Innocence is goodness. If guilt is equated with evil, then innocence is equated with good. In order to forgive someone or something requires looking for the good in them - looking for their innocence. Seeing their harmlessness, their gentleness, their holiness and their perfection.

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

"The good" is also combined with love, and light, and power, and strength. It is the realm of miracles. In effect, evil is a breakdown, malfunction, failure, weakness and a loss. So its opposite, good, is all that can actually work, solves all problems, repairs all sickness and resurrects.

"The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all."

The Holy Spirit also represents the state of forgiveness and the miracle, as the power of God which performs miracles, as the healer as the resurrector. Therefore seeing the good in your brother for example also equates with seeing the Holy Spirit in him.

"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further."

Jesus encourages us to find the good in things. To "look on the bright side". To make of the world a forgiven world where all is seen as innocent and harmless and guiltless and sinless.

"Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated the GOOD efforts, and OVERLOOKED mistakes?" Indeed forgiveness puts you in touch with your true nature, brings you closer to God, aligns you with your soul, and reawakens the power of God in you. It is your natural divine function to create the good and to do only good.

Ultimately "the good" is God, and anything of God is good. The world, as an illusion, is not good, and can at best only reflect God's goodness. Moving away from evil takes you toward the good of God. And in God, everyone and everything is good.

"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."

""I am blessed as a Son of God."

Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God."

"And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him MORE than just a body, for the "good" is NEVER what the body seems to be."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good.""

"And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him." "ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions except in the ego's judgment."

"Man will ultimately look upon his own creations, and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself once looked upon what he had created, and knew that it WAS good."

"For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me."

"God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was."

"Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship."

"And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use."

"We look on everyone as brothers, and perceive all things as kindly and as good."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist."

"What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it?"

"But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites, and CANNOT meaningfully join in ANY way."

"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good." "Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected."

"There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good."

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."

"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer.""

"He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain."

"The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it. Coming from God, He uses EVERYTHING for good, but does not BELIEVE in what is not true."

"Out of Love he was created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father."

"You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do."

Anything to do with the body, and what's inside the body, is thought to be "mine only", and not yours. We describe ourselves in terms of what is exclusive to ourselves. As if to say, I have my own this, and that, my own attributes, stuff that belongs solely to me and is not shared with you.

My body, my mind, my face, my personality, my feelings, my thoughts, my life, my power, my abilities, mine mine mine. This is how our egos think of ourselves. But this is completely unnatural and not at all how God set things up.

Believing you are separate from God and others, you exclude them from yourself and see yourself as not sharing anything. The body becomes a device for separation, and our egos tell us we are cut off and cannot share with anyone. Like we're alone on an island, and afraid because we depend on our own (lack of) power.

But what we really are is a part of God himself. Like, you are cogs in his machinery. God is everything, so if we say we are separate from God, we're saying we do not have everything. And that leaves us with nothing left. That means if we are without God, we are nothing. A lack of God is a lack of life, which is death.

God created us not by separating us off and setting us apart to be nothing like him or each other. Not did he disconnect himself from us when he extended our being. In the creation of our souls he literally put himself into us, so that his own attributes would be shared with us. He went into us and stayed there BEING our attributes.

God cannot actually create anything outside of or separate from himself, just as ideas cannot leave the mind. That's because he's already infinite and everywhere. But he can share himself internally and include more within what already exists. So he extends and shares what he already has.

This means anything you have has to be inherited from God, but also must still belong to God. You can share it, but you cannot have it exclusively. You cannot steal it away from God and call it "only mine." But so long as you share it with him and all his creations, you can have it.

So then it's not like you have your own anything. It's more like, God loans you his stuff. He himself goes into you and his own strength is what you call the strength in you. And his mind is shared with you and thus your mind is really his mind in you. And his thoughts and his will are shared with you. His love and his happiness and his peace are in you, as yourself, as his.

As the course tells us, we are either host to God or hostage to the ego. Being a host means you make room within to accommodate the presence of someone else, and to share your stuff with them. By hosting God, it's like you are literally having God come into you and dwell within you. You then share everything with him, not just in a separate compromising way, but he actually BE's your stuff.

So now there's God in you being mind and spirit, and what seems to be your mind and spirit is actually one with his and is his. You don't actually have anything that is just yours. There's his stuff, and he shares it with you so that it is yours as well. But it's not yours alone.

Nothing belongs to you alone. Absolutely everything is shared. That's why atonement is a lesson in sharing - because we forgot how to share and to be shared - ego/separation is an idea of selfishness and exclusivity.

This is a whole different way of describing yourself and your identity and what you are. Instead of saying "I am this and that", it's more like "God in me is being my this and that." Any happiness in me is actually God being happy in me and sharing his happiness with me. Any love in me is really God's love and God sharing his love with me so that I also have it.

In heaven it's kind of like a giant banquet buffet, where everyone can have access to everything simultaneously, everyone shares everything, everything is available to everyone and no-one can hog or hoard anything. Every part of you is part of God. Every attribute of your own is an attribute of God. You are immortal and divine, because you are part of HIS immortality and divinity.

So the whole aim is to get your sense of who and what you are away from this exclusive separate idea of "only I am this and that", defining yourself in terms of what belongs only to you. When you do that you are "hostage to the ego". We need to be moving toward an attitude of "God in me is this and that and I share his this and that." We need to be host to God again, in us and through us.

God's is the mind with which I think. God is the light in which I see. God is the love with which I forgive. God is the peace in which I am peaceful. Love created me loving. You have nothing OTHER THAN what God himself is BEING in you.

This is why you have inherited everything from God, and therefore everything real is given you. It is also why you are still as God created you - because what you are is an extension of his own self. You can't be anything separate from God. Whatever you are, is a part of his own, because you are ONE.

You thus actually have a symbiotic relationship with God in which you depend on God for your entire existence. It's not just about you trusting God like a separate person, but you actually getting your very existence, life, mind, joy etc from God himself. You depend on him to BE your life, your happiness, your love, your will etc. You need him to be these things FOR you.

Your eternal life is sustained BY him. Your innocence is guaranteed BY him. You have all power in heaven and earth because he shares HIS power with you, without which you have no power.

We need to get our heads out of this definition of self in terms of what I am exclusively, what is only mine, what belongs to me alone, what stuff I can say about my separate self that isn't shared with God. We need to have ONLY that which comes from God, and we need to deny anything that is not of him being a part of ourselves.

And we need to realize that if we think that we have personal exclusive attributes, we are being separate from God. And if we are separate from God, everything that is really a part of us and worth having is actually IN God and is a part of himself. So if we want it, we have to stop being separate from God and go be ONE with him and use HIS stuff, BE his extension.

This entails not only acknowledging that God is our creator, which undoes the authority problem, and that we are his creation and co-creator, bur it also entails realizing that getting with God is the ONLY solution possible to ALL your problems.

There is really only one problem which is a sense of being separate from God. By being separate from God you have nothing and are nothing. You can't exist without him. So the ONLY solution to the ONLY problem is to rejoin with God. That is the ONLY thing you can do to make a difference. Either you are being separate from God, which produces all problems and suffering and death, OR you are one with God and share HIS eternal life.

One problem, one solution. Staying separate from God and trying to utilize your special separate exclusive lack of power to solve problems and heal the world will not work. The problem is separation. ONLY undoing the separation will help. The ONLY way to do that is to resurrect and become whole again, to become one with God again, which means being HOST to God again - letting God into you to take up residence within again.

It's kind of like being a medium for God, a channel through which God expresses. Only in this way can you share his love and power and use his power to work miracles. And only his power is capable of doing this. Without his power you have no power to do anything. But with his power there is nothing your SHARED holiness cannot do.

I've been through a lot of crap in which I've had to deal with medical issues for my wife. She's been close to death's door a couple of times. I had to literally decide whether to continue her life or not, and she's been on life-support twice.

But what I personally went through was a confrontation with the idea of death and its inevitability, and an intense ego challenge as to whether to believe it or not. I had to decide whether to side against death and seek for life. To decide whether there was a real alternative and possibility. It wasn't about her, it was about whether I believed that death is the only option or not.

This awakened in me a reversal, a 180-degree turn, pointing away from the direction of death towards eternal life. It awakened a much greater awareness of the Holy Spirit, who has the goal of eternal life. And it made me ever more cognizant of our immortal nature as given by God.

At first it seemed my challenge was to just deal with life-threatening sickness and to go through the stress of it all. Trying to make it go away and stop it like most people would. But what later evolved was a questioning of sickness itself. Having to decide whether to believe in sickness and death or not. Everyone was buying into death and giving me messages of hopelessness and I had to decide whether to believe it.

If I were to continue believing death was inevitable and unavoidable I would have no remaining faith in life. But if I were to question whether death is the only option, it would open me up to entertaining the idea that I should refuse death and turn away from it. I would have to deny and refuse to accept the naysayers and the doubters and those who expertly believed in death's inevitability.

It wasn't really that my wife was going through life-support scenarios and having to play out all the possible "what could be the worst thing to happen" in my mind. It was more that this was actually a spiritual lesson in which I had to make a firm commitment. Was I going to seek for her resurrection or not? Did I want eternal life or not? Did I support miracles or not? Was I really going to get real and LIVE the teaching and be a miracle worker or was I just going to lay down and let death have its day?

When the Holy Spirit told me in the midsts of this drama, "resurrect her", it was immediately clear what the purpose of all this was. When I sought Jesus's counsel and he told me in no uncertain terms that I must not terminate her life, I knew I was being steered towards miracles. And I had to somehow find the strength and determination to find another way.

Instead of therefore simply "going through" another nightmarish experience, or regarding it as pointless, or seeing it as something to be avoided at all costs, what was really playing out was a spiritual lesson in which I had to decide whether to side with life or death. And by that I don't just mean normal life in a temporary body but eternal immortal life. Was I going to believe in a miraculous resurrection that flies in the fact of everything everyone is telling me, or was I going to just fall into a hole and let death happen.

Well. As it turned out I did decide to side with life, and this has since been catapulting me into far greater vigilance and clarity. I see now that instead of just going through a hellish experience that I would try to avoid, it instead became a huge turning point. I had to bring into question whether death could happen, what life would be like, and even whether she was even really sick at all. Was I going to allow her to remain sick or was I going to challenge even her on her own sickness? Was I going to insist that she not be sick?

This is where resurrection entered my mind as a real alternative and as a possibility. And this is where I made a giant leap forward. I now recognize that I must in fact NOT BELIEVE IN SICKNESS AT ALL. I have had to come to realize that even my wife's sicknesses are fake. I've had to realize that she in her mind is deceiving herself and "playing a game of death". I've had to come to recognize HER immortal self which cannot BE sick, and I've had to start siding with her immortality OVER her mortality.

This has in fact given me tremendous clarity now because, the more I dwell on immortality the more clear it becomes that anything ELSE is not true. How can a person be sick if they are immortal? How can appearances of suffering exist if they are IMPOSSIBLE in God? How can a person's signs of death be true if God created that person to live forever? I am now holding this up in my mind and comparing and reminding myself and her, that she cannot BE sick, the sickness is a lie, and SHE IS NOT SICK. I was not able to so fully commit to this or be convinced by it before this confrontation with death.

How else am I to truly be in support of life, as God defines it, than to question all sickness and death? I've even had to question it in those closest to me. I've had to decide to side with the real life in the soul within each person, on their behalf, and for them, even if they don't believe in it, and even if they are actively trying to work against it. I can be of NO HELP at all unless I can stand up for God's truth, and I can have NO HOPE at all unless there is a REAL possibility of an alternative to death. There is an increasing POWER in me now which is pushing death and sickness aside.

My whole focus is now shifting to resurrection, to life, to support, to healing, to the assertion of life, the cancelling of sickness and death, the withdrawal of power and attention from sickness, the clarifying that people are not even bodies, the utter refusal to accept that someone can even BE sick, and the clear recognition that all sickness is a lie.

Even if this entails recognizing that a loved one is lying, and even if it entails not believing my own eyes, and even if it means having to not be tempted by appearances of death because part of me believed sickness and death WERE possible, and therefore I was torn and confused. I was not clear on whether I sided with life or death and was in the muddy territory of wavering back and forth. Not firmly committed to life or its opposite.

For me now it's not merely a matter of trying to struggle through life and avoid sicknesses and try to stave off death as long as possible. I am now actively MOVING TOWARD ETERNAL LIFE. Moving in the opposite direction to the ego's goal of death. Focusing on and strengthening the idea of immortality, unchangeability, invulnerability and permanence. Attuning to the immortal soul within myself, and in others. Looking for the life and the truth and the light. Seeing miracles in light and as light.

I am now heavily flying in the face of the entire world, going against everything everyone says and believes, rejecting the "nature" of this world's nature, against the grain, being unlike the world and unlike the body, refusing to accept death and refusing to allow others to remain in self deceptive states of suffering. I am having to be UNPOPULAR in order to do this and to NOT side with the mass opinions of others. I will now assert only the life-affirming and HEALING attitude of resurrection and miracles. The strength of siding with God and with the Holy Spirit, and the utter refusal to fall into traps of temptation.

Only the immortal is real. Only the unchangeable is real. Only the invulnerable is real. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real can be attacked or made sick. Nothing real can die. This is the only truth. There is ONLY LIFE, there is no death. Death is the world's biggest lie and I will no longer lie to myself or to others that mortality is natural or acceptable. It is the FIRM CONVICTION that there is only life, that raises the dead, and I WILL see miracles.

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."

Christianity makes sense. It makes logical sense. The structure of its metaphysics is consistent, albeit mistaken. But here's a secret... everyone who has an ego believes the Christian doctrine, because it's really a doctrine base on the ego's thought system and the ego made it.

For example, it depends on the idea that this world is real, that you do real things in this world, and that if you do the "wrong" real things then that's a sin.

This basis alone is enough for all of the rest of it to spring forth consistently.

For example, if this world is real and sin is real, then you will start trying to identify what is a sin and what isn't. You'll separate out "good and bad". This immediately produces the notion of good and evil. Some things are considered not sins so they are good, and other things are considered sins so they are evil.

Just the mere of act of existing in a dualistic right/wrong world where real stuff happens and some of is it not right, automatically implies that evil exists. Therefore the doctrine now becomes that you should choose only the good stuff and reject the bad stuff.

This actually isn't really just a Christian perspective. It's really the belief of the EGO, and anyone who has a persona and shadow is participating in the battle of good vs evil. If you believe that some aspects of this world are good and some are not, or that some behaviors are good and some are not, you are believing in a separation between good and evil. It means the good stuff is being spiritualized, is being made special, is given extra value, and is seen as acceptable. The bad stuff is seen as unspiritual, valueless, and unacceptable.

So it's not just Christianity that believes in this dynamic. Anyone with an ego believes in this dynamic, even members of other religions if they believe this world is real and that some of the things in it are more spiritual than others.

This goes on to imply that in order to be spiritual, you must only do the good acceptable things, you must keep your behavior in-line, and you must not "sin". If you do sinful things, you will be guilty of sin and be justified in being punished. It would then only seem "right" to punish the sin and condemn the sinner.

This leads to the idea of God, or the interpretation of God, as someone who judges whether you've been sinful or not, and how he then decides based on that whether you are worthy of heaven/love, or whether you need to be punished in hell. So automatically it creates the belief in heaven and hell as the extremes of sin vs not sin.

Anyone who believes that sins are real, Christian or otherwise, actually does believe in heaven vs hell, and good vs evil. They must, because believing in real sin automatically implies these things. Its a package deal.

So if now God is only going to approve of you if you are "good" and do not do the things which are considered sins, and if God's disapproval is going to land you in hell and punishment, it gives you a pretty good motivation to be "good". So then you focus on that, believing that the more good you become the less evil you become. Makes sense right?

This also then implies that if you DO sin, then you need some kind of special pardon if you're going to be seen as acceptable. Therefore you will need to be forgiven by God or Jesus, and if they decide not to forgive you but to condemn you, then you're on your way to hell. This produces such a huge amount of fear relating to whether you are going to be acceptable or not, whether you can be forgiven, and even the possibility of going to a "real hell" is already a nightmare.

To believe that sin is real automatically leads to believing that hell is real. If sin is evil then obviously sinning produces evil and, you know, there's a "place" where evil then seems to exist, and we call that hell. This belief in real sin produces therefore the belief in "real hell", and just believing that hell is real, alone, is enough to frighten the pants off you. It is not so much that the church itself attempts to use this idea to scare you into conformity and control, although that might've happened to some degree.

The ego doesn't need the church to accomplish this. Anyone who believes sin is real will automatically haunt themselves with this belief that a "real evil" could not only attack and threaten and tempt them, but that they themselves could therefore be vulnerable or susceptible to becoming part of that evil, and wind up in hell, suffering and being damned from love forever. Nasty business. All it takes is an ego.

Also then if God is in a position of having to judge between sinners and the innocent, that now turns God into a judger and and a conditional lover. He will only love IF you behave yourself, and if you don't, He will be the one to send you to hell. The amount of fear produced by reacting to this notion, alone, is horrifying, not to mention that it implies that God is fickle and incapable of unconditional love, and so cannot be trusted.

The idea that you might not be accepted or loved, is deeply upsetting. IF God were like this, which he would HAVE to be if sin and evil are real, you're going to be clinging to the edge of your seat until "judgement day" hoping that you've got some chance in hell of not being sent into the pit.

Again this is not just a Christian viewpoint, to be fair, it is the viewpoint that underlies EVERYONE who has an ego. Almost everyone on the planet has bought into this entire thought system as a complete package. Believe in even just one PART of it and you must automatically believe in the rest of it, because it all ties together perfectly logically and leads to all of the other implications.

If you are a A Course in Miracles student, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist or whatever, or an Atheist, if you believe the physical world is real and that it contains good and bad, YOU DO BELIEVE IN HELL, SIN, A JUDGEMENTAL GOD, SACRIFICE, THREAT OF DAMNATION, SUFFERING AND DEATH. If you think you don't, and you have an ego, you're in denial.

In order for you NOT to believe any of this thought system, or any of the parts of it, there MUST be a decision on your part not to believe at least one PART of it. For example, if you were to believe that sin is not real, this AUTOMATICALLY IMPLIES that the entire rest of the ego thought system, the entire rest of "christianity", is false.

If sin is not real, there is no good and bad or right and wrong, things appearing to happen are just illusions, God is unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental, there is no real evil, there in no hell, and you are One with God in Heaven forever. And that's all an automatic logical conclusion that is part of the package deal you get when you believe that sin is not real.

You could also say, I do not believe the world is real. That too will put a pin in the entire ego thought system based on good vs evil, and will completely undermine every part of it. If the world is not real and God did not create it then there is also no real evil and no sin or death and no hell to speak of, and nothing that seems to happen here can prove that you are sinful or guilty, therefore you are already eternally forgiven.

So it's really down to the thought system, and its logical consistency. The ego's thought system is responsible for creating Christianity, it is responsible for creating all political parties, it is responsible for creating all wars and conflicts, it is responsible for creating all belief in sin and evil and hell, it is responsible for all suffering, all sickness, and all death, regardless of what form the belief system seems to take or how it's structured or what side you're on.

What A Course in Miracles is trying to teach is that the entire ego thought system and ALL of its contents, IS NOT TRUE. And that means, since truth=reality, it is not REAL. This doesn't throw Jesus Christ out the window, in fact, because Jesus wrote ACIM and He is teaching us through it the "correction" of not only Christianity's interpretation of reality, but also the entire ego's, which includes far more. It's trying to show us the way out, the truth and the light, and the correct interpretation of what is happening here.

It's teaching us that the world is not real, sin is not real, sickness is not real, death is not real, it's all an ego illusion. God is unconditionally loving, forgiveness is universal and permanent, and only love is real.

God's will is already done.

There is no separation between cause and effect. He has willed what you are, and you share His will with Him. You can therefore will to extend the Kingdom of God and to Create in His likeness.

However, the idea of a separate will is an ego idea. It's really the attempt to STOP the will of God, which means to not have a will at all. It is wishful thinking, because it can't be possible to truly have a separate will.

If you will with God, you will have Life. If you will against God, to have a different will, you will have death. Death is the absence of real will.

Also when you will against God, which is really a withdrawal from willingness, a refusal to will, you will go into the ego split mind in which there will appear to be "your will" and an external "alien will". You'll also believe the body has its own will along with everyone else. Multiple split wills.

Once cause and effect are separated out it's going to appear that everything external has its own will, and that it is willing against you, because you no longer see the connection between cause and effect. So you can't have your "own" will without simultaneously creating an "alien will" that is in opposition to your own. Therefore your separate will is the persona, and the alien will appears to be the shadow. And then everything "you" will separately will be thwarted by the shadow, and you'll be at war - a battle of wills.

As the Course says, there is a metaphysical curriculum of awakening with fundamental truths you need to come to. You cannot change that curriculum because it's the same for everyone (even outside of ACIM), but you can seem to delay learning the truth (the time you take it). You do that by seemingly having your own ego will which goes off busying itself and spinning its wheels and avoiding and denying, which you will then think is free will.

You are free to choose because God's love is not forceful and won't stop you from trying to be separate, but when you are without God's will you will have barely any will at all. That's why you can't perform miracles, which are supposed to be happening all the time. Without God's will miracles are impossible, and Life is impossible.

You will think you have a "life", and that it's your own life, which you control, or have autonomy over, with an authority separate from God, but that's an ego claim. Its a delusion, because in truth your will and God's will are shared, and will only exists when there IS a sharing of real will (God's Will). Will has to be extended, and the ego's will does not extend, it just projects.

Also the ego does not really ever will that you wake up or accept truth or be open to sharing with God or to receive a "cure" that undoes the ego.. It "wills" that you be dead, which is a giving up of the "will" to live. All attempts to have a will separate from God are attempts to relinquish free will and be a victim - the victim who appears to have no will power to actually take action or prevent death. And then the death of the body-identified person is allegedly the death of God's will. The end of Eternal Life.

In a similar vein to that you think you think, but you really only share the thoughts of the thought system you are aligned with, you "think you will", or wish you will, according to the thought system you belong to. Either you are willing "with" the ego, or you are willing with God. And the ego's "will" will be against God's will, because it's just a device for denial. Then whatever the ego wills, which is your death, will become what you're actually choosing and will experience. If you don't want that, you have to align with God's will and accept eternal life. You don't have any other options outside of which of the two thought systems you share in.

You can be of service to God, or of service to the ego. There is no other "separate" will that you have of your 'own' independent of both. Either you're in the "Life Will" or in the "Death Wish".

God's will not my will be done.

Let's redefine forgiveness, to be less about me fixing up what I'm projecting or trying to fix my own suffering, and more to do with whether I am GIVING love or not. Let's think of it not JUST as a going-within, a taking back of projections, a taking of responsibility, and a claiming of atonement for ourselves, and recognize it ALSO entails a GIVING outward, an expression of love, a healing force, and a resurrection of OTHERS.

Therefore it is actually a "forgiveness process" to GIVE LIFE to others, to not only see them correctly, but to RESTORE them to wholeness by giving them love. By working a miracle for them and providing a SERVICE. That is forgiveness, not just sitting on a fence passively looking at someone with a smile, or trying to solely find peace for yourself. That is selfish.

Atonement is about sharing, in which giving and receiving are one, and you can't have one without the other. To receive but not give is not atonement. To bring darkness to the light but not bring light to the darkness is not atonement. You cannot exclusively receive atonement UNLESS you are willing to GIVE it. It HAS to be given otherwise you cannot receive it.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

To forgive is to HEAL, both yourself AND the other. Both the giver AND the receiver benefit. It is not about you exclusively doing this for yourself, it is much more to do with SHARING and including. Restoring your brother to health SO THAT you can also be restored to health. Giving love SO THAT you can receive love. You cannot have anything unless you give it. And the resurrection of your brother is YOUR salvation.

Forgiveness is not about being selfish, or trying only to resolve your own issues, or attempting to find peace just for yourself. You cannot have peace in isolation. You cannot be happy while you ee yourself as separate from others.

You cannot experience love if the love is not going OUT. One part of our work is to uncover our blocks to the light within, SO THAT the light can SHINE outward and be given to others. You are not a lightbulb in a box, you are meant to be seen and received. You are a GIFT to others, and your healing is one with theirs. You are a gift to your brother that God has given to be shared.

If you exclude your brother from the healing, if you do not give them love, if you do not see THEIR salvation as part of your own, then you are not being forgiving. Forgiveness is not one-sided or exclusive or about just you.

It's not a question of "how do I forgive", it's about "how do I forgive FOR US." It's about you giving to the whole sonship, and participating in the great crusade to resurrect EVERYONE. How can YOU find peace if others are not at peace? How can YOU be healed without the healing of your brothers?

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."

"So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

It makes sense that if you keep seeing people as being able to affect you, as being the cause of your problems, as being to blame, as being an enemy, or having power over you, you will simply have to experience fear. Fear will be present in the mind because the mind is now split and has diminished its perception of itself.

Now that you are 'suppressed', you will sense that you have much less power, and that this power has been displaced outward to other people who now have power over you. You will see enemies all over the place and will not feel safe, but rather will be afraid all the time.

Fear isn't just a reaction. Fear is a state of mind in which you are perceiving enemies. Fear is what it is like when the mind is experiencing itself being at war with itself, where its inner conflict is overlaid on top of the world, filtering out the beauty and peace and causing you to only see part of what's there, which then looks harrowing and insane and a threat.

Fear is a reversal of cause and effect, and fear is also the mechanism of perceptual distortion that forces you to see enemies where there are none.

You'll also find that once you're in a victim consciousness like this, you will feel afraid all the time and not even imagine that it's possible to be less afraid. And more importantly, you won't realize that you feel afraid because of some attitude you have, OR that it's really got anything to do with how other people are behaving.

You will think your fear is just your separate problem, and that other people probably aren't this afraid and there's something wrong with just you. You'll notice everyone else seems to be more confident and you can't figure out why you're the scared one.

You imagine ways you might stand up to the intensity and terror of everyone you meet, by bolstering yourself up or talking yourself into being tougher, but it doesn't work. You still feel insecure, until you realize what part you play in doing this to yourself.

Something marvelous happens when you start to change your perception. What you need to do is to take back your power, by realizing how your way of perceiving is attacking you. You have to realize that people look like enemies to you because of how much you are attacking yourself and them. And you have to see in your mind the processes that go into trying to separate you from yourself.

You can't feel strong and safe when you're perceiving yourself in a split way, which means there is a strong contrast between what applies to you and what applies to others. So long as you imagine that other people have taken something away from you, that they are the cause of you feeling afraid, that they are doing this to you, you are going to experience fear. But you have to realize, that's just how YOU are choosing to perceive. It's got nothing to do with other people, and you're not really seeing them correctly.

When your mind is split, you will project your shadow mind onto other people and see it in them, and will be threatened by it. This makes other people seem like an enemy, like they are powerful and dark and evil and scary. They're not. But you will see this in them because it's in your mind like a filter. And within your mind, that dark evil stuff is at war with the part of you that you think is you - the positive-seeking goodie-goodie self that people pleases and wants to be adored. Both of these are within your own mind, having a war between them, and that's entirely down to the fact your perception is broken.

That also tells you that if you would heal the separation between these two parts of yourself, undoing all of that attack content, you would not see people AS threatening because you would not have this negativity in your perception, and therefore would not HAVE grounds for feeling afraid.

This healing will lead to a feeling of continually increasing strength and empowerment. It will make you literally less afraid. You will marvel at how you feel stronger, brighter, more energetic, more expressive. You will be surprised at how less anxious you are around others. You will feel more aware and awake and will be happier more often. And you'll be quite surprised at how you don't feel terrorized like you used to. Because you've stopped doing it to yourself.

And as such the forgiven world starts to rise up before your perception instead of a world of hate and vengeance. As you forgive yourself, the world will appear to be a happier place. It will seem like it doesn't contain the threats and guilts that it once did. And it will be like unveiling a beautiful world that was right in front of your face all along but you didn't see it because it was all covered up with your blocks to awareness.

And eventually too this will mean, you will come to realize that God is right here in front of you and with you and inside you, and that you can experience Him. For real! And how joyful that will be.

Are you ready to join the Great Crusade that Jesus speaks of in A Course in Miracles? I know that I feel I am gearing up to this.

Jesus has said to me, "help". He has said, "help others to wake up." When I've been distracted with other worldly pursuits that I think are 'why I am here', Jesus corrects me, "that's not why you came here." I also know... Jesus has a plan for the atonement, and he is in charge. Also the atonement means the complete and total correction of the entire Sonship, not just for you.

We are also meant to being in alignment with and extending of God, of service to everyone else. We can't be of service when we are occupied with our own agenda, which means... what are you going to do when all your other ego agendas and distractions are undone?

If there is a vocation, a 'career', that is possibly meaningful and truly helpful, it would be to extend miracles to our brothers and to help them to awaken. Isn't this the natural result of becoming healed yourself? It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. It is the privilege of the awakened to awaken.

Here are some pertinent ACIM quotes:

"Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it. The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded." (OrEd.Tx.1.106)

"As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must ..." must "... join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is Listen, learn and do: Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it." (OrEd.Tx.1.31)

"[The spiritual eye] pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." (OrEd.Tx.2.49)

"Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world." (OrEd.WkBk.SpTp241.7)

"[The world] is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result, not a cause." (OrEd.Tx.21.1)

"This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly." (OrEd.Tx.18.70)

"To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill a part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function and fulfills the part assigned to him to make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules." (OrEd.Tx.25.46)

"Teaching is done in many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by example." (OrEd.Tx.5.53)

--- Now I know there is a lot of controversy on this, saving the world and all that (which means saving everyone FROM the world). You CAN interpret all these quotes in quite a.... metaphorical way... that they all mean something else, or apply only in the mind or whatever. Go ahead with that if you want to.

For me, I'm realizing more and more that Jesus IS calling us to participate in an OUTWARD EXPRESSION of love, which extends to our brother not just in the form of us looking on from afar, but of ACTIVELY helping others to return to God.

After all, if we are to be LOVING, then our love should encourage others to awaken, it should liberate others from suffering, it should show the way, it should enlighten, it should bring truth, and it should help us to find our way back to God.

This is what the crusade is all about. We are all part of the Sonship and we are all in need of this love. Isn't it time to demonstrate love and truth?

The ego's prayer: Please help God because this situation is totally what I do not want. I am not grateful for it at all, it totally sucks, save me, for me. Pleeeeeease.

Holy prayer: Thank you God for your love and for extending your love through me, thank you for restoring peace and love and happiness in my life and everyone's life, and thank you so much for loving us and encouraging us. I receive and extend your love to everyone in this situation, thank you so much.

See the difference? Please is the opposite of thank you.

The ego's prayer has NO EFFECT. It is completely devoid of power. It keeps you separate from God. It identifies you as very distant from the solution. And it renders you as 'really victimized'. You are going before God and saying, hi God, I am a great big victim, I am asking you to save me but I want to stay in misery. No thanks to you.

Holy prayers are POWERFUL because you are joining with God in oneness, aligning with His power, opening up to extending HIS love, and are willing to not only share His love but to share in the certainty and knowing that all is well, and therefore all is or will be healed. It is a statement of truth compared to the ego's statement of how everything sucks.

We like praying with the ego. It doesn't work. We need to learnt to pray with God. It is far more effective.

There is a reason why you are immortal, by which I mean, completely invulnerable.

You have to understand what threat is, what danger is, what causes fear, and who is doing the attacking.

Believing that other people are capable of causing you to be hurt, is actually a mistaken perception and is not true.

It is actually you who attacks yourself, every time. Only you are capable of introducing 'separation' into your own mind, which is the root cause of all attack, all war, all sickness, all death.

Without that separation in your mind, that 'split', you literally return to wholeness, divine health, invulnerability and complete immortality.

And this is because the 'secret' is, that all forms of attack are self-attack, and all forms of suffering are self-induced. And it is actually impossible to suffer as a result of a cause outside of you, without you playing along and *pretending* that there can be harm.

The ultimate truth then is simply.... that in God's reality, where we live, there is ONLY immortality, there is ONLY invulnerability, and it's not even POSSIBLE to actually be hurt by something separate.

So while people may think, yeah, immortality is a stupid idea that is impossible and everyone dies.... well.... carry on choosing to die until you get it. Immortality is NATURAL. Mortality is unnatural.