"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 (tying it to the body's nature) 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."

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

Extension, sharing, union, oneness, equality, transcendence, miraculousness, is the mind's natural function. Mind needs to function according to mind's laws in order to be healthy. But bodies are fundamentally opposite, as separation devices.

If the mind identifies with "being a body", or functioning by physical laws, or obeying physical limitations, the mind becomes sick. It's like something that's supposed to be completely free and open, being shoved inside a completely closed box. Mind and body are not compatible.

"Spirit makes use of mind as means to find Its Self-expression. And the mind that serves the Spirit is at peace and filled with joy. Its power comes from Spirit, and it is fulfilling happily its function here. Yet mind can also see itself divorced from Spirit, and perceive itself within a body it confuses with itself. Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"Yet mind apart from Spirit cannot think. It has denied its Source of strength, and sees itself as helpless, limited and weak. Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself, and hiding in the body's frail support."

"You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt."

"the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain"

The situation we find ourselves in is therefore very strange. We seem to be isolated and alone inside a body, trapped, as if separated off from other minds, physically unable to truly share or join. Even in intercourse we can't actually get inside of another person's mind, or experience them as ourselves, or really share anything with them.

Everything seems to happen to us alone, and not another. Everything seems to apply to me and not you. Even the form of our bodies suggest we are different, separate, special, and exclusive. That we are separated off by time and space. As if I can have little private thoughts inside a little private world that has no effect on anyone or anything outside of me.

This is not how mind needs to function to be healthy. This is totally opposite to its natural functioning. Mind needs to SHARE, to join, to be one-with, to unify, which is true communication and extension. Mind needs to be open and transcendental beyond limitations and walls and boundaries. Mind spreads out and can have the vision to see beyond physical limits and distances. Mind can be everywhere at once.

So somehow we have to find a way to transcend the body's anchoring, imprisoning, limiting factors, and restore the mind to functioning how it functions in heaven.

"Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart?"

"What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means."

"A PERSON conceives of himself as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body. ONLY if he perceives as a MIND can he overcome this."

"While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere."

"Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

"The belief you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake."

"Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith."

"If you are sin you ARE a body, for the mind acts not."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"And so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness."

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed."

"And while you see your brother as a body,APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you."

"He Who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees Himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore He is limitless. And being limitless, His Thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever."

"I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained BY teaching. I understood that I COULD NOT ATONE FOR MYSELF ALONE."On the one hand, we're asked to accept atonement for ourselves. This is because our own mind needs to accept God's truth and become sane, in and of itself. But the fact is that you also share everything with others. Your mind is plugged into other minds. So that now means that you can't accept your own atonement, unless you're also willing accept other people's atonement.

I could say, well, I find myself to be innocent and holy. But if I can't also have that same perspective about EVERYONE, then I can't really claim it either. This is due to the Golden Rule, that what is true of me is true of the whole sonship. Either both of us are innocent, or both of us are guilty.

"Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty."It's not possible to see myself as innocent while seeing someone else as guilty. This means that secretly I find myself to be guilty as well, and am now projecting sin onto another in order to deny that I find myself sinful. I now see the guilt seemingly outside myself in another as if it applies to them and not me. This is how the ego always thinks in a dissociated way.

Nothing true can apply ONLY to myself. Truth has to apply to everyone at once. The truth is that whatever applies to me applies to everyone, because we were all created equal in God. If I believe in guilt I will find both myself and others to be guilty and will see a guilty world. If I truly and genuinely believe in my own innocence, it can't be that I simultaneously hate others and find them to be sinners. No one can love and hate at the same time. So you can't accept atonement just for yourself and leave everyone out of it. Just as you can't be in holy relationship while excluding anyone.

Even though I'm tasked with accepting atonement "for myself", being responsible for using my own free will to choose it, this actually means that I have to be willing to let it APPLY to everyone simultaneously. I cannot in fact accept it for MYSELF at all, if I am not willing for this same truth to be true everywhere. If I fail to recognize its universal application, I have not learned it. Only by SHARING the atonement with the ENTIRE sonship, can I accept it for myself.

This means I have to find EVERYONE to be innocent and accept the atonement FOR everyone. I can't JUST find myself to be innocent and leave others dangling. The truth I claim for myself HAS to be also claimed for everyone. I have to see the holiness of christ in everyone at the same time otherwise I can't see it in myself. And I cannot be true to or know myself without being true to the known reality of everyone's true nature. Only ego would think it can accept atonement exclusively, because it wants everything at the expense of everyone else.

"Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

"To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"Redemption is recognized ONLY by sharing it."

So yes on the one hand, since we "rule" our own mind, which God created in us individually along with our soul, our natural condition is that we are ALSO fused intimately with every child of God. You CANNOT accept the atonement "just for" yourself. It is absolutely impossible and runs completely opposite to the nature of love and of all things God.

The atonement is a reflection of heaven, and of heaven's laws. Those laws are laws of absolute sharing, equality and union. You are literally in and like all your brothers, and thus there is an aspect of you which is completely shared with them all. The entire sonship is your self, just as you are the christ along with everyone. For YOU to accept atonement means, in effect, that you AS THE SONSHIP is accepting it FOR the sonship.

"My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself."

"Peace be unto you who rest in God, and in whom the whole Sonship rests."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, NOT FOR PART OF IT."

"To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by SHARING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITH HIM. This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

"The Kingdom of Heaven (the sonship/one son/christ) IS you. What else BUT you did the Creator create, and what else but you IS His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement"

You see, you are not just you. You are also everyone else. All your siblings in the sonship are part of you and you of them. We are all together a collection of individual souls who share absolutely everything with each other openly. And so what applies to you applies to everyone and includes everyone. Everyone is included in your self and in your mind, just as you are included in them. And so you CANNOT do anything alone!

The ego is the idea of being alone, separated off, independent of or isolated from others. It's the idea of being "only you" and "not others". It's the rejection of your union with your brothers and an attempt to confine and limited yourself to ONLY what appears to be your individual self. It's an attempt not to share anything with anyone. And it is OUT of this state of exclusivity and imprisonment that you are rising INTO a state of TOTAL sharing and inclusion. So you have to learn that you ARE the whole sonship and everything you do is for everyone.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This doesn't in a any way violate the free will of others. You accepting atonement for "yourself" does in SOME WAY and in some part, accept it FOR others and gives it to them. It lifts them up to the degree they're willing to allow it. You becoming lighter lightens everyone's load. "When I am healed I am not healed alone."

Just as Jesus accepted the atonement for himself AND FOR everyone, this did lift everyone into light, but each individual was only lifted to the degree they allowed themselves to be included in it. Not that Jesus didn't GIVE it to everyone through unlimited sharing, just that they did not full RECEIVE it.

As EACH of us accepts atonement truth for ourselves, we ARE radiating it throughout the sonship and every mind is illuminated by it. This is the same thing that happens when you work miracles. They can touch people far beyond your awareness because we are all joined. We're sort of like a network of individuals. We each can raise up to the highest heights which pulls everyone upward as well, but each has to also be willing to be pulled to fully embrace what is offered them.

So while your "only responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself, YOUR SELF is not JUST yours. You must accept it for everyone otherwise you cannot have it. "To have all, give all to all." The way by which you share atonement with everyone reflects the holographic nature of the Kingdom, in which everyone has everything simultaneously because every individual is the whole. Atonement, just like miracles, are holographically connected and must be shared in order to be experienced for yourself.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did. Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

"As peace extends from deep inside yourself to embrace all the Sonship and give it rest"

"For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies."

"My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation."

"Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?"

"You who share His Life must share it to KNOW it, for sharing IS knowing."

"He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him"

"I desire this holy instant for myself that I may SHARE it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it WITHOUT him, nor he without me. Yet it is WHOLLY possible for us to SHARE it NOW."

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

"This is the light which brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves."

"Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world."

"Forgiveness shows us that Godʹs Will is one, and that we share It.""And I accept this vision in its name, both for myself and for the world as well."

"And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself"

For many years I’ve had this strange knowing in the background, that the course is about immortality. But in our society, immortality is laughed upon as something utterly impossible and ridiculous.

I did not see hardly anyone else speaking of the immortality implied in the course. I thought maybe I was wrong about it and that it wasn’t about this. But over time the more I’ve studied it the more I see the ENTIRE course pointing towards our TOTAL invulnerability. Even "forgiveness" is only an aspect of the fact that no-one has even really done anything to you, because you are immortal!

This means immortality, as a spirit-identified person, is not only completely natural, it is the ONLY truth. Mortality is in fact NOT true at all. Yet the world believes everything is mortal, attackable, susceptible, vulnerable, hurtable, destructible. And this is because the world itself is all of these things, being unlike the nature of reality.

Regardless of the seeming profound lack of support for ideas of immortality among other ACIM students, I continually feel drawn to it like a moth to a flame, as a bright light which beckons with truth .. and something about it which is known. A beacon of truth in the midst of all darkness and confusion and the avalanch of opinions.

Becoming identified as a non-body spirit entity, and stopping believing that I am a body, is entirely an act of siding with immortality. Regarding myself as incapable of being attacked by anyone but myself, is an act of aligning with invulnerability. Realizing that the world has no power over me beyond what I give to it, is a restoration of my unlimited power and unopposed will.

Everything in ACIM is pointing towards heaven. Pointing towards reality. Pointing towards the fact that God’s truth and immortal nature are the ONLY truth, and everything else is utterly bullshit."You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

The entire world, all bodies, the entire ego thought system, all attack sickness and death, is a "confusing yourself" with things that are not immortal. Confusing who you ARE. Not knowing yourself as God knows you. Rejecting your true nature. Separation is rejection, and is the opposite of joining with yourself. And when you reject your immortal self you do not love yourself.

Love is immortality because it is endless. It is permanent and unconditonal and unlimited. It is what you are made of. You cannot die, ever. You cannot be hurt in any real way. You cannot be abused or persecuted or offended or attacked or damaged. No-one can do anything to your soul.

You alone are responsible for the confusion you have of believing that these things CAN affect you, which is an act of affecting yourself and blaming it someone else. All you need to learn is this one thing. You can never die. You are PERMANENT. You can never be changed. You can never malfunction. You cannot be sick. Nothing can ever be wrong with you. If you think there is something wrong with you, you MUST be mistaken.

God creates only that which is permanent. You are still as God created you. Not one single speck of the world has ever touched you. Not one single event has ever changed or defined you. Not a single second of a single day has done anything whatsoever to change God’s creative act of creating you perfect. And you WILL NEVER stop being PRECICELY as He wills that you be forever.