Originally, the only existence was in Heaven. But in the separation, we opposed heaven and made an opposite state of mind. This state of mind then projected an opposite world, rooted in the idea of death (opposition to eternal life). This includes the Earth and the Sun.

"Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." "For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

What we actually did was, we went from total heaven, to total hell. We took it to the extreme. We wanted to be AS opposite to heaven as possible, opposing EVERY law and nature and property of reality. This threw us immediately into insanity, resulting in "false perception."

In making a world opposite to God's nature, we made space and time and matter and planets and bodies. All of these were made in the spirit of opposition and falseness, of attack and sin, of murder and death. The body was also made within false perception, LOCKED IN to false perception, such that we could only see what is false and project it out to make a world. The world was therefore made by us to symbolize total opposition to reality, and the crucifixion of God's son.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error"

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see."

"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. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

It's important to realize that in fact TWO things happened in the separation:

1) Your mind was in a false state, believing in the murderous opposition to God. It was insane, driven mad by guilt over the attack on God. It could not perceive accurately or truly, it could only be confused and lost and afraid and murderous. It was trying to destroy itself. It had lost touch with truth and reality, and was in darkness or 'evil'.

2) From this dark state of mind, we projected the world. This includes the making of the physical planet Earth and all its bodies and forms, as well as the environment around it. We made the physical world as an attack on God. Due to the insane state of mind we were in, we made it "in hate", with laws of death and punishment, and with the intent to destroy. This is why everything in it eventually dies.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin." "The body is the idea of sin made flesh." "You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

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

Since we made the world in INSANITY, to oppose heaven's nature and to attack God's family, we really made it without seeing it clearly. We made it in a confused state of mind. We made it in blindness and in darkness and in unwillingness to see. We made it TO hide reality from ourselves, and so have not really looked upon its 'actual' nature. We haven't seen what we really made, we've only seen what it APPEARS to be while in a state of inner false perception.

What Jesus is saying in the course is that because this is all rooted in your mental state, and you can change your mind, you can also be restored to sanity. Your internal landscape can be healed so that it becomes able to recognize reality, recognize that an illusory world IS an illusion and not real, and that you can then return to having real vision. That you can open your eyes and actually take a good clear look at what you made, WITHOUT the negative dark evil baggage of false perception.

It's like, okay, you were in a bad mood one day, you lashed out and made some horrible sculpture, which seemed evil and twisted and wrong. And then your mood brightened, and you lightened up, and you remembered sanity, and then you looked upon the sculpture you made and saw it as if new - as if for the first time, without the past and without hate or sin or guilt or fear. And in that "new light", it does not appear to you the way it appeared in false perception.

Note that this does not mean the world's FORM necessarily changes at all. In fact, the same physical laws apply, the same decay and chaos and war and famine and murder and death and sickness still occur. And the body, which is part of that system, is always able to still "see" that as its reality. BUT, when you see it without the ego baggage of murderous destruction, you are "forgiving it".

Jesus refers to true perception as "accurate perception". That means you are becoming able to see correctly, or clearly, "what is there". ie, to take a look at the twisted, "strange world you made", but from a lighter mood. With a more loving attitude. One which doesn't project guilt and sin ONTO it. But one which also lets you "see it straight", without distortion and without confusion. And this lets you see the world you made in a "forgiving way".

This doesn't in any way really change the fact that the world STILL is a place of suffering and murder and death, or run by death's laws, or designed to attack. But you no longer are DECEIVED BY it, tempted by it, fall for its forms and appearances, or buy into its implications.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate."

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

So what we're trying to do here is to, while being in a body, change the internal contents of our minds, so that we are no longer in the same state of mind we WERE in when we made the world as a projected attack, so that we STOP PROJECTING THAT. At first, the world is seen WITHOUT the hateful baggage, and then later the lack of ITS SOURCE within our minds, the undoing of the world WITHIN our mind, causes us to STOP PROJECTING IT AT ALL. And then the world disappears.

"These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God."

"You have been promised full release from the world you made. "

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE. But take it from the hand of Christ, and look upon it. ITS reality will make everything ELSE invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL perception."

"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. 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."

"For time YOU made, and time you CAN command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made."

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source."

"LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

""The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, no-one and nothing remains still bound by them, and, by YOUR OWN forgiveness, you are FREE TO SEE. And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And, with this final blessing of God's Son UPON HIMSELF, the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him.

The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. *****And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness.***** Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently ***across chaos*** (the chaos is still there), and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign (symbol) of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace.

Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation IS the end of dreams, and, with the closing of the dream, will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation? How much do you WANT salvation? It will GIVE you the real world, trembling with readiness to BE given you. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this, is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. MEET His patience with your IMpatience at delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him, in trust, ***out of this world***, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness."

For a while now I've been experiencing the Holy Spirit working in me quite actively to clear and heal my mind, emotions and body. And I've been unsure how this correlates with A Course in Miracles because I don't hear hardly anyone talking about having interactions with Holy Spirit that involve any kind of manifest 'activities'.

Indeed many people still think Holy Spirit is just some kind of metaphor or inaccessible state of mind. Much of the ACIM community has a very cerebral, nervous, intellectual relationship with Holy Spirit, if at all. So I've been reluctant to share about it thinking myself to be doing something 'weird'. But maybe I am pioneering.

For me, this seemed to begin quite naturally as the next step in my exploration of trusting Him. I think that some day when I lay down to sleep I just had this idea to ask Holy Spirit to help me in some way, or to heal whatever I was feeling, and it was part of me opening up to exploring whether He would take some steps on my behalf.

Previously I think that I believed and acted as though my forgiveness process was something that I would do on my own and that any 'progress' or 'results' from it were due to my own willingness to see differently. But this then shifted, because after a certain point, after enough surrender and willingness and development of trust, I started to get this sense that Holy Spirit was meant to do more than just be an onlooker or advisor.

The first few times this happened I felt what I would probably describe as an 'energy' or a sensation of energy moving, through what seemed to be my body. It was sometimes accompanied by little jerks or motions in my hands or feet. Sometimes some subtle contractions of muscles. But over time, this has greatly increased.

I started then to learn to simply 'invite Him in' or to ask Him to come into me or to join with me. I didn't know if this was 'proper' or allowed or normal or anything but I was willing to explore it. I would invite Him in. He would quite often then say to me, "relax" or "surrender". And it seemed in a way that this was either a 'condition' or a prerequisite for supporting this thing happening. So I'd do some surrendering and relax my body physically. And then stuff would start to happen.

I will sincerely invite Him into me and then I will relax and allow and I will start to feel 'energy' move, whatever that is. Manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes this takes a pattern where it starts at my feet then works its way up my legs. As it goes, these limbs become more tensed as though sort of 'electrified'. Holy Spirit's energy is like electricity in a way, or how you might imagine someone if they were being electrocuted... but in a non-harmful non-painful way. Often my legs all the way up into my hips and pelvis will 'energize' and tense, seeming to form a certain specific 'posture' which, once established, immediately begins to 'drain' energy out of my upper torso, particularly any negative emotions or upset energies. These just flow down and out through my root chakra or feet like someone is flushing the toilet.

Then after a while this electricity will come up through my upper torso and into my arms and chest there can be at times some quite vigorous shaking, tensing and pulsing of stomache muscles, and various energetic changes taking place. When it works its way up to my shoulders and head area, I quite often now will experience what I can only describe as a very rapid intense oscillation/vibration of my head, which will suddenly shake at a very fast rate, as though something is being dislodged and removed upward. After this process is basically done I will be 'buzzing' somewhat and yet usually feeling quite peaceful and relieved, especially if upset emotions were healed in the process.

Now, not only does this happen for me on almost a daily basis now, but also it is becoming much easier for me to 'access' this electrical energy - in other words, to work with Holy Spirit 'supernaturally' in me, by just my mere willingness to allow Him to do something. And I'm finding that this is making it possible to apply this to any particular seeming condition that's going on in my body. For example I might have stuffy sinuses from eating some icecream, and if I'm willing I will sort of give a brief 'nod' to Holy Spirit, and he will instantly start to shake something and energize something and extract all of the symptoms. Or lets say I am under slept and I turn to Holy Spirit and he 'zaps' me, lol, I do my little shaky thing, and then I'm not longer experiencing that tiredness.

Also this is manifesting in the healing of others now, where I have an increasingly spontaneous willingness to lay my hand on a person and allow Holy Spirit to be immediately engaged through me to heal something. This has been developed somewhat through my openness to explore supernatural healing and commanding away sickness and so on. By developing some trust in that area, I am now growing in 'strength' and confidence in that if I simply do my part and join with Holy Spirit, miracles can happen, without any preparation whatsoever. God doesn't need preparation. God is ready to heal right now!

In particular, I've also been inviting Jesus into me, and I ask him to come in and heal certain feelings I feel in my torso. And immediately he comes in and makes corrections, which I may experience as tightening of muscles or pulses in the stomache area or contractions and other shaking, and then somehow these negative feelings will have simply disappeared without me really noticing how or when, and I will feel happy and start to laugh. And so I've been exploring that more too. What is the next step?

Well, I've also more actively started to invite GOD to come into me, to be in me, to dwell in me, to shine through me, to love through me. God is the one whose presence regularly moves me to tears. Realizing that God is HERE right now, and that it's really me that believes in separation or unawareness of God's PRESENCE. So as I open up to accepting and being aware of and open to God's presence here, I have to open to God being inside of me also, in my 'body' and mind. And so I invited God to be in me.

Then instead of referring to Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit, I referred to Him as 'Spirit of God', to make that kind of 'connection' between the two, which maybe I wasn't making before. So I invited 'spirit of God' to come into me, while also affirming "I receive God's healing". And let me tell you, the amount of activity that Holy Spirit them did in me was probably the most intense I've ever experienced. All up my spine I felt this intense presence and electrical energy radiating out of both sides of my spine all the way up and down several inches, accompanied but much more intense body-part shaking and energy dislodging. You have to really try to just trust and allow and relax while He's shaking the crap out of your body, literally. And afterwards, I felt healed and renewed and peaceful.

And I can tell you one other thing that I am noticing, is that... because of these 'sessions' of healing, I think... I'm noticing more often now moments where I just feel... calm, present, and there aren't any thoughts happening. It's quite unusual and unlike any other 'mode' of functioning that I am used to. Like, as if I am ALWAYS thinking, and then... there isn't any thinking happening, and I'm like... what is this? It's a feeling like there is this 'love' present, and it's just very calming and relaxing. And I've remarked to myself, that this is like the 'first time' that I am 'being', aware, without having any thoughts about anything. Also last night I was doing this and also experimenting with 'not controlling anything' and I heard myself exclaim, "this is the first time I am actually finally RESTING." To be aware, relaxed, and to have no sense of having to do do do do do anything, and just BEING there. Ahhhhh. Felt like real rest and relief. Relief from the ego mind. For the first time ever!

So what's on my mind now is... the interesting transition from ... doing forgiveness mentally, taking steps in changing perception....following some procedure (which still helps)... versus.... starting to be transformed SUPER-NATURALLY, by Holy Spirit directly. I used to not really ask Holy Spirit to 'do' the healing in me, thinking that I just needed to change my perception and accept my innocence etc, and that Holy Spirit was just sort of looking on from above and guiding me with word phrases and so on.

But then I came to realize, particularly spurred by some other people who ask Holy Spirit to actually do something, that Holy Spirit is not only meant to do something but to actually supernaturally HEAL me. And not just a little bit. I completely saw one passage of ACIM in a different light when it says "Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I will LET HIM" - and "I choose to LET HIM, by allowing Him to choose for God for me". This for me has become, to let Him choose for God, to decide my innocence, AND THEN TO COME INTO ME AND PERFORM HEALING MIRACLES - which quite *literally* remove the consequences of my wrong decision - literally the healing and removal of upset emotions, the correction of body sickness, all of it! And this all entirely hinges around "If I will LET HIM." He isn't the one who lacks an ability to heal EVERYTHING... we are the ones who won't conceive of, allow or open up to letting Him wield his unlimited POWER in our lives.

I have a little willingness, then he does some super amazing - I have no idea what He really does - THING - and then I am better off. Yes I continue to do forgiveness in a more formal sort of sequence of perceptual corrections, but I am opening up more now to, what Holy Spirit just told me... "direct transfer", of experiential truth - the healing power of love - the presence of the One Mind - to accept and receive God's healing directly and to then extend it, rather than this whole ACIM thing of some kind of monotonous, intellectual, do-it-yourself 'study' of a book or manipulation of thoughts or thinking that YOU do the healing and correction. YOU do not heal. God is the healer. God has appointed Holy Spirit to HEAL YOU, FOR YOU. So this requires you to let go of even the process of your own forgiveness, to LET HIM actively work in you and through you. Otherwise you are just staying separate and missing out on a HUGE amount of support and divine help in your process of awakening. You don't have to do this all yourself, and in fact you HAVE to relinquish doing it yourself in order to open up to accepting and allowing God's love!

I'm sharing this because I feel more confident over time that regardless of what I am experiencing, it is real enough to me and transformative enough to me, that I think other people are supposed to know more about this. There isn't enough of an awareness of the Power of Holy Spirit in the ACIM community, especially not in terms of performing miracles and other super-natural manifestations. Some branches of religion are much more familiar with this than most of us are. But I said to Holy Spirit, I don't know how I could possibly 'teach this' to anyone, because it's not like it's based on some kind of metaphysics or logic or whatever. I have no idea what Holy Spirit actually does or how He does it. It's much more of an experience that I sort of stumbled into.

Then Holy Spirit simply said, and this is His instruction to YOU:

"Invite me in."

I’ve been studying passages about perception lately. There’s a lot of them. The body’s eyes are only capable of fixating on forms and appearances of physicality. They were made NOT to see. They only register "physical signals" of light coming from the outer surface of objects. They eye’s "perception" is equivalent to false perception, because they are blinded by form. The eyes do not see at all.

They pass signals to the mind. The mind is the only thing that sees. The mind then interprets the signals based on the belief system and values. Whatever you value, you believe in, and want. This turns into what you "want to see". Similarly fear is used to shut out perception of things you do not want to see. When you have ego values, you see what you want to see as special, and what you don’t want to see is regarded as unreal or evil. This is a dualistic view.

Your perceptual mechanism is a layer on top of the mind which filters the body signals and interprets their meaning. This is where the "world you see", in your mind, is based on the meaning you give it. The body’s eyes are never capable of showing you reality. They can only send pictures to the mind which are illusions. The world they depict is fundamentally an illusion regardless of HOW the picture is interpreted. It is not possible to use the body’s eyes to see Heaven.

When you move towards true perception, which is still interpretative, you start to put all things into one category in your belief system and value system, rather than categorizing the world in dualistic terms of special love/special hate. All of the pictures being sent by the body are categorized as UNREAL. They are recognized as being fundamentally illusions, which, when viewed WITHOUT distortion (accurate perception) are easily discerned to be NOT reality. A mind "without illusions" in its perception does NOT "see reality", it interprets body signals as the LIES they were made to be.

To see with true perception lines up perception with the laws of God and allows the mind to see "through" the perceptual filter without distortion or bias. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." The mind then uses perception to see the "physical signals" "as-is", with no additional meaning being given them, nothing denied, nothing hidden. When seen "as is", they are simply registered as FALSE. They are OVERLOOKED with forgiveness.

Perception of form becomes very "thin", like a thin transparent veil. The body’s eyes here are still registering signals of a physical world, where bodies are in various states of sickness, people are still at war, and so on, but the mind interprets it all as unreal. The mind is in touch with the fact that it is the one DREAMING, and that it is the one who has sent the world out there to report back what’s out there. "Miracles remind you of who the dreamer is."

So then the mind knows that ITS DREAM is what is brewing shown to it by the body signals, the dream is fundamentally FALSE, and does not really exist. It is a very small step from there, "illusions recognized must disappear", for God to now take action to END YOUR DREAMING, remove perception from your mind entirely, and thus collapse the entire dream including the body and the physical world which were nothing BUT an illusion. In false perception you ADDED illusions ON TOP OF the illusion. There are TWO LAYERS of illusion. In true perception you came to look at the illusion WITHOUT illusion being added, and recognizing it only for what it is. Then when the world illusion has been recognized, it disappears.

I’ve been hearing people use the term illusion in an incorrect way. As if it means, "illusions about" something. You guys need to brush up on your grasp of what an illusion IS. People have too easily equate an illusion with "a false perception of something", and then equated the "disappearance of the illusion" with true perception. As if true perception does not SEE illusions, but sees reality. Let’s be a bit more precice in defining what is an illusion and what is reality.

I was driving one day and saw what I thought was a two headed bird. It was a large bird like a crane. I stopped the car and had a good look. Sure enough it dam well looked like a two headed bird. It seemed REAL. I drove forwards a little and took another look. Driving forwards introduced additional information which was HIDDEN from my perception before. Suddenly I was able to see additional legs, and then it became clear that there were in fact two birds, standing right next to each other. The illusion that there was a two-headed bird in reality, was blown. I was now SEEING the TRUTH (true perception) "about" what was ACTUALLY THERE. Seeing the truth, however, merely revealed the information that was hidden, and the parts of "whats there" that I could not see. My perception became more full and whole and inclusive. I was now looking at what was there "as is", instead of with a deluded interpretation.

This is also how it works in the course. You perceive with the body falsely. If you believe that what the body shows you is truth, you are deluded and in false perception. You believe the ILLUSION or the parts which function together to make it seem like soemthing, is real. You don’t see all the information. They are key facts hidden by denial. You are unconscious. When you open your awareness by removing "blocks to awareness", you gain access to information and facts which you did not know existed. You start to see more FULLY, all of what is there, as it is, a complete picture, without distortions or hidden information. This merely shows you the "apparatus" that was being used to make something look like somethig else. It’s like being privy to a "behind the scenes" look at the making of a movie. You see the cameramen and the fake stage and all the actors "out of character" and it blows the whole illusion.

True perception shows you these hidden details. But the fact is that SEEING CORRECTLY (corrected perception) only shows you the TRUTH ABOUT what is out there. It only reveals it "as it is "without your interpretations and strange meanings and lack of context. It only shows you an undistorted view of what is there. This undistorted view is, you could say, "free of illusions", but more accurately, it is free of BELIEVING that what is out there is REAL. It does not buy into the illusion any more. It’s like when you solve a puzzle and now you can never be deceived by it. Or you hear the punchline to a joke and it’s never as funny after that because you recognize that the setup is a lie. True perception shows you, without distortion, accurately, correctly, that the physical world the body looks at makes no sense, is deceptive, does not match up with God’s nature, is fundamentally flawed, IS ITSELF AN ILLUSION, and IS NOT REAL. Jesus is very clear on this in stating that true perception recognizes that what you see in this state is categorically UNREAL.

Bodies, forms, objects, animals, weather, forests, oceans, the planet, galaxies, all of it is a movie set. And when you are aware of ALL of the parts of it, see it clearly, and stop buying into its appearance, you will no longer be willing or desiring to believe that it is anything other than FALSE. A big lie. A trick. Just a great big scam. That’s why you WAKE UP after seeing that "forgiven world", because you see that what is here - this world - is NOTHING REAL, it has NO VALUE, it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors that you USED to think was true, and now you RECOGNIZE it as FALSE. Then it disappears.

You then find yourself in Heaven, where there is no world, no bodies, no spacetime, no planet, no critters, no forests and oceans, and "nothing there but shines and shines forever." Now you are in KNOWING of what is REAL. And it sure as fuck was not planet Earth. You’ve now left the MOVIE SET behind, have given up your little toys and fake play things, have become COMPLETELY DISILLUSIONED with the world, and have now decided to GO HOME TO HEAVEN, leaving this world behind. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "The body is a dream." "The body is the central figure in dreaming and without the dream it does not exist." (paraphrase)

So all you folks saying "illusions about", are not RECOGNIZING that the world ITSELF is a mechanism of illusion. FORM is an illusion, no matter HOW you look at it. If you look at it and think it IS REALITY, now you are blind and decdived. ONLY by looking at it with true perception can you be NOT DECEIVED by it, not blinded by it and realize it is 100% fundamentally a device for deception and untruth, which can ONLY deceive you if you don’t realize what it is doing. In this truth, you SEE form - body signals - as something that you USED TO think was real, and now you realize it was just a TRICK. If you don’t recognize how this world is LYING TO YOU ("nothing so blinding as sight of form"), and if you think illusions are ONLY your "interpretations" of what’s out there, you’re going to be staying sleeping for a long time to come.

I think the big gross error that some people are making, is that they have decided:

1) When I’m in ego, I’m not seeing correctly, so I’m making a shit hole out of something that isn’t shitty.

2) When I’m in true perception, I will see the beautiful lovely world with the credit it deserves.

That’s totally fucked. I’m sorry. It’s 100% backwards.

1) When you are having false perception you are BUYING INTO the illusion and not recognizing it. You think it’s reality, even though you’re having a nightmare. It’s a state of hallucination and distorted interpretation.

2) When you are having true perception you STOP BUYING INTO the illusion, you recognize it is NOT TRUE. You realize it’s NOT REALITY. You are no longer having a nightmare, but you ALSO ARE SEEING THAT THIS WORLD IS NOT REAL. You stop hallucinating ABOUT IT, but that doesn’t suddenly mean "its reality." You are now seeing the TRUTH ABOUT it. The truth about an illusion is that IT IS AN ILLUSION!!!

This ties in exactly perfectly with what forgiveness is. Forgiveness OVERLOOKS FORMS and does not make them real. The idea of "looking at" the physical world "with love" and "seeing it correctly" and it being fundamentally "a lovely thing" is bullshit to the 10th degree. That’s a total failur to understand what an illusion is. You are supposed to stop believing it’s real, not believe it’s MORE REAL than before.

This is the *incorrect* view of the metaphysics:

1) False perception shows you a false world or false view OF the world

2) True perception shows you are true world, or a true view OF a true world - as if what’s out there is true and real

THAT IS WRONG!

This is the CORRECT view of the metaphysics:

1. False perception shows you a *FALSE WORLD*, AS IF IT IS TRUE, making it SEEM REAL. It is backwards perception. It renders reality an illusion, and illusions reality. You do not realize what you’re seeing "as real" IS NOT REAL. False perception sees this world AS REALITY.

2. True perception shows you a FALSE WORLD, which is NOT REAL, and recognizing that IT IS NOT TRUE. That the "truth about" it is that IT IS NOT TRUE. It renders reality as reality and illusion as illusion. Truth = true, false = false. Here you RECOGNIZE that what you’re seeing IS NOT REAL. True perception sees this world AS ILLUSION. **A LIE**

In true perception you will then be so certain that you aree merely PERCEIVING A DREAM, not a reality, that you will be ready to WAKE UP FROM DREAMING.

When you wake up from dreaming, the UNREAL WORLD - Earth - does not suddenly become real! IT DISAPPEARS beacuse it was never real to begin with!

What REMAINS is Heaven, which has nothing to do with this unreal illusory world whatsoever.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made." You MADE this world with illusions. Making makes illusions. It is not creation.

"Some illusions are shared, and some are part of your personal hell."

In this world, there are circumstances, events, happenings, situations, scenarios, some of which seem tolerable, and some of which are a nightmare. And rest assured that the world is set up in such a way that problems are endless and inescapable, all roads lead to death, and it is only a matter of time before things go wrong. It's built into spacetime itself. And according to the world's laws, everything is dead as soon as it is born.

But what makes it hell, isn't so much "what happens" or the current configuration of the external world. It's more to do with how you experience it. Whether you experience it like a happy dream, or like a horrifying nightmare, depends entirely on what's going on in your mind.

Regardless of whether you are in a good place mentally, or a bad place, the world will still keep functioning according to its nature. Animals die. Trees burn. Houses crumble. Cars break. Food rots. And planets are consumed by supernovae. This is built into spacetime. This is the rules of physics by which the world seems to be governed.

"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 question is, what meaning, purpose, use, attitude and way of perceiving you are going to have, while this stuff is happening. And what you make of it is going to determine whether or not you experience happiness or unhappiness, invulnerability or suffering, health or death. And you do in fact have it within your power to experience this script of the world, in a way that entails NO negative reaction at all.

Reactions to the world are ENTIRELY based on a belief that you are at the effect of the world. That the world is the cause of you. If you believe this in a way, in any situation, your mind will inflict imagined states of suffering upon itself. It will perceive itself as victimized, demoralized, attacked, hurt, threatened, abused and upset. And all of this is ONLY in response to how the mind is perceiving and using the situation. These experiences don't depend on what is "happening" in the world, it only depends on your use of them. Or the meaning you give them.

When you are lost in the ego, in specialness and self interest and attachment and arrogance, confused and blinded and lost and afraid, you likely will feel like you are ONE WITH the world. In this experience, there is no distinction between what the world seems to be doing, and what you seem to be experiencing. There is no "positive separation" between you and events. And when they happen, they seem to happen directly to you, causing you to suffer, upsetting you, threatening you and making you hurt. And you can see no seeming way to stop them.

But when you step back and remember that you have responsibility for your thoughts, your perception, your attitude, your beliefs, etc... you are in fact CONTRIBUTING to how you experience what is happening. If you suffer and are upset when something "bad" seems to happening, it is not really because of what happens, but because of your beliefs about it.

Let's say, you value human bodies and believe bodies are really people. You have some favorite bodies and you want to keep them around. You are attached to them and value them, and use them for self interests. And then one of these bodies is attacked and dies. And now you will experience what seems like real loss and terrible grief, will be sad and in despair. And it will seem cruel and unfair and you will feel victimized by it, angry at the person for leaving and abandoning you. But this is ONLY because of your mind's attitude about the body, about the events that transpired, and what it means to you. And you could just as easily laugh about it.

What happens, is not why you suffer. The world does not cause the suffering. Events don't have any power to do anything to you. No-one can cause you. Nothing in the world can oppress you or make you sick or dead. There is no causal power, no will, no mind in the world, capable of influencing you in any way at all. At least, not if you are in your right mind. Not if you are recognizing that the world is FICTION. And not if your beliefs are fully lined up with the truth. No one who recognizes that the world is a dream could possible take it seriously.

"You would not react at all to figures in a dream that you knew you were dreaming."

So it isn't the state of the world, or what happens, or who does what to whom, that makes you suffer in any way. It's not the reason why you are unhappy or upset or afraid. Any "re-actions" you have are EFFECTS that your mind is inventing to correspond to and are consequences of the CAUSES that your same mind is believing exist, happening against you from the outside in.

Your mind, attacks itself, and believes it is hurt by these attacks. And it believes the cause of these attacks is not itself, but something external to itself. This is because your mind disassociates from itself and is split. Two parts of mind at war with each other. And this split minded state is the only way your mind can experience suffering, at its own hand, and disowned.

I went through hellish experiences a little over a year ago. I managed to try to stay strong through some of it, as much as I could muster, but I was still beaten down, tempted, torn apart by it, terribly upset, stressed, like going through the worst living nightmare possible. But time has passed, and healing has occurred, and forgiveness has been applied. And I now look back and can ask myself, what is it that made it seem like hell at the time?

The answer is always that it only seemed like hell because I took it seriously, I forgot to laugh, I thought it was real, I believed in bodies, I believed in external threats, I saw others as enemies, I decided what things meant, I read into it, I feared for possible futures, and basically MADE the whole thing a nightmare. Internally. I allowed it INTO my mind, by my belief in it being real.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

I accepted it into my mind, through belief in external causes, which was really MY mind causing itself against itself, perceptions of hell and nightmarish threatening situations. It wasn't merely that the situations were there to make me stronger at the ego level, but they were there for me to rise above my own self attack. The lesson was not to suffer and become stronger because of it, but to become stronger in rejection of the suffering. Realizing I was doing it to myself, making it worse, inflating it, reading into it, giving it meaning.

At the time, yes, I was not ready or able to stop myself from doing this. I was not far enough along in my clarification of what I was doing to not make it worse for myself. I didn't know the many ways I believed bodies were real and hospitals were threats and all the rest of it. I "did my best at the time", certainly. But I still made it hell for myself, within, in spite of that. And that is where the real lesson is.

It is not what happens, it's what you make of it. And if you believe the world is real, you will suffer. And if you believe that other people are bodies, you will fear for their lives. And if you believe the world can attack someone and make them sick against their will, you will suffer along with them. And in all this false empathy you will feel victimized as much as the person you think has been victimized. And this is all an inside job.

I could-a should-a would-a laughed through the whole thing and not taken it remotely seriously and simply resurrected and healed and brushed it off as nonsense. But I wasn't ready to be able to do that at the time, so I suffered. But I suffered because of my beliefs, my attachments, my valuing of unreal things. And in every way, all of my suffering was really INSIDE myself, not really anything that anyone was actually doing outside of me. It was my inner experience that became hellish. It was my inner feelings and reactions that were my suffering, and it was all ultimately self inflicted. I chose it through believing in it.

Many people would say it's completely understandable that I would feel so upset given what was happening. And many would say that anyone would feel that way. And that when such things happen everyone is stricken with fear. And that this is all completely normal and natural. But it IS NOT. It is mental illness, and it is extremely widespread. Because we're not willing to look deeply and honestly enough at what is really happening in our minds, and what and HOW we are doing it to ourselves. No one is supposed to be unhappy, or suffering, or sick or dead, ever.

For a time I could not see my involvement in it, and just kept having these upsetting flashbacks of how "it was hell" and how upsetting and ridiculous it was. Because I could not "positively separate out" the what from the meaning. And emotional memories of ego experiences are always from a victim vantage point - the "one with the suffering" viewpoint.

I couldn't realize how I DID have a choice and I WAS choosing and the way I suffered was actually my own choice, albeit somewhat unconscious at the time. I didn't realize I could believe otherwise because I believed too heavily in the body and the world being reality. So the suffering was somewhat inevitable. And it was not the world's fault. It was my mistaken mindset. I had to learn that bodies aren't real and the loss of body parts has no effect on the spirit.

I used to also have a fear that it was going to repeat and something just as bad would happen again. But this too is melting because I can't fear that "hell will happen again" if I am realizing that I am the one who caused it to seem like hell. In choosing not to do that to myself again, I can render myself invulnerable. No matter what seems to transpire. A happy dream is an empowered dream, in which I am cause, not effect.

The only benefit perhaps to such trials, such suffering experiences, isn't so much that you learn skills or abilities to get through it and survive, but more that you learn the part you play in making it seem to be what it is. In taking responsibility for sight. In owning your power of decision to choose differently. To use it as an opportunity to forgive, and not as an opportunity to attack yourself. Because at the end of the day we really are just using the world to try to prove that we are weak and vulnerable and must die in guilt, which none of us really deserve or need.

You can set yourself free from hell, but it does require that you learn the beliefs you hold about the world are false. The valuing of bodies and the fear of sickness and death has to go. The indentifying with a body, and others with theirs, has to go. Otherwise you are going to suffer sooner or later, by your own choice. The secret of salvation tells you this. Nothing happens without your own consent. And all the ways that you experience any situation is you doing it to yourself, no matter whether it seems like you are the victim or the victimizer or who seems to play what role, in what is essentially a non-existent illusion of happenings.

You can't get out of hell by talking yourself into it, justifying why the world is real and why it's okay that there is suffering, by telling yourself that it's okay that bodies are dying, or trying to adjust to hell. You cannot find peace through making the world real and then trying to make yourself at peace with its real hell. The only way to escape it is to not believe in it at all, otherwise you do hell to yourself long before the world becomes hell to you.

The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Most of us approach a spiritual path as something that we have to DO. But I'm questioning what exactly it is that we have to DO. And in fact, DOING is the OPPOSITE of what we're supposed to be doing.

For example, God has already accomplished the absolutely perfect act of creating us to BE perfect FOREVER. We have been given an absolutely perfect holy loving joyful innocent self which has eternal life and is immortal. There is nothing wrong with it and there never will be.

So in that light, what is there to DO? The course tells us that when we reach the END of our path and awaken to the truth, we will gladly realize "I need do nothing", because it's a recognition that everything true is still true, everything false is false, and you are still exactly as God created you. So there's nothing to do.

If in truth there is nothing to do, and heaven is still perfect and undefiled, then what exactly is HEALING, or correction, or waking up, or all this learning stuff? Because ultimately the actual purpose of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn. The purpose of choice is to choose against choosing on your own and to eventually realize there is nothing to choose between. So what are we supposed to be DOING?

The truth is .. .I think... that it's all really about UNDOING. The course for example says that the miracle doesn't "do anything", it just UNDOES. That is still a change and an act, but it sort of takes away distortions and removes blocks and cancels out ego stuff. That's not a sort of "addition" of something, it's a removal. And atonement meant to UNDO. It's more like a path that SUBTRACTS, takes away, cancels out and STOPS doing. You come to God with EMPTY HANDS, not hands full of ego achievements.

So how do you "do the course" or "do awakening" if the process is really supposed to be centred around NOT doing? Perhaps the focus is on learning NOT to do the things you are already doing with ego. More of a "melting within" as the course says.

It certainly is NOT a process of building, assembling, erecting, putting together, creating, establishing, accumulating, or any other form of "I need to be the one who makes things perfect". God has already created that which is perfect. So it's certainly not our job to be trying to "perfect something". And really this makes it more clear that the spiritual path isn't a sort of "growth" towards something that doesn't exist yet, it's a RETURN to something that God ALREADY GAVE.

Along those lines, we can spend an awful lot of time hammering home course quotes and concepts and ideas trying to sort of ... induce some kind of higher state, to steer ourselves toward God. But the course also says quite simply that fear is the only problem, and the only solution to fear is love. Love is literally WHAT YOU ARE as created by God, as a self which is completely centred in and identified as that love, within God.

So what it's really saying is, just as light shines away darkness, it's really the light of God, or the love of God, coming from your true self, that CAUSES all your darkness to be shone away. As it says, "salvation comes from my one self." So the truth is that your one self has the POWER OF LOVE in it. But the question is, what is it that we are trying to heal? It seems to be more about gaining ACCESS to the love/light/self that has power in it, to let IT shine away our problem - but the catch 22 seems to be that we need that love in order to get TO that love, which is why we need help and willingness.

The self that you really are does not need any healing. It has nothing wrong with it. There is nothing to be done to it to fix it. It has no needs or lacks or faults. And it is in fact the LOVE - which is God - that is present IN AND AS what you are, that is the established "proper functioning" of yourself. It is God himself who guarantees your proper functioning, as in "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." And God is the mind with which you think, the strength in which you trust, his will is your will etc.

So if you think about it, the love that you have in your real self, your christ soul self, IS THE REMEDY, because it is that love that heals and shines away sickness and undoes death and ego. It its the love that is ALREADY in you, that melts away the mental distortions of denial and deception.

So it's a very strange scenario where your already-perfected self is the very thing which is come to save "you" and heal you from the BELIEF that there is something wrong with you. This of course seems completely backwards. You believe you are a defective limited self that needs a lot of help and lacks a lot and is sinful and guilty and afraid.

And yet this self is NOT what you really are, and what you really are - Christ - will actually PROVIDE the LOVE that melts and heals your mind from this faulty view of yourself. So you in effect - as a perfect soul - will save you - the idea of your false self - from believing that you are not christ.

You can think ok, if I do this lesson and recite this text and say these affirmations and "do" this forgiveness, then it will get my mind into a state where I am more loving. As if to say, that all these things will CAUSE the love to show up, or will MAKE healing happen in your mind, or FIX your problems, or RESTORE your sanity.

But mind is something you have absolutely no comprehension of. It's more like a presence of living light. You have no clue how to fix it or correct it. And you'll find that it's not any of these "techniques" that CAUSE the presence of love or to get the mind to be more awake. How do you even manufacture "wakefulness"? How can you put love in place? You can't. And you don't.

So you can become actually very stuck in this cycle of trying to fix what is not broken, trying to apply all kinds of methods to somehow "put in place" what you think is missing, as if it's your job to make yourself have the perfect nature that you're supposed to have. But that's not your job, and you are completely unequipped to do it.

GOD HIMSELF has established your nature, has created you from love with love, and this love is beyond description and concepts. It is actually the LOVE ITSELF that CAUSES the miraculous healing of your mind and that of others. It is not that you need to do something to MAKE the love show up, it's that the LOVE needs to do something in order to make the UNLOVE go away. And your ego self is an identification with being the unlove - ie a lack of love, which is also called sin and fear and death. Lack of love can only be healed by LOVE BECOMING PRESENT, as light REPLACES darkness.

It is the LOVE OF GOD that shines away the darkness. This is its POWER. Remember that "healing is but another name for God." And "miracles are a universal blessing from God." God GIVES YOU the healing and remedy that you need. God operates ON YOU to heal your mind. God SENDS YOU the love that shines away all sorrows. God PUTS IN PLACE the proper perfect nature and condition that your mind needs to be in - IF you will let him.

This is why the course then says that the Holy Spirit - NOT YOU - THE HOLY SPIRIT - WILL UNDO, ALL the consequences of your wrong decisions - IF you will let him. If you will let HIM, NOT YOU. And this is to do with the question of, what's your proper function? What are you supposed to be DOING here, how are you supposed to be functioning, what is your ROLE? Your roel is NOT "I am going to separately individually and on my own fix my entire self and make it holy and spiritual."

The truth is that a "thought of God" has entered the darkness of our minds to BRING LIGHT INTO our minds, to shine away the darkness. That is a miraculous blessing from God. That's the Holy Spirit's function of HEALING. HIS function is to heal our minds WITH the eyes of christ and the love of God. With the very love that is in and comes through your real self.

So then what are we supposed to be DOING? Well, it then cannot mean that it is our function or job to DO anything really, except that, we're supposed to be WILLING to LET OURSELVES be forgiven, to let ourselves be healed, to RECEIVE HELP, and to let God do the work for us. The course even says that we do not even do the miracles and we have no clue what miracles even are really, other than vague descriptions of them. We have no idea how to ESTABLISH perfect love in ourselves.

So really the "spiritual path" is quite paradoxical. It's about using the body to make the body unnecessary. It's about using learning to learn that there is nothing to learn. It's about using change to learn that you are changeless and have never changed. It's about surrendering separateness. It's about letting God come back into your awareness and be in your mind and share himself with you - to let him GIVE LOVE TO YOU, to shine away your darkness FOR YOU.

So I think overall we're really supposed to be acting more like ... having willingness and humility and surrender to stop trying to wake ourselves up on our own, and instead open up to letting God perform spiritual surgery on us. We HAVE to get God's LOVE into our awareness.

As the course says, "identify with love and find yourself". Love itself is what you are, and in the presence of that love there is no fear or guilt or death. Nor because we hold these things at bay with the amazing power of our concepts, but because the LOVE SHINES IT AWAY FOR US. The atonement is the idea of God's love, shining away and undoing all ego and death.

All we've really done is we've gone into denial, and the solution to that is to do the opposite - which is acceptance. But acceptance isn't a DOING, it's a laying down of all the DENIALS and blocks and barriers and resistance and fear that try to PREVENT the love from doing what LOVE does. It's all an attempt to STOP GOD'S WILL. So the solution can't be that we keep doing our own separate will and expect it to work - we've God to let GOD'S WILL do its thing.

And that ultimately means coming to recognize that God's will is already DONE, because God is not indecisive or in two minds or uncertain. He already has GIVEN us EVERYTHING, and the only part missing is that we keep pushing it away, we have become ungrateful, and we do not want it. So it's a matter more of stopping the resistance - the resistance is a doing that needs to stop. And all the things we've taught ourselves have to be let go. And all the barriers we've built AGAINST receiving everything from God have to be dismantled.

Really then what we're supposed to do is LET GO AND LET GOD, receive God's love and support, let the Holy Spirit operate on us and HEAL US FOR US, let ourselves recognize that we have already BEEN forgiven, and gently let go of all the things that say otherwise. That's not so much a doing in terms of a putting in place, but more of a sort of PURIFICATION, a sort of clearing out, an emptying of self-made bullshit, a letting things come and go without attachment, a relinquishment, a purging catharsis, a kind of release from everything we made.

The very thing we need - the power of God as the love of God - is the very thing we have denied. And yet it is still there waiting to help us through Christ. As the course says, "ONLY Christ forgives." WE ARE NOT being forgiving at the level of having an ego, forgiveness is not complete until we are IN CHRIST BEING CHRIST looking out through Christ vision. Because forgiveness is a result of maximal love. The love has to be there FIRST in order to result in true perception.

From our ego perspective it's more like opening up to becoming a "medium for God", or a channel through which God can resume his expression and extension. "The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function." We are learning to resume our function of LETTING GOD, doing his will, not blocking him, and thus receiving and extending the love he is already giving, which will heal our minds and undo ego. GOD'S LOVE WILL DO what needs to be done. There is NOTHING ELSE to do.

Accept, receive, allow, admit, open, extend, give, share, include, be grateful, recognize, acknowledge, be.

LOVE TRANSMITS, YOU RECEIVE AND EXTEND. THAT IS ALL!

"I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. ***God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself***, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"***God has ALREADY given him*** all that he REALLY wants."

"With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy ***God has already given them***. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death."

"I do NOT feel guilty, because ***the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM***.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to ***LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven***."

"When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "***I need do nothing.***" Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. "

"THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. ***All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference*** to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

"***The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function***. ITS fullness cannot be contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness IS extension. The ego's whole thought system BLOCKS extension, and therefore blocks YOUR ONLY FUNCTION. It therefore blocks your joy and THIS is why you perceive yourselves as unfulfilled. Unless you create, you ARE unfulfilled. But God does NOT know unfulfillment, and therefore you MUST create."

Sometimes it *seems* as if something happens to us that we did not choose. Let's say, something physical in the world comes along and hurts your body. Maybe its a car crash. Maybe someone is having a bad day and spills hot coffee on your body. Whatever it is, the question arises, did *I* cause this to happen? Am I a victim?

If ever the answer is that I DID NOT choose it, what are the implications? It means that there must be something that has power over me, I must be a victim, I must have no hope for a cure, I must be vulnerable to external attack, and I must be capable of being made to suffer against my will. This whole belief is especially wrapped up in sickness and death, via perceived external or bodily causes.

There is also the fact that we are co-dreaming this world with others, and that means some other brother, not in his right mind, might elect of his own free will to attack your body. Is this also asked for? Did I CHOOSE to be attacked? Have I harmed myself or used my brother's body in some way, perhaps in agreement with him, a mutual attack? Surely if I did not participate in its choosing, HE is the sinner, and my victimhood and proof of attack in my body accuses him. "Sick bodies are accusers." "Brother at your hand I die."

Jesus says this.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

So EVEN if there is a seemingly completely distinct attacker, some other person who of their own free will seems to be trying to attack your body, EVEN THAT is somehow chosen by you. And if you are pain or are suffering physically or emotionally, it is STILL true that you are causing it. In essence, there are NO EXCEPTIONS to the secret of salvation, and the instant that you believe there are, there is NO WAY TO FIND SALVATION, because now you've ruled out of the possibility of being FREE FROM "unwarranted external powers" or an "alien will."

Jesus goes on to say:

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

Here he seems to me to be saying, if you were sitting high up and were dreaming of a world down below you, which YOU populate with figures, and YOU animate, and you make "do things", like a child playing with dolls causing the dolls to pretend to interact or fight, then you'd realize that YOU are not identified with any of these figures and so these things are not happening to YOU. By being spirit-identified, you are not dream/body identified. So any activities in the world - in your dream - which you made do what it does, has no real effect on who and what YOU really are. But this does require a total clarity and atonement-level acceptance of the awareness of dreaming and the fact that you're making the world happen.

Jesus continues:

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

So now he's telling us that the form of the issue does not matter. Whether it be a violent person or a car crash or a disease or unhappiness. There is ONE truth about them all, and that truth is that YOU are doing them to yourself, by identifying with the body and dreaming a dream in which you CAUSE the bodies to hurt each other. For this to be true, you as a dreamer has to be a really high-level, powerful position. Can you comprehend the power entailed in dreaming a planet? Can you accept or own that this entire environment is in your mind?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

The issue with your body is a tiny speck of the dream that your mind is supposedly dreaming. Like in your dreams at night, where your mind invents an entire environment and then puts a little body in it, perhaps too it is true of this physical world. We dream up an entire ecosystem of events and activities and people and then make stuff happen and the only way we'd feel that we're vulnerable to any of it, is if we forget we're dreaming it and identify with some part of it, such as believing you are a body. Jesus is practically saying that what you are transcends ALL bodies. Is this too lofty of an interpretation? Too hard to relate to?

Jesus says to let them be as vicious as they may. And that seems to mean, even allowing the body to be attacked and damaged.

""In my defencelessness my safety lies." - You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

But somehow, if you were conscious enough of being the dreamer and not the dream, you would not be even slightly confused or believe that anything the body is experiencing is anything to do with what you are. That it is having NO EFFECT on you. It's not disturbing your peace of mind or happiness.

The problem with this is, "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body." So one moment Jesus is saying to let people be vicious, which presumably could mean your body is damagable, which is backed up by his statements about "only bodies can be attacked". And then the next he's saying that the mind should heal the body, and if it doesn't, the mind is not healed. "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." Yet if another person did the damage, does that mean your mind is not healed? Is your mind not healed because YOU dreamed of the other person? Is your mind not healed because you made up another body to attack this body, in your dream, thus literally doing it to your body self?

Jesus seems in some ways to say, you can transcend all worldly happenings, all bodily situations, be fully spirit identified, recognizing you are mind not matter, and be free from every possible dream scenario no matter what happens in the world. BUT, he also seems to teach that a mind in such a position would therefore have the miracle-working power to UNDO or correct or heal, anything that arises. This seems to imply the body can be attacked and is vulnerable, BUT that the mind CAN heal it, and if the mind has not healed it the mind must not be healed simply because it's not sane to allow the damage to remain. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother and yourself." "A miracle of healing proves separation (attack world) is without effect."

A question arises, is it possible to somehow supernaturally cause the body to be INCAPABLE of being attacked? Jesus speaks of a "protection" near the end of "sickness is a defense against the truth". He speaks of the body being unable to be sick, or to die. But if bodies can be attacked, would some other person come along in the dream and still attempt murder? And would it still produce a wound on the body? Does mind wield a power capable of essentially making the body literally immortal and undamagable?

Or would this be simply impossible, given the body is not real and only real things are free from threat? It would suggest the body can still be attacked, but that the mind could heal the attack. And that would seem to line up with Jesus's body being crucified in spite of his profound advanced mental state. If his mind has permanent projective power over the body, it would not have been crucifiable. The spear would not have been able to penetrate the hands and the nails could not be driven into his limbs.

It's true that, nevertheless, "the mind that made the body can make another". So in a sense, if the body is destroyed the mind, which is not the body, could manifest another illusory body, which also has inherent susceptibility. ie bodies fundamentally exist only as illusions, illusions can be attacked (illusions of attack) fundamentally, and so there is no way to render a body immortal or permanent. The mind CAN however heal the body, can project new bodies, and has the power to perhaps supernaturally manipulate events, utilize divine guidance and therefore find a "safe" path through the dream of attack.

One line says, "without the idea of death there is no world." Another says "to see a sinless body is impossible" and "the body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Which means, if the body seems to exist at all, it depends on death. It is made of death. And at best, it can symbolize eternal life but cannot BE it. Mind can maintain it and heal it. But there are limits - and short of a supernatural miracle, a body wouldn't survive a direct encounter with a supernova.

We know the body is just an image, an illusion, projected by the mind. It SHOULD, in the "movie projector analogy, mean it's possible possible for the DREAMER to NOT dream attack scenarios. In fact, "my self is ruler of the universe speaks to this."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

How absolute does this sound? It seems to literally mean, as the ruler of the universe, nothing can happen without your consent. No events can occur, without you dreaming them. Wars cannot take place unless you make them happen. Not only does what you desire happen, what you DON'T want to happen does not occur either. ie, you have TOTAL CONTROL over the dream.

And if that is true, does it not mean you could organize that there will NOT BE an attack upon your body? Unless you CHOSE that there be one and made it happen, that perhaps Jesus orchestrated every aspect of his own crucifixion? But does not this also mean that he must've dreamed of the "rest of us" too? Why not just dream of everyone being fully awake and bring an end to the dream entirely? How are we co-dreamers? Through a shared will?

Jesus also speaks of the body disappearing upon awakening. This suggests, in a co-authored dream, when a dreamer wakes up, he stops making a body. The recognition of its NOTHINGNESS cancels its illusions, making it impossible for it to appear to exist at all. A light shines so brightly, the body vanishes. "And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar of the Son of God."

If mind has the power to make a world, it would seem mind could have the power to force the body not to age, be sick or die. That mind would take authority over any occurrences. Mind could supernaturally make it impossible for the body to be attacked. It could "sustain the body indefinitely, BUT within time, where all bodies exist. This would require an ongoing maintenance, a vigilance, in orer to maintain this projection. And this seems to be what is spoken of here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this ***protection*** ***needs to be preserved*** by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement 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. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

So Jesus is suggesting a potential for indefinite sustainability of the body's health and state, where mind is overriding any worldly causality. This feasibly could continue for thousands of years. And there are stories of certain masters who have accomplished this longevity. St Germain, Babaji, etc. These advanced teachers of God apparently have the power to reverse, heal, and resurrect the body. At least for as long as it is useful in the atonement plan. The purpose is the plan. And once fulfilled, bodies are no longer needed.

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

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then - and then - I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

"This is the message of the crucifixion: there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusion are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains."

So what's the conclusion?

Mind has power over everything. Mind is co-dreaming the world with others. All illusions are attackable IF the mind CONSENTS to it. Due to free will, other minds can use their bodies to try to attack your body. This possibly cannot happen at all if you do not consent to it. If it does happen, you have agreed to a mutual attack scenario, and now your brother seems able to attack your body. But now your mind has the power to miraculously heal it, and being sane it would do so. And this the body can be "protected" by the mind indefinitely while useful, eventually to be laid aside ie vanished when no longer useful. You can choose the body cannot be sick, age or die, by protecting it actively, or through miracles of healing. But the time of bodies will come to an end.

This sounds like a tall order, but ACIM is saying we should not in any way be at the effect of the world. It should not do anything to us. We should regard other people as having not done anything to us. That is forgiveness. You are immortal and unchanged.

Forgiveness therefore is being causal and not an effect of the world. In forgiveness nothing happens to you, no-one offends you, nothing upsets you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can be taken from you. The world does absolutely nothing to you at all.

There is a very strong thread through the course that teaches this. It basically means you should be having absolutely no reaction to the world for any reason. You should be in a calm and whole state of mind which is always unconditionally loving, always deliberately acts, always gives the same one response to everything, and never re-acts to anything.

A "re-action" is an indirect action, a response, to a seeming provocation from outside yourself. Something happens first, and then you act, rather than acting first. And the action you perform is determined by what was done to you, rather than by what you truly will to do from love.

Reaction means you are a victim. It happens when you believe that stuff in the world is doing something to you. This happens when you believe it is REAL. This applies to everything physical. Everything the body can see and sense. All physical things are illusions, with a nature that is designed to tempt you all the time.

The world tempts you to believe that bad things are happening, cruelty and injustice, threats and dangers, wars and attacks, sicknesses and suffering. It shows this to you as pictures of crucifixion, pictures of bodies, pictures of things going wrong. It presents this to you as physical images, as physical objects, suggesting to you - look at this, it's true!

All physical things are forms of sin. Even the body is made from the idea of sin and deception. They give rise easily to a sense of guilt and fear, IF you buy into them. If you look at them and you start to buy into it, believe it, trust it, want it, you'll be giving it power over you. And then you'll perceive that it is causing you. Which means you are being affected by it.

This then causes you to be changed BY the world, seemingly. Or rather, you are using the world to pretend you are affected by the world. The result is that your mind will believe the external world is causing it, and it will manufacture effects to correspond to it. Your feelings will change, you will be "made" to feel a certain way, and you'll start having all kinds of effects - reactions, to what you've perceived.

Basically, if you believe that anything in the world is true, you are giving it power and truth and reality, which in your mind will set you up as the victim of it, and that will cause a reaction. If you are reacting in any way, with upset, fear, guilt, anger, anything at all, you have bought into the illusion that the world exists and is truly causing you.

The aim then is that you need to get to where you recognize that the world - which is a dream - is only a dream, which you are dreaming. And because it is only a dream, it is not a cause, and is only an effect. You must withdraw all power from it, all truth, and all reality. You must recognize it as nothing, doing nothing, causing nothing. All of its physical testimonies and states and forms must be recognized as lies - false - untrue.

Anything you see with the body's eyes, do not believe it. if you believe it, you will become deceived. It means you've bought into a temptation, and temptation puts you in hell. Anything that seems to be happening or existing in the physical world is NOT OF GOD and is not true. It must be denied. To deny it you must withdraw all belief in it, not play along with it, not go into false empathy, not join with it or become one with it.

The aim is to reach a state where you recognize that the world does nothing whatsoever, it has no power and no cause over you. You dominate it because you are all-powerful and causal. You are its dreamer. And as a result you cannot react to anything. It means the end of victimhood, the end of being affected or upset, the end of suffering because of anything other than yourself.

It does sound like a tall order - to not react to anything here whatsoever. To not react to a war, or a murder, or an abuse, or a fire, or a loss, or a threat. To be completely calm and still and unmoved and uncaused by anything in the world. But it is the goal we're seeking to achieve. If we are to be forgiving, it means we must be overlooking the world, which means not resting on the world, and not giving the world things it does not have.

In full recognition of being the cause or dreamer of the dream, you no longer can go along with believing that people are really suffering, or that sickness is true, or that death has any power to suppress anyone, or that bad things can make you unhappy, or that anything in the world can take anything away from you by any means.

It means the end of all effects from the world, all shifts to emotion, all fluctuating state and responses. It means being singular and unconditional, with one response to everything. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I will not react to the world I see. The world I see does nothing to me. I am immortal spirit and nothing in the world can change me or do anything to alter me in any way.

"That this is all the BODY does, is true. For it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream, UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?" UrT27I4

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist." UrT22F5

"Be not deceived by the form of problems today." UrW79L10

"Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the "reality" of any changing form." UrM28A7

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take." UrW140L4

"Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes." UrT29I8

"You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought which will release you from them." UrW184L4

"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." UrT31D2

"Be not deceived by what appears as many choices." UrT41G14

"Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear." UrT21C2

"He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did." UrM6C3

"for the world will never again appear to rule the mind" UrM6C3

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power" UrT11C5

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal." UrM9A6

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son, taking on a physical appearance. It is this which the body's eyes look upon." UrW64L1

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself." UrW64L2

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach." UrT31H1

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this" UrT31H6

"For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's." UrM17A9

"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated." UrT27K4 "The world I see has nothing that I want." UrW128

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys?" UrM14A4

"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. 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." UrW137L7

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." UrT12G1

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

You hear often that 'the world' as a term becomes substituted with terms like "its a dream", "its an illusion", "its not real", "we made it up", "its a projection" etc.

But, this doesn't really grasp what an illusion is. It's not just some word you can replace other words with.

The definition of an illusion is something appearing tobe something it is not, designed to deliberately deceive and block awareness of the truth. It is a device that lies to you and tricks you into believing something that isn't true. But in order to even KNOW that it is an illusion, you have to have enough awareness of what it's like to NOT be deceived by the illusion. You have to be aware of how the illusion works, what it's actually 'doing' to portray an appearance, how it is distracting you, and basically to 'see through it'.

Overlooking illusions is forgiveness. This means being aware of all of the 'tricks' that the illusion attempts to perform, but seeing through them and past them and not being fooled by them. And this is an entirely different state of consciousness and awareness, than to simply stay IN the ego illusion and start labeling it 'illusion'. That's like just switching out the term "planet earth" for "planet illusion". That doesn't really reveal HOW it deceives you.

So the big problem we have is that we do NOT realize how the illusion is an illusion. We do not recognize it AS an illusion. We do not see through it, or past it. We are fooled by it. We are made unconscious by it. It's like being hypnotized or put into an unconscious stupor, in which we take the illusion seriously, at face value, and listen to its appearance as if that is reality. Mistaking an illusion for reality is our only mistake.

Here's an example of an illusion. You are in the dark. The room is unlit. In the room there are objects. One of the objects you touch and it feels really strange and it seems to move as you touch it, and this makes you suddenly afraid that there's maybe a person in the room, and you scream. So you've fallen for the illusion, the impression, that there is something serious and frightening happening. But what happens when you switch the light on, suddenly you have MORE INFORMATION. You are now aware of more parts and pieces that you couldn't even see before, and were not aware of at all. Suddenly you realize that the thing you touched was in fact just a large house plant which you brushed up against, and it's completely safe and not scary at all. You feel relieved, right?

This is what it means to see through the illusion. It means, you have seen the truth, which has revealed to you, by shining a light of increased awareness, ALL of what is present, rather than only a narrow context or portion of what is present. When things are taken out of context they become a nightmare. Meaning becomes distorted. Reality becomes disjointed. We start to hallucinate that things might be happening that aren't really happening. This is how someone experiences insanity - losing touch with the bigger picture and becoming fixated on something whose relationship to real meaning has been distorted and blocked, such that you can no longer tell what anything really is and everything becomes frighteningly animated and motivated by bizarre nonsense forces that you don't understand.

The physical world, in the form that it appears, is an illusion. This does not mean that the physical world of form is being seen 'correctly' and fully, by seeing objects as they are. Or like, you become more aware of how all the objects contain beauty or contain God etc. That isn't seeing through the whole illusion. What you do not realize, because you have forgotten what it means to be NOT DELUDED AT ALL, is that the physical world of forms is, in its entirety, designed to block and distract away from the awareness of the presence of God. Even if you awaken to some 'stage' in which you see God in all things, if you are still seeing forms you are still deluded by the illusion.

"Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give." - ACIM - "T-22.III.4."

Also.. "T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

What you may not realize is, this entire physical universe is a holographic projection, designed SPECIFICALLY and INTENTIONALLY, to distort and block all trace of the nature of God. It is deliberately designed to obfuscate, distort, give an opposite appearance to, and completely make it appear, that God does not exist at all. The form that it takes is DELIBERATELY designed by the ego to show you something that looks nothing like God, has no properties of God, completely diffuses and blocks God's character, and makes you completely BLIND to God. The body's eyes then can only see this form, the appearance of the absence of God, and cannot see past it TO God. The entire physical universe is a DECEPTION!

The way this works is, every 'form', every object, presents to your awareness the idea that all things are different. It presents the idea that all objects are separate from each other, none of them share anything at all including the same space or time, none of them truly are equal or perfectly alike, and all of them are in conflict. Does that sound like a picture of God? No. That's intentional. Form, the form of error, was deliberately made make God not apparent, and to make it seem to your awareness that God does not exist at all anymore. That's the ego's wish. That's why it made this illusion.

So the 'illusion' is, that forms present an image to you which is not the truth, which is extremely deceptive, and which you fall for easily. For example, consider problems. The ego presents to you a specific problem which is usually limited to a handful of forms. It tells you that only these forms are a problem, so you need to solve it. You solve it, but this has no effect on the 50 billion other problems in the world. The ego's solution to problems only seems to apply to a tiny portion of the world, and has no transfer value to other problems.

The ego absolutely hates the idea of it being possible to solve ALL problems with ONE solution - that is the Holy Spirit's attitude. It does not want that at all. So it keeps you focussed on looking at objects as being very DIFFERENT to each other. A dog is not a cat. A car is not a house. An attack by a coworkers is not an attack by a neighbor. The ego makes it all APPEAR different and separate. THAT is how it deceives you. Because in truth, there is only ONE problem and ONLY solution resolves the entirety of it completely.

The abstraction needed to SEE and to RECOGNIZE that all forms are THE SAME THING, the same illusion, takes some significant forgiveness and awakening. Being able to look at all forms and recognize, every single one of the deceptions and temptations that every one of these forms is trying to SHOW me, to try to convince me that they are TRUE, is the SAME LIE, and they are all using the SAME STRATEGY. Ultimately, the entire world is the same ONE illusion, presented by the ONE ego, using ONE set of seemingly diverse and apparently highly fragmented deceptions. Each time that you fall for one of its deceptions and think, hey, yes, this illusion is real and this problem is separate from others, and this object is not one with other objects, and that person is separate from this person etc... that's you FAILING to see through the illusion. That's you FALLING FOR THE TRICK!

So yes, there is a way of seeing, which doesn't just overlook illusions but which is AWARE ONLY OF GOD. There is a way of recognizing everything that is false for what it is - false. There is a way of no longer believing a single thing that any appearance of object or form or separation or expression of fragmentation/multiplicity suggests to you in any way. There is a way of COMPLETELY IGNORING what the senses are shown via external signals. There is a way of absolutely not listening to a single shred of ego consciousness whatsoever. And there is a way of SEEING GOD DIRECTLY AND FULLY. And guess what? God does not look ANYTHING like how the physical world looks, and they have nothing in common at all.

In revelation, the entire world disappears. The entire illusion disappears. All physical objects disappear and are replaced with brilliant bright light and total awareness of love. That is all. This is reality. This is an experience of no illusions. Compare that to the PURPOSE of the world that the ego made, and recognize that forms looks like forms FOR A REASON, and separate objects appear to be separate FOR A REASON, and separate problems appear to be distinct and unique FOR A REASON, and all temptations and deceptions are designed to distract you and lead you into unconsciousness FOR A REASON.

The ego's use of the world is NOT that it is neutral. The ego's use of the world is to create a 'veil', an illusion, a huge TRICK, a distortion of consciousness, a BLOCK to awareness, over your awareness, so that you can no longer fully experience God or recognize His nature. God is the same everywhere. God is in all parts equally. All of God is in every part of God. When you are presented with objects which appears to only contain distinct separate parts in each part and there is no sign of any sharing or oneness whatsoever, in form, THAT is the illusion that there is no God. You have to learn NOT TO BELIEVE YOUR EYES!

This is what illusion means. You have to get out of the illusion to know that it is an illusion. You have to awaken to a greater reality in which you are aware of how God is everywhere, God shares everything, God is in everything fully, all of God is in all parts of existence, there is no separation, and all appearances are a LIE. Lies are not meant to be paid attention to, you are meant to discern that they are lies and not listen to them and not take what they present to you seriously or as though it is even real. Recognize the entire physical universe was made to SHUT OUT GOD, and not just in terms of you having a separate perception OF the world that has errors in it, but that the world ITSELF is an error and has taken on a multitude of forms to completely deceive your comprehension of 'what is'. We fall for this every single day and every time we believe in any kind of differences whatsoever.

There are no forms in God, not even forms that seem like they have God in them. NO FORMS. Complete formlessness. Forms are separation and separation is not real.

Every time we think one thing is not something else. Every time we think one object is not another object. Every time we experience separate problems and separate solutions. Every time we believe that we are separated from other people by bodies. Every time we don't recognize that there is only ONE problem, and only ONE solution is needed once and for all to solve them all, permanently. Every time we fall for this grand illusion and can't find a vantage point in awareness from which we can see 'the whole', the one, we fall for the ego's deception. Truly this world is not just a 'thing' and not just a 'place', it is a mechanism for reality distortion, consciousness obstruction, enforced unconsciousness, fragmentation of mind, and loss of life. This is what we have to see past and not believe what our senses are saying is out there.

"There is no world. This is the central thought the Course would attempt to teach." - ACIM - think about that deeply, the entire physical world is a magic trick aimed at stopping Creation, stopping awareness, and stopping God.

We are immortal Spirit. We are God's creation. We are infinite and unlimited by form. We are equal everywhere. And we are real. And we have no differences. And we are not separate objects. And we are not limited by space or time.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - "I am not an illusion but a reality." - ACIM