One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.
This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.
You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.
This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.
"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.
Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.
"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."
"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."
"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."
It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.
The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.
This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".
As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.
You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.
Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.
What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.
This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.
IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."
"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."
See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.
The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.
This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.
"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."
"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."
The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.
This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.
So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.
"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."
The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.
Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.
"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."
What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.
Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.
Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.
It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.
"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."
"The sonship is your soul."
"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."
"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."
"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.
After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.
The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.
If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.
Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.
The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.
Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.
That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.
"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."
"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"
"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."
"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."
"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."
"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."
"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."
"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."
In ACIM Jesus sometimes says things which SOUND contradictory, but they are not. He will claim one thing, then claim another, sometimes in the same sentence. And it will sound like the two things are totally opposite. So then you'll tend to conclude only one of the two statements can be true. But this is a mistake.
Here are some examples of logically cryptic-sounding self-contradictory statements:
"It should be noted that God HAS begotten only ONE Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."
"I and my Father are one."
"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."
"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son."
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."
"God has but one Son, knowing them all as one."
The reason they sound contradictory is because they simultaneously take two logically opposing positions. For example he tells us God has one son, but in the next breath tells us God created many sons. Or he tells us there's "I" and "my father" and then says they are "one". Then he's talking about brothers, suggesting more than one, but is talking about how they are seemingly one thing. Or how God created "everyone" within heaven, but then refers to them as a seemingly singular "one son". Even to suggest that God has one son, but that he knows "them all" as one.
So then you find yourself asking, how can it be possible that God is having one son AND that God is knowing "them all" as one? And USUALLY what almost everyone does, who thinks the way most people think, is to SIDE WITH one or the other of the statements, and DISMISS the other. Because that "seems to make sense". Because if you can turn a blind eye to the contradiction, you seem to "solve" the problem. But this is a TOTAL FAIL. Here's why.
The ego thought system is based on separation. The separation always suggests that something is true of one thing which is NOT true of another. It is the opposite of an equality-based system. It reasons that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone. That something is either true of this OR that, but not both. The whole ego approach is to differentiate and make un-equal everything it refers to. This results in ME VS YOU, ie war.
Examples of this are e.g. "I am innocent, you are guilty". "I parked in the first parking space, not the second". "I bought the red one, not the blue one". "Its either male or female". "You can go north or south". "I took the left door, not the right door." "I am Paul, not Jim" etc.
The whole PHYSICAL world, and all of space and time, was MADE based on this thought process or "way of reasoning". In fact you can say the physical world IS the ego thought SYSTEM. And so when you THINK this way, in terms of "EITHER THIS OR THAT, BUT NOT BOTH", it maps very very well to the physical world. It doesn't seem to produce contradictions either.
I'm either in America or in England but not in two places at once. I can go north or south, but not both. I am old or young, but not both. I can have the salad for supper or the beef steak but not both. I can buy the house or the condo but not both. etc. I can go left or right but not both. etc
The trouble is, God's Kingdom is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to this way of thinking, being opposite to THIS WORLD.
"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."
The whole system is completely unlike it. And what's POSSIBLE in God's system is IMPOSSIBLE in the ego's system. And what makes SENSE in God's system appears to be utter NONSENSE in the ego's reasoning.
And the thing is, pretty much everyone in this world, whether you're into ACIM or not, and even if you are, USES the ego's reasoning system to draw conclusions.
That's fine, if you're talking about the physical world. But the instant you start talking about God's Kingdom, his laws, his nature, his creations, you are now in TOTALLY inappropriate territory for that way of thinking. That way of thinking is NOT how God thinks, so it WILL NOT map correctly to God's Kingdom or draw correct conclusions about it. And HIS world is not broken up into pieces of "either this or that."
The key difference is that God's Kingdom and system of thought, logic and reason, are based on INCLUSION AND SHARING. Whereas the ego's system is based on EXCLUSION and SEPARATION. This can be simplified to two simple equations or formulations:
God: BOTH THIS AND THAT ARE EQUALLY TRUE.
Ego: EITHER THIS IS TRUE OR THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT BOTH.
You can also see that since God's Kingdom is reality, and the ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE of God, the ego is a logical "operation" of NOT GOD, or the negation of God. And if eternity is "always", the ego's opposite is NEVER. ie "always never."
Which is why its whole system is based on this notion of "This is true, but that is not". ie EITHER this is true, OR it's false, but not both. Or this applies to ME OR YOU, but not both at once. There is no simultaneous, at-once, sharing, or inclusiveness, in the ego world. And that limits its thought process.
In God's thought system, God shares all of himself with his creations. This SHARING, fundamental to his nature, means that his creations HAVE everything God has. Without limit. Without compromise. Without one person having something and having to wait until the other is done with it. They SHARE it, like simultaneous access. And they OVERLAP each other, which is impossible in the physical world without causing an atomic explosion.
Similarly, the Golden Rule which describes God's thought system, applies here just the same. What is true of one brother, is true of another brother. What is true of one of God's creations, is true of ALL creations. Every thing God creates is EQUAL in its nature and its wholeness and its perfection and its LIKENESS to God.
So now you can say something which sounds bizarre like, if what is true of ME is true of YOU, then it is true of BOTH of us. It is true of ME *AND* YOU. Which means if it is true that I am me, it must also be true that YOU ARE ME ALSO. And now there are two things, me and you, which are ALSO simultaneously BOTH one thing, while still being two things.
THAT is the "oneness" that is taking place in reality. And it's this oneness of sharing that many do not understand because it DEFIES exclusive thinking. I am INCLUDED in my brother, I am INCLUDED In God, and my creations are INCLUDED in me.
In God's system, a whole bunch of seemingly bizarre things are possible and true. For example Jesus talks about how when you GIVE in reality, you SHARE it, and now YOU have it AND the other has it. Because now both of you share the same thing. And instead of having to LOSE the thing, you now allow another to GAIN it while you RETAIN it. Which means it has INCREASED. This defies the ego's reasoning.
"Ideas are increased by sharing."
It would be silly to suggest that when God creates, he sacrifices himself and there is nothing of himself left, given that he GAVE ALL of himself to his creation. But that's what the ego would conclude. The ego would also conclude that if YOU have everything, NO ONE else can have ANYTHING, because there is nothing left to have that is not already yours.
Ego produces a FINITE system because it does not want to share anything and so sees everything as LIMITED in its amount. This also leads to conditional love, like love is a scarce commodity to be traded. The ego would say if you have all of God, no-one else can have any of God, because the ego is based on SELFISHNESS, which arises naturally as part of a system of exclusion. As Jesus confirms:
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
In the ego system, when you give something, you lose it, the other gains it, you sacrifice, and there is no increase. If I have a pizza and I want to "share" it with you, I have to SACRIFICE AND LOSE half the pizza. This is compromise, not sharing. We both have less than wholeness. But in heaven, its the total opposite. I can have the whole pizza, you can have the whole pizza, because we share it. We OVERLAP. We merge together and are one in our having of the pizza. And now we BOTH have THE WHOLE.
Similarly when you think about sons of God, the EGO's way of thinking would say you have to put things in concrete boxes and keep them SEPARATE. Which leads you to conclude, EITHER I am in my body, OR I am in your body, but not both. But God's law would say, I am in my brother and in myself at the same time. What is true of me is true of him. Therefore there are TWO brothers who ARE ONE. Their oneness or union DOES NOT IN ANY WAY overthrow or erase or undo or cancel, the fact that there are STILL TWO. And this applies clearly in cases like "one brother is all brothers", and "I and my father are one." Jesus confirms:
"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND.""
"Every mind is in all minds."
Notice here that he clarifies that there are STILL TWO PARTS in the statement. There is still ME and GOD. Two entities. Yet, they are ONE. Which means logically, 1=1 and 2=1. This makes no sense to the ego. But it is true. And accurate. And correct. This is how things are in reality. God has created a son, SHARED everything with him, so now THEY BOTH have everything, and thus they BOTH AS TWO ... are one. Their oneness does not undo their twoness, and their twoness does not undo their oneness. None of this has to do with the ego or "the separation".
The ego on the other hand, or those who THINK WITH the ego, tend to think about God's kingdom in EITHER OR terms. This is a complete logical failure. It results in false conclusions all over the place. If AIR, let's say, is in one box AND in another box, the ego would have to say, the air can only be IN one box OR the other box, not both. But the air is in both boxes. Similarly, a son of God is in his own box, BUT he is ALSO in the boxes of all the other sons. And in God's box/being.
If you use ego reasoning to draw conclusions about the inner contents of the Kingdom, YOU WILL come to a false conclusions, guaranteed. God's Kingdom is not made up of SEPARATE (un-shared) BOXES. It's made of SHARING boxes. So you can't say "either this or that", or "either one son or many", or "either God or God and a son", or "either oneness or separation" or "either one or many". That's all ego thought. It's a mistake. You have to THINK LIKE God to "get" what God's system is really like. And that way of think is to think WAAAY outside the box.
Once you recognize that God's system is based on a totally different kind of logic, basically "BOTH AND" rather than "EITHER OR", *EVERYTHING* Jesus says no longer is a contradiction. It is no longer contradictory to say "God has but one son knowing them all as one". It does not mean He only has a count of one son, because that ignores the fact he has many. And is does not mean that by having many they are "separate" in the ego sense, because they DO SHARE EVERYTHING and therefore transcend their boxes and thus ARE one. Their oneness and manyness coexists.
If all you do with these kind of statements is to TAKE SIDES with one PART of the statement and relegate the other to "the ego", that's a total fail. Because now you will relegate perfectly legitimate multitudes of creations of God to the realm of EGO, or multiple minds are now considered fragments of one mind, or multiple sons is considered an illusion. WHICH IS WRONG. It is completely a total failure of logical reasoning because the wrong kind of logic is being used
You can't just say "well it says I and my father are one, therefore I don't exist.". That's BS. That's what the EGO concludes. That's not God's conclusion, nor is it true. It is still true that YES, essentially, in truth, you and God ARE ONE THING. But, this oneness DOES NOT in the traditional sense mean or imply that there aren't ALSO two things. God IS a father and DID create a son.
I want to just make it clear that this is also NOT the same thing as"duality". Some people will argue that God having many of anything is duality. It is not the same at all.
Duality is the ego's idea of separateness. That is, that something is EITHER this OR that. This denies sharing. When you change the "OR" into an "AND", to correctly map to God's nature, the statement becomes THIS AND THAT. Which now suggests that there is sharing between TWO or more things. This is no longer duality, but it is also NOT THE END of individuality or many-ness. In any "contradictory" statement Jesus makes like that, THIS (part A) AND THAT (part B) are BOTH true. Without cancelling each other, and without opposing each other.
God's Kingdom is not duality. Duality means separate boxes WITHOUT sharing. As Jesus confirms:
"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."
Those RELATIONSHIPS, are the SHARING nature of the Kingdom. You need more than one of something to have relationship. It's what joins you with God and the Christ mind. But these relationships also do NOT undo your individuality. Nor does it imply that you having a self is unholy.
God who is whole, creates additional wholes beings. He cannot create partial beings. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created, there is no lack in it." So now if God has a son, which he does, because he's a creator, and a father, His son MUST BE A WHOLE, yet to ego logic you can't have two wholes.
If God is all encompassing, there is NO ROOM FOR ANY SON AT ALL. To the ego, anyway. Because "two wholes" is nonsense to the ego. Yet many proponents of oneness and non-duality like the idea of there being at least a son still, which is COMPLETELY illogical in any thought system.
Ego thinkers who struggle with logic will conclude this. But the truth is God does have a son, and there ARE TWO WHOLES. The reason this is POSSIBLE is because of sharing. The two wholes SHARE everything, and therefore ARE ALSO ONE WHOLE. EACH SON therefore is a WHOLE SON, has everything, and shares it with the WHOLE of the rest. As Jesus confirms:
"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS created "separate" beings, who have EVERYTHING individually, and want to share it to increase their joy."
This is a statement of divine logic. God is whole, and yet, he SHARED himself to create MANY "separate" beings, INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - souls, sons, who HAVE EVERYTHING because they share all of God, and they WANT to SHARE it. This statement was taken out of later editions btw, probably due to ego thought processes that deemed it "nonsense" or "suggesting separation", appearing to be a contradiction when it IS NOT. God created separate beings who are share as one.
Technically God should not have a son, or be a father, or a creator, if God is everything. Because what is all encompassing cannot have an opposite, thus cannot create a division or separation. BUT God DOES that, not by SPLITTING, but by SHARING. He allows within his own being the presence of additional beings provided they SHARE ALL of what is, thus NOT invalidating their individuality OR the wholeness of the system
"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."
Even to the ego the idea of God having even ONE son makes no sense. It implies separation and two-ness. And that is against the EGO'S spiritualized concept of "oneness" meaning "a count of one". Ego reasons, if you remove all separations, you must end up with ONE BLOB. One perfect blob, which we'll call oneness or God. And thus IT concludes THIS is what God is like. But this is the logical outcome of EGO thought processes. And it is COMPLETELY WRONG.
Or perhaps we can say it is partly right, because God IS one and his whole creation IS one, BUT.... it is also many. And it is this "one AND many" which the ego CANNOT comprehend. It can reason there is one, OR many, but not both. And BOTH is true. Because God IS a creator of many sons, and has a FAMILY. And his nature is to share, and be inclusive, which means BOTH me AND God exist.
"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"
"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return"
AND, you have your own creations, which further adds to the sonship. AND God created the holy spirit. AND the angels. The Holy Trinity DOES have three entities. And "The Kingdom of God includes all his children and their creations." AND "Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite." Infinite creations is a LOT MORE than "one". But the ego would balk at this as if it's some kind of "duality", or separation, or ego. EGO concludes that God is ego-like!
So if you really want to grasp HOW and WHY Jesus is NOT contradicting himself, and WHY his seemingly opposite statements are NOT against each other, and why ALL parts of his statements are true simultaneously, and why God did create multiple children who are BROTHERS, and why separate individual beings does not mean ego or duality, you have to adopt a whole different way of reasoning. A thought system LIKE how God thinks.
"Either this or that" is ego and DOES NOT work when used to think about ANYTHING in heaven. And this one "default" way of reasoning is what almost EVERY acim student uses, because we don't recognize that we're basing all our thought on a false permise and assumption. It's an assumption to believe that two things cannot be one thing, or it's "natural" for two things to be separate and not share anything, or that you can never have two things being one thing. You have to question this.
Such thinking has led to countless horrendous manglings of the course material and its meaning. Relegating Jesus's TRUE statements to PARTIAL truths and partial falsehoods. Which has produced interpretations of the course which fall way short. People then either conclude WRONG things about heaven, or they give up and exclaim its not possible to undestand it because they can't see HOW to think outside the box. BOTH are ego reactions to ITS failed logic.
"No-one who looks upon this "reasoning" EXACTLY as it is could fail to see it does NOT follow, and it makes NO sense. Yet it SEEMS sensible"
To the ego, the truth is UTTER NONSENSE. But what is nonsense to the ego, makes perfect sense to God. To him it is completely natural to create an infinite number of creations which all are whole and coexisting in total harmony, sharing everything without selfishness or egotism. And God's creations DO NOT think in terms of "me or you", but in terms of US. You have real holy brothers and always will.
"We are creation, WE, the sons of God."
Here, you can read the THE ONLY PARAGRAPH in the entire Course where a "shift in perception" is mentioned in connection with "miracles". There are NO other references to this and there is not even a single reference to any kind of "shifting" OR changing of perception in relation to "miracles" mentioned within the same context or section of text, anywhere.
I am going to explain what it really means and what a MIRACLE is, below.
"The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary."
So, for a start, the "shift" referred to is in the context of the collapsing of time, and not so much talking about the so-called "shifts in perception" that you undergo when you are correcting/purifying the mind. But it does mention perception.
The KEY sentence is this: "The miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception."
Now, we need to understand what the Course means by a "horizontal perception" and a "vertical perception" and how they are different and what exactly is "entailed" by "shifting" from one to the other.
"Horizontal perception" is ego perception. It means that you believe in and are perceiving causes on this level, which are producing effects on this SAME level. Therefore it seems that cause and effect are operating sideways. So for example, if it SEEMS as if a person throws a ball at another person and it hits them on the head, person A is the cause and person B is affected. This illusion sets up a scenario of victimhood, if the people are thinking with the ego.
On the surface it appears there was an independent, separate cause on this level, which produced independent, separate effects in some other part of this level. This way of perceiving relies on separation and fragmentation of the level, ie multiple separate individual causes and effects. And also in horizontal perception, it is believed that a cause "escapes" from the effects it produces, so is not at the effect of itself and can get away with murder.
Horizontal perception is a murderous thought system of attack and the attempt to deny effects ie to deny oneness, to have separate rules for separate individuals, to perceive inequality and to seem capable of attacking without being attacked. This is all "standard" within horizontal perception. It's ego perception.
"Vertical perception" is very different to this. Instead of looking sideways for causality on this level, or thinking that this level causes effects in a higher level, perception instead places you IN GOD, ie in truth/heaven, looking DOWNWARDS upon the lower level (this world).
From that higher perspective, it is seen that the ENTIRE world is one dream, it is all coming FROM the higher level, the higher level is the cause of it, all of the things happening in the world are EFFECTS ONLY, there ARE no causes in the world on the horizontal level, and therefore there also are no victims, no possibility of one part of the world attacking another, and no separated opposing wills working against each other. It is the perspective of God, or the perspective of the dreamer of the dream.
In vertical perception, you literally RECOGNIZE that everything in this world/lower level is expressing FROM the higher level, thus mind is the cause of everything that's showing up, and there are no other causes of anything. That means there is no horizontal cause of sickness or death. There is nothing that is happening or showing up in the world which "explains" or "justifies" or "causes" anything else on the same level. So someone does not die from a car crash, someone is not sick because of bad food, someone is not suffering with PTSD from a war, someone is not lacking money because someone stole it, etc. No horizontal causes whatsoever.
Instead, vertical perception sees that there can be no victimhood, there are NO causes on the level of form, the entire universe is an effect, mind is the cause, mind has all the power, mind has projected this entire world and it can CHANGE ANYTHING if it so chooses. When it changes something, it basically goes behind the back of any fictional "horizontal laws", which includes all of the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and pulls the plug on them.
That means, while it is physically impossible for a physical object to suddenly disappear from one location and show up in another, based on the horizontal laws of causality, "vertically" this is absolutely effortless. The vertical mind can choose, from above, to simply undo the projection of the object and to project another object somewhere else. To the observer on the physical level it will seem like A MIRACLE! A demonstration of what appears to be horizontally impossible. A law-breaking, physics-defying demonstration that the horizontal laws ARE NOT TRUE, and that the laws of God ARE TRUE.
This is also the true meaning of "there is no order of difficulty in miracles". They are all the same because all that happens is a vertically-perceiving person who does not buy into any of the horizontal illusions/laws whatsoever, decides to rearrange the illusion in a way which completely defies all of the laws and which horizontal-believing people find to be impossible. If at first a person appeared dead, and if the horizontal laws say that once death occurs there is no going back, and the vertically perceiving person decides to remove the dead body and put life back into it and manifest a living body in its place, THAT IS A MIRACLE.
A miracle is an expression, rooted in love, aligned with the Atonement (vertical truth), which CAUSES FROM ABOVE, and produces effects BELOW (e.g. in the physical level). And since all such acts are basically the SAME ACT of causality from above to below, it does not matter whatsoever what the below rules say should be possible, or what seems more difficult or easy, or the magnitude of the effects, or how long lasting they have been, or how many times a person was caused, or how long sickness has been present, or how long someone is dead for. None of it matters vertically because love expresses maximally from above, will full power and effect below, and everything is essentially the SAME ACTION. One problem, one solution.
Now, we need to therefore recognize that when someone is in the ego mindset, if they are trying to apply the course and are trying to shift perception or have a healing or receive a correction, the only "actual" healing possible is to move in the direction of the vertical.
However, if we are being honest here, a person who is just starting out with this and who has a "little" willingness and accepts a small correction, can barely be called a miracle worker. They may "shift" from 99% horizontal perception, to 98.5% horizontal perception. A very slight shift away from horizontal toward vertical truth. And that person WILL NOT be able to move mountains. They will not be able to reverse death nor will they be able to heal the blind etc.
Each little shift in perception gradually, slowly, over a long period of time, moves the person from the horizontal upward toward God. And it takes a LOT of purification work to do this. A huge amount of investment in horizontal ego perception must be let go in order to move upwards. And there is NOT a "sudden shift" here. You do not suddenly go from heavy ego investment to "no ego" in the blink of an eye (at least almost never). We're not talking about going from horizontal to "slightly more vertical" perception. A miracle entails a shift ALL THE WAY to vertical perception.
Notice also it says "entails", which doesn't necessarily mean "is". It's not saying a miracle IS a shift to vertical perception. It ENTAILS getting into vertical perception first. You need to get your mind up there into the perspective of God, first, before you will be able to perform a miracle. And for most people that is going to take YEARS of dedicated undoing and correction, which the course calls PURIFICATION. It's not even the same thing as forgiveness.
Now, there are parts in the Course where Jesus makes a distinction between being "miracle ready" and the actual "action" of performing a miracle. Miracle readiness means being in vertical perception at all times. Actually PERFORMING a miracle, which expresses FROM love, in a vertical direction, producing changes in EFFECTS on the level of this world (almost always observable), is a separate part of being miraculous. You don't just sit there "being miraculous". It is not a spectator sport. Members of Jesus's party are ACTIVE WORKERS. There is an activity involved. A USE of the POWER of causality. An EXPRESSION of it to where love was LACKING, providing what was lacking, so that LIFE is restored and death is reversed. (Miracles fulfill a lack).
So the "shifting of perception" from fear to love, or from ego to truth, or from darkness to light, or from death to life, is not ITSELF a miracle. Miracles flow DOWNWARD FROM HEAVEN. "Miracles fall like drop of healing rain from heaven on a dry a dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." They come DOWN from ABOVE, not up from below, and they are not your movement upwards. Nor do they flow sideways. A sideways shift in perception is not a miracle. A slight shift towards vertical perception is not a miracle. A person is not performing miracles by MOVING UPWARD, they perform miracles by expressing FROM a high place, downward, which then LIFTS upward. The shifting of perception towards God is an EFFECT of a miracle, not a cause.
It is in fact the EGO which likes to believe that IT is a miracle worker. It does this through level confusion, which is the belief that a lower level causes a higher level. In this belief, the ego says, well, if I shift my perception toward truth, then I am being causal and am triggering a miracle. Or as if, the shifting itself is a cause, and it produces vertical effects. This is A LIE. This is classic ego thinking. God is cause, not the ego. Cause comes DOWN from above, not up from below.
Miracles ENTAIL a shift into a vertical perceiving mode, FIRST, in order to SEE with God's eyes, to recognize suffering for the illusion it is so that you do not make it real, and then LOVE EXPRESSES. The expression of love is downwards from God. Causality flows vertically, from God, to us. Getting your perception INTO a state of perceiving vertically IS NOT a miracle, it is PREPARATION for a miracle.
Recognize that miracles are rooted in forgiveness and forgiveness is a HIGH STATE of mind, in which there is nothing LEFT to forgive. It is the atonement. Forgiveness, atonement, salvation, are all the same thing. They are end goals after a great deal of purification work and much correction of perception. Correction of perception is not a miracle, but miracles DO have a corrective function.
They are extensions of, expressions of, the atonement principle, once it has ALREADY been accepted. Atonement has to be RECEIVED, BEFORE miracles can be GIVEN. You can only give the miracles you have received, and miracles are something you SHARE and GIVE, not something that you "only receive". You cannot express a miracle UNTIL you accept atonement, and you cannot accept atonement UNTIL you have "shifted perception". So the shifts in perception have to happen FIRST, over a long period of time, gradually, to get your mind to where you are WILLING to ACCEPT the atonement, and THEN you will be willing to RECEIVE, and THEN you will be ABLE to extend and perform a miracle. You cannot give miracles you have not received and that means you cannot express atonement if you have not accepted it yet!
You can't sit there and think, well, I just shifted "my perception" and so "I" have now received a "miracle" in isolation, which only I have benefited from, and it has no causal effects on anyone else. Giving and receiving are one, and once you accept atonement you GO OUT and you extend the atonement to others and HELP OTHERS. Miracles are services to others FROM a state of love, not little stepping stones in your own awakening.
Miracles can rearrange time because they operate from above and outside of time and therefore can DEFY linear/horizontal causality/time. Does shifting your perception rearrange time? Does it have effects which are POTENTIALLY SPECTACLES, which you then have to be careful not to use AS spectacles (ie for that sake alone)? Could you describe your own correction of your own perception, something that could have the "risk" of being considered SPECTACULAR in the eyes of other people, with effects so extraordinary (like Jesus appearing out of thin air after having "died")? Not likely.
Jesus walking on water to prove that gravity means nothing and He is not under the laws of the horizontal, THAT is a miracle. Jesus completely defying all laws by MULTIPLYING a few loaves of bread and fishes enough to feed 5000 people, that is a MIRACLE. Jesus raising someone from "certain death" and reversing death and restoring him to a living state, that is IMPOSSIBLE on the horizontal level of laws (death is irreversible), but He proved that it is NOT irreversible, because he has his hand on the "controls" of this entire world "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."
If it is not supernatural, it is NOT a miracle. It there is not some kind of causality coming from above and expressing below and BREAKING the ego's laws, it is NOT a demonstration of God's truth and is not a miracle. If it is merely someone having a personal healing in the privacy of their home and perceiving slightly more truthfully afterwards, that is NOT a miracle. It is merely a stepping stone TOWARDS being able to let miracles flow. If all expressions of love (FULL love) are a miracle, then love has to be able to flow fully and freely through you before you can be miraculous, and that is NOT even remotely going to happen while you still have a ton of correction and purification to do. "Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST." Purification is a process of gradual shifting of perception towards truth and a LOT of it is needed FIRST BEFORE you gain access to the right to perform miracles.
MIRACLES ARE NOT SHIFTS IN PERCEPTION!!!!!!!!!
Miracles are expressions from love. To be able to express from love, you have to have willingness to allow love to be in you. You have to be aware of love, and you have to be free of blocks to love. That's a HIGH STATE of mind. That's advanced. You try to get someone who has just picked up ACIM and accepted a little bit of correction, to express God's love through them.
They will not be willing OR able, because there are too many blocks in the way. Miracle working DOES NOT come to the beginner. It takes a lot of undoing and correction of the mind - a lot of "shifts", which add up overall to a much bigger shift, which eventually put you closer to God and more in alignment with vertical perception, which THEN starts to reveal miracle working abilities. The ability to cause from above. To cause from above (super) the natural (ego horizontal nature).
If it does not PROVE and DEMONSTRATE that the ego's laws are not natural and do not APPLY at all, it is not a miracle.
And note that Jesus walking on water COULD have been considered a spectacle. However, the Course actually says, do not use miracles as a spectacle as an attempt to INDUCE BELIEF. This is often cut short. The end part is vital. If you use a miracle ONLY to try to "force" someone to "believe" or to become a follower or to go along with your teaching or whatever, to coerce, to manipulate them, THEN you are producing a (potentially spectacular) miracle for the sake of achieving an ego purpose. And this IS a mistaken understanding of their purpose.
But if you are not doing that, and you're not going around putting on a show just to shock and awe people, without using them to actually TEACH or HEAL or UNDO or RAISE THE DEAD so that people become MORE RESURRECTED, THAT is the only way that they are used incorrectly as spectacles. It's got NOTHING to do with whether the miracle is spectacular or not. And this idea of "not doing anything spectacular" has led people to hide in a hole and be afraid of miracles and to play them down and shove them in a box to suggest not doing ANYTHING that could be considered a spectacle. It's a gross misunderstanding.
So anyway. Stepping off my soapbox for now. Miracles are miraculous. This is a Course in SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES, ego-law breaking miracles, what appears "impossible" to the horizontal ego thought system, and expressions of real love which has the power to LITERALLY move mountains.
Come on people. This is a course in MIRACLES. MIRACLES!!!!! Not a course in fixing yourself up and sitting on a fence.
"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.
Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.
Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.
This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.
It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.
This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.
Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.
So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.
This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.
There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.
You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.
Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.
It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.
It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.
On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.
The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.
This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.
But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.
A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.
The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.
Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.
Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.
Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.
But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.
All is well. It's just a room.
The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.
As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.
The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.
To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.
Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.
If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.
True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".
Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.
To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."
Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.
Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.
In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.
"To see a sinless body is impossible."
"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."
"A world forgiven cannot last."
As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.
To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.
"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening."
Fear is not "just fear". It's not just "an emotion". It's not just "one thing". It's not just "a reaction". Everything that fear appears to be, it is that, and it is not that. There is much more happening that isn't obvious.
Fear is the opposite of love. Death is the opposite of life and life is love. Fear and death are therefore the same state - the end result of the ego's thought system of sin.
Fear is self deception. Let's look at how the ego thought system deceives us.
God establishes what is ACTUALLY true. This truth is reality. It is eternal life, love, happiness, safety, peace. This truth is always true. Nothing can change it.
Ego means nothing more than truth reversal. It's an attempt to oppose the truth through denial. Ego can't change what is true. But, in ego you can DENY it or "pretend" that it's not true.
To deny what's true, you believe it is false. God's truth, or the truth about you, becomes false to you. Simultaneously, things which are false and unreal start to SEEM true and real. You start believing UNTRUE things about yourself.
Jesus describes the end result of this process (the ego thought system) as "total confusion". It's a state where everything true has been confused with or mistaken for, everything false. And everything false has been confused with or mistaken for, what's true.
You could not be more confused than to have no idea what is ACTUALLY true or actually real. It's a state of not recognizing anything for what it is. A total loss of perspective. It is insanity. Fear and death are insane. Fear is paralysis, or the stopping of life, which is death.
When your mind is confused, it's because you believe something is true which isn't REALLY true. Something seems real that is not real. Something seems to be happening that isn't really happening. You think it is, but it's not. In this state, you are simply very MISTAKEN. And in denial. And unwilling to accept that a totally opposite truth is the real truth.
What is false? Death, sickness, suffering, unhappiness, fear, guilt, sin, attack, murder, threat and danger, darkness, insanity, delusion, disassociation, not knowing who you are, unreality, non-existence, etc. All of this is false because it is OPPOSITE to what is actually true - God's truth. None of it is real and none of it exists.
What is true? Eternal life, happiness, freedom, fearlessness, freedom from sin and guilt, immortality, being incapable of sickness or death, nothing to be afraid of, no threat or danger, total safety, peace of mind, invulnerability etc.
When you CONFUSE these two, and put belief into the false stuff, you "make it real". You try to invest it with reality and truth.
"Whatever you BELIEVE IN becomes REAL to you."
To do that you have to deny what's really true. This denial is a block to awareness. It makes you UNAWARE of the real truth or the big picture. It disassociates you from what you are believing in the big picture, and the consequences of that belief.
That means you are CAUSING things (making them through belief), which are producing EFFECTS, but you are no longer aware that you are causing them, so they seem to be caused by something other than yourself. Who wouldn't be frightened of an "alien will" (a will outside of your awareness of what your own will is willing) that seems to do things "against your will"?
It's the mere fact that you are unaware of what you are choosing, wanting, supporting, believing in, that results in "stuff happening" that you didn't SEEM to will. And this stuff is then experienced as being unfairly treated. Especially given that everything that happens in ego is a form of suffering. And who wants to suffer? No-one sane.
So then, naturally, you perceive that you are suffering not because you chose to, but because someone or something else separate from you caused it. You really caused it, but you don't see that, so you HAVE to pin it on some other cause, automatically, to try to make sense of where it came from. This is the root of all projection.
The simple notion that there is "another cause" besides yourself, is the root of all fear. Because if something can CAUSE YOU other than God, can change you, affect you, or hurt you, without you being able to prevent it, that is grounds for terror. The mere perception of "a separate thing" that seems cut off from your oneness is grounds for fear.
As you move further into the ego darkness, increasing fear, consciously you start to experience what SEEMS to be a greater unwillingness to want or 'own' what is happening. You want to get away from the danger, away from the source of threat.
Because in denial you believe/perceive more and more than it's got nothing to do with your own choice. That you are having absolutely no part to play in making things happen, did not choose them, do not want them, did not cause them, and don't even HAVE a choice. And death is an attempt not to choose at all.
The more this increases, the more you go into denial, the less aware you are that you're choosing to believe death is salvation. Here, false = true and true = false. If both the true and the false are false, and the true and the true are true, there is a total blurring of distinction and no difference between them, resulting in total confusion.
The threat of death seems to be on the increase, your conscious horror at this increase makes you squirm like you don't want it and try to avoid it, but unconsciously you are choosing it.
For example, if you believe in cancer, at all, you will become afraid. Believing it exists whatsoever, that it has power, that it causes death, that it even exists at all, places your mind into denial. Because in God's truth, cancer does not exist. Cancer is false, untrue, unreal, non-existent, powerless, causeless, nothing. Cancer is totally an illusion that has no effect on the Son of God.
But if you've moved into "I believe cancer exists", you MUST now be in denial. That means you believe in cancer, but you are not aware that you believe in it. What's left of your conscious awareness is now limited only to the scope of what you are AWARE of. You are not aware of your belief, BUT, your belief is moving you TOWARDS cancer. Because whatever you BELIEVE EXISTS, you WANT MORE OF.
Whatever you believe in, you try to invest it with reality. You try to MAKE it be true. You give it a sense of truth, power over you, an alien will, causality, strength, threat. The more you believe in it the bigger of an 'enemy' you make it, and the more your perception warps to make it seem large and looming and able to affect you.
So there's your mind believing "cancer is a very real danger", which puts you into denial of the truth, which makes you unaware you believe in a dangerous threat, which makes you confused about what is true and false, which makes you think cancer is real and true and your salvation, which makes you want it, which CAUSES IT.
So now there is an increase in your 'environment' of the presence of this illusion of danger, and your conscious awareness is becoming afraid because strange disconnected threats are looming on the horizon, and you are not aware of how they got there. It seems like they're happening "on their own", separate from your mind. And because they seem separate, you perceive that you have no control over them. This perceived lack of "ability to influence it" produces fear.
This is the general state most of us find ourselves in - seeming to have no power or control over anything external, anything that seems separate, or anything in the world. As if the world is causal, decides your fate, and you just have to suffer, or run away in fear. As if it has its own will, separate from yours, that you can do nothing about, making its ultimate attack unavoidable.
Whatever you believe in, you make it real. Whatever you believe in, you give truth to. Whatever you believe in, you value. Whatever you believe in, you want to see. Whatever you believe in, you will perceive. Whatever you believe in, you make happen. Whatever you believe, you'll defend with your life, because you associate LIFE with "whats true".
It is not possible for example to believe "cancer exists", while also claiming to believe you are not threatened by it. I do not have it but I am scared of the idea, purely based on beliefs in its existence. You cannot believe in a causal power outside you without feeling threatened. You are not immune to it just because "it doesn't seem to be happening to me". You will fear it even if it's not seeming to happen. And the unconscious masses have done a lot to amplify its "reality".
The only way to not have fear of cancer therefore is to not believe in cancer. AT ALL. ie, cancer does not exist, cancer has no power over me, cancer does not cause death, cancer isn't affecting me, cancer has not done anything to me, cancer cannot do anything to me, I do not believe in cancer, cancer does not exist, there is no cancer, cancer is a lie, cancer isn't real, cancer is an illusion I made up, cancer has no mind of its own, cancer does not exist at all, there is no cancer, cancer is nothing, cancer is not making me afraid, I have power over cancer. etc
That's what you have to believe in order to be free from it. And being free from the BELIEF in it DOES make you INVULNERABLE. That's what you have to believe in order to not put yourself into the state where you'll be afraid of it. And that's what you have to believe in order to not CHOOSE IT. Because if you "believe it exists but I don't believe I have it", you are trying to have it.
Whatever you believe in, you are CHOOSING. If you don't want to choose something, you must NOT believe in it. You can't believe in something and then claim that it does not apply to you. You can't believe in something and then claim to be free of it. Believe it, and you give it power over you instantly and are moving towards manifesting/materializing it into your experience. And fear and suffering then become the consequence of that.
The secret of salvation states that you are doing everything to yourself. That means, in your confusion about what is true and false, you keep choosing things which are FALSE, by believing they are TRUE. By mistake. Because you are mistaken about what is true. You keep choosing things which are unreal, by believing they are real. And that means you literally WANT TO SUFFER.
By believing in illusions or false things, things opposite God's reality, you are electing to make those things part of your reality. So that you can have a false experience of them. Beliefs are attempts to CHANGE WHAT IS TRUE into what you want to be true. But belief can also be used to line up with what is ACTUALLY true, so that you believe the Atonement truth, which sets you free.
In fear, which includes unawareness, you are consciously kicking and screaming to get away from what seems to be coming to you "on its own". Unconsciously, ie behind denial, you are actually MAKING IT COME TO YOU by believing in it. And that literally translates to, you are doing it to yourself. Or the adage, "what you fear comes to you" or "what you fear increases". This is literally true.
Jesus says "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."
This also means there are NO CAUSES OF SUFFERING BEYOND YOUR OWN CHOOSING.
"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."
And that then means, if you were to actually sort out what is REALLY TRUE, from what you THINK is true, ie that you WANT GOD, and learn to recognize the ACTUAL truth again, you would also simultaneously recognize that false things ARE false. You would recognize that cancer is an illusion that does not exist. You would recognize that there IS NO THREAT. Because then you have stopped threatening yourself.
All fear comes from self-threat. A sense of danger that results from YOU believing that you are under attack. Which is an attack on yourself. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."
For example, if you believe you sinned, and choose not to forgive yourself, you'll believe you are guilty. But this isn't merely a belief in guilt. It's a belief that you ARE guilty and an acceptance that your guilt is TRUE. If guilt is true, you will WILLINGLY ACCEPT that you DO deserve punishment, because it it SUPPORTED by what you believe is true. You will not object to it. So instead, you will WELCOME suffering. But even more-so, MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS.
This now means you YOURSELF believe that you logically deserve to suffer. And this means you now ACCEPT that you MUST suffer. Which means you believe you should suffer. Which means you now have it in for yourself.
It means you are now seeking to attack yourself in order to punish yourself, because it is justified, and this is SELF THREAT. It is suicidal. And that is going to terrify you more than any external projection of "who is causing fear" or "how its going to happen".
Guilt leads to fear. Guilt leads to more self attack. Your SELF attack is what frightens you. YOU are the cause of your fear.
So then when you are in fear, you are trying to hurt yourself. You are scaring yourself. You might project it onto all kinds of external stuff but it's self attack. Ever notice that when you are afraid you start finding all kinds of EXTERNAL things or "causes" to pin the fear on? Many things around you start to become threatening? That's projection. Your perception is warping. It's the same as accusing your brother of your own sins. You accuse your brother of your own self attack and reasons to fear.
So fear is really a state where you are CHOOSING TO SUFFER, where you are wanting what you are threatened by, are trying to make it happen, to undermine your immortality. BUT you are disowning it so much that it SEEMS like you have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
You are in denial that the thing you thought was going to help you is actually hurting you. You are in denial that your savior is your attacker. You are in denial that what you WANT is actually working against you. You are in denial that your defense against truth is causing you to be MORE sick. And you are under the impression that death is going to save you from God's wrath.
Your internal conscious messaging might be "I hope that doesn't happen, it's scaring me". But your ACTUAL activity is "I hope that happens, I want that to happen, I believe in it, it's going to save me." Your mind holds visions of threats and dangers in front of its perception to attack itself.
This is why fear is such a slippery thing. It's so deceptive, back to front, inside out and upside down. It SEEMS like the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what it is. The experience of it seems like you totally don't want it, but this COVERS OVER the fact you are WANTING exactly what you are frightened by. If you are scared, YOU scared yourself.
You have to own up to this, look deeply at it and realize what you actually are doing, rather than what seems to be happening on the surface. All victimy persons, everyone who is afraid, all who are terrified, ACTUALLY are choosing and wanting everything that they are afraid of. AND they are the one DOING THE ATTACK. This is why victims are victimizers and victimizers are victims.
Fear is choosing with the ego, siding with deception.
In fear you secretly choose to suffer, by choosing something that does bring suffering (ie to God it is FALSE), but which you BELIEVE brings salvation. And this stems entirely from being CONFUSED about what is really true and what is false.
All the attributes of God's truth need to be given back to God. You need to re-associate aspects of truth with God's truth. God's truth is where the safety is. God's truth is where salvation is. God's truth is what will ACTUALLY help and heal you and give you life. God's truth is what will protect you from harm. God's truth will give you immortality. And by choosing it, you will GET what you EXPECT to get, rather than the total opposite.
Learning to RECOGNIZE that is the entire process of working on your spiritual awakening. The "sorting out" of true vs REALLY true. What do you REALLY WANT to believe in. What are you believing that isn't REALLY true. How might you be very mistaken in your conviction that death is real? How might you be mistaken in believing that cancer even exists? How might you be confused about whether you can even be affected by anything, given you are immortal?
Gradually you will side with the ACTUAL truth rather than siding with what you BELIEVED was true. And that's a really good thing. Because now your expectation is that the truth will help you and make things better for you, and it ACTUALLY DOES. And then you will develop TRUST in it. You can't trust the ego. It is all lies and deception. One thing pretending to be something else. It is two-faced because it contradicts the real truth.
Only the truth is true. Only the false is false. Only eternal life is real. Death is an impossible illusion and does not exist. In God's love there is NOTHING to be afraid of. "Nothing unreal exists." Nothing false is true. And recognizing that will bring you peace and freedom from suffering forever.
In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.
Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.
In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.
The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).
Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")
Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.
Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.
Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".
Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.
Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.
The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.
Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.
Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.
Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).
This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.
The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.
Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.
Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.
Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.
The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.
This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.
This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.
From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.
And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.
To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.
This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.
Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has
built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."
There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.
There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.
There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.
Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.
It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.
The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.
The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.
It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.
The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.
Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.
"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."
"Heaven is a choice I must make."
"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."
"The truth shall set you free."
----TL;DR: Changing your perception OF a sick body, isn't enough to change what you are projecting. You are projecting your body and the symptoms.----
"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition. As you think so do you perceive."
Recognize that projection COMES FIRST, then perception happens SECOND.
"The world you see" (perceive) "is what you have put there to see" (what you projected first).
"The world you perceive" (second) "is witness to your state of mind" - your perception "witnesses", perceives, and reflects back to you, your state of mind, because your state of mind PROJECTED what it is that you are now PERCEIVING.
These are two different processes. The act of having a certain state of mind, which you then project FROM, puts stuff "out there", which you THEN perceive as a secondary process.
Even the body itself is a projection. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The body then PERCEIVES, AFTER having been projected.
Jesus talks about how this is a circular logic for us, a trap, whereby we believe what we want to see, we project it because we believe in it, we "make it appear" (manifest it), then we "perceive" ie let the body tell us what it is we projected.
Perception then, is distinct from projection. It is a secondary act. Without projecting, there would be nothing TO perceive.
So here's what you need to realize about perceptions of sickness.
The mind, in whatever state it is in, has beliefs in it, thoughts, which then project. These projections MANIFEST the body and many other forms and objects. The mind for example projects the body ITSELF.
If the mind has a belief in separation, it will project a body which shows up with signs and symptoms of sickness, because it is a PICTURE of your inward condition, and your inward condition is one of "I am under attack". So the body SHOWS it. it is a WITNESS ie corresponds to your state of mind. This is why "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." The body literally only shows up as the mind's manifestational projection. It's an image being projected by the mind.
Jesus speaks to this in his "special notes to helen"....
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. ... 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."
So here we can see, the MIND, MAKES the body. Your mind is projecting your body, and everything about it, right now. However it is showing up, witnesses to your mental content and your belief system. If it is showing up as sick, it is therefore directly correlated, it is PROOF, that your mind is not healed.
This also means, that when the mind IS healed, or close to, and it is still projecting a body, it MUST project a body which appears without signs or symptoms of sickness. This is because the body COMES FROM the mind, mind is its source, and a healthy mind WILL ONLY project a healthy-appearing body image.
Now. There is a problem here in how many people are interpreting the correction of perception.
Remember perception happens to look upon WHAT YOU PROJECTED, after you projected it. The body's eyes receive little photons of light to tell it, oh look, there's a body there. That's part of perception. The illusion that the very thing YOU PROJECTED, is now telling you what IT IS, completely forgetting that you put it there in the first place.
So now perception, is ONCE REMOVED from the direct expression or projection of the mind. Perception therefore is a secondary experience.
So now, let's say that you have projected a body with a broken leg. The broken leg was not caused by anything in the world. It was ONLY projected from the mind. The mind did not project a broken leg ONTO the body. The mind directly projected ONLY an image of a body with a broken leg. The body does not EXIST as a separate object, or a "thing", or something as an end in itself. If you do not project it, nothing shows up! If you do not project it, there is no body!
So now, that you projected an image of a body with a broken leg, you now will perceive. Perception can be in a state of correctness/clarity or in a state of false perception/distortion. Since your MIND has a belief in sickness in it, and has made a sick-appearing body image materialize, it also now believes sickness is real. Perception is now going to take place, and that same mind which PROJECTED the "sick body", is also going to see that same belief in sickness IN the body that was projected.
This means perception is now going to show you a hallucination of "sickness is real", "something is wrong", "sin and guilt" etc, as though it is *IN* the body. It is not in the body, it's in the mind. Thus the idea of sickness, which made the body to begin with, is now SECONDARILY projected ON TOP OF the body that you projected.
Then you will have various ego reactions to what you are misperceiving, and will start to seek a resolution. But your planned strategy here isn't typically anything to do with fixing your PROJECTION, it's always to do with fixing your PERCEPTION. And that means, something very obvious is about to happen.
If all you do, is fix your perception OF what you projected, you might be able to seem to "be at peace" with what is showing up. You might seem to become less upset or resistant or less fighting with, your broken leg. You'll tell yourself, if your perception OF the body is healed, you will be TOTALLY DONE. But this leaves you with a problem, and a state of denial.
Fact is, even if your so-called "perception" is perceiving your broken leg as "lovely and wonderful", oh how lovely that death looks.... your leg is STILL BROKEN. And that's a problem. Because now you are demonstrating that you can be hurt, you are attacking the entire world by claiming that something OTHER THAN YOU put the break there, you are holding this broken leg up for everyone to see to make them guilty and accuse them of sin, and you are attempting to demonstrate that God's Son can be killed.
It also means that since ALL sickness manifests as a DEFENSE against the truth, in the mind, which then projects a "defending body", which shows up as attacked, you CANNOT accept full and total peace while still maintaining that defense. It is impossible. The defense has to go, which means the belief in separation has to go, which MUST produce a projected body which shows up as HEALED.
Nothing happens to the body that was sick that you projected previously. It does not exist. You just RE-PROJECT A NEW ONE, every moment. Sickness in the body can only show up if the mind is defending against truth, and sickness can only show up in the body if the mind has GUILT. "Sickness is but another form of guilt". Therefore, if the mind does not have guilt and defenses, the body WILL ONLY show up as healed, as PROOF, that the mind is healed. The mind will PROJECT a healed-appearing body to testify to ITS inner condition.
So while that broken leg persists, you are in denial. You may be owning up to the fact that you have some control over your PERCEPTION. But you are not admitting that you have the power to PROJECT what you are even looking at.
This is a fundamental difference and there is a pretty big divide in the ACIM community based around this one distinction. Many people believe all they need to do is fix their perception OF the world, or what's showing up, and then they are done. In this belief system, it becomes justified that you can still have sickness show up and have a "healthy mind", that you can still DIE and be innocent, you can welcome death, you can keep your sickness and be totally happy, etc.
Yes, to a degree, as a preparatory step, you can come to be "relatively peaceful" about these things through changing your perception. What you are INDIRECTLY doing there, is that it's not actually your perception that you're fixing, is the content of your mind that PROJECTS the body in the first place. Attempting to change your perception is a second-hand roundabout way of trying to address the content in your mind, which is "showing you" a belief in sin and sickness "in" the broken leg. But at some point.... you're going to hit a wall.
The wall will simply be, that in order for you to really thoroughly change your perception so that you do not believe in sickness, and have no sickness in your mind, you're going to have to also ADMIT, that your mind is projecting the FORM OF SICKNESS *AS* the body, in the first place, regardless of your perception OF it.
So many people are onto this "change my mind about the world" kick, which changes perception OF the world. But they do not realize, at some point, if you are not going to perceive sickness, your mind has to be emptied of all belief in sickness, AND THIS MUST result in the PROJECTION changing. It has to. The mind can't retain some small amount of belief in separation and have *perception* be a state of peace.
If that broken leg is still showing up, but you are relatively "ok with it", you are IN DENIAL. That broken leg is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING UP AT ALL. A sick body is PROOF the mind HAS NOT been healed.
There is this second camp of ACIM folk then who see this, and acknowledge, that the mind projects the body. Jesus Himself said it in that quote above. The mind that projects the body can make another. And if the mind can project the ENTIRE BODY, then IT is 100% responsible for making the body show up with ANY sign of sickness or death. This is how no-one can die without his own consent! If your mind does not put it there, it cannot be.
So if you just stop at.... I'm going to just be okay with this sickness, I'm going to perceive this sickness differently, I'm going to perceive this BODY differently, I'm going to look at this body in a more loving way etc.... that's a step TOWARDS healing the mind's content. But if that body is still showing up as BROKEN, you are NOT DONE.
This is where there comes to be a lot of denial, because not only is it often difficult to see that you projected the sickness AS the body (it can happen really fast and then go unconscious), there is also a lot of FEAR about this idea that your mind is THAT POWERFUL, that it can not only make sickness and death happen to you BY your will, but that the mind can also reverse that. Yet Jesus teaches:
"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both." ABOLISH means, to TOTALLY REMOVE. That means, the reversal of ALL forms and signs and symptoms of sickness in the body AND mind, and EVEN DEATH. It Literally means, the ability to reverse death, to raise the dead, and to completely restore life. It is the ability to REWIND SIN and UNDO ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES (effects) of your wrong decision.
Your mind is cause. Your body is your effect. The body is NOT CAUSED by the world in any way whatsoever. Ever. Your sickness is NOT PUT THERE by any cause outside of your mind, EVER. You are responsible for what you have chosen. And because you are, you can CHANGE YOUR MIND and it MUST CHANGE THE PROJECTION.
So yes it's one thing to work on changing your perception, but your perception has arisen from what you have projected. And that means, if you are GENUINELY undoing the sinful content in your mind, are taking full ownership of your power, are NOT believing that anything in the world has the power to affect you or your body, and are NOT attempting to demonstrate that the Son of God can be hurt and killed THROUGH the symbol of the body (the body can become a sign of immortality), then YOU WILL STOP PROJECTING SICKNESS AND DEATH.
You do not project it ONTO the body. You project it AS the body. No-one else put the body there. Your parents did not put the body there. Biology did not put the body there. Chemical reactions and physical interactions did not put the body there. The world, the dream, other people, did not put the body there. ONLY YOU DID.
So that means, if you're to go all the way with this.... this is where you get into MIRACLE WORKING. Because it means, you are willing to DEMONSTRATE, to live by example, that it is possible to reverse all sickness and death in yourself, AND IN OTHERS.
You first reverse it in yourself by accepting atonement. This allows you to receive miracles. Then you are able to express those miracles to and for others. If they are willing to accept it.
We are not supposed to be walking around with limbs hanging off and body parts failing and organs malfunctioning and eyesight going bad and developing a limp and a having cancers and diseases and various other forms of SIN.
Death is an attempt to demonstrate that the Son of God can be killed. Pain is an attempt to bind the son to the body to fixate him on and identify with being a real body. Sickness is an attempt to prove the Son can be hurt. Sickness is an attack on your brother. Sickness is the result of seeking outside of yourself, and demonstrates level confusion. None of this is God's will. It is a demonstration of the OPPOSITE OF GOD'S WILL for you.
No-one is supposed to be dying. Bodies are not supposed to be decaying and dying. There is NOT supposed to be 7 billion people planning their own death, who will very likely die in the next 100 years, putting 7 billion corpses in the ground, just because they did not want God's healing and love. That's their choice. It does not have to be yours.
If we are to demonstrate that we are immortal and invulnerable, we ARE supposed to demonstrate here, in the flesh, that the body cannot be hurt, BECAUSE, the body is ONLY coming from the mind, and therefore if you project a healthy body it will STAY HEALTHY at all times. And nothing can attack it. It is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be sick. NOR CAN IT DIE.
"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION."
Later, when it's done being useful, it is simply DISAPPEARED. Just as Jesus did:
"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. "
It was not a matter of it disappearing from his perception OF it. The body ITSELF disappeared because HE STOPPED PROJECTING IT.
THIS is our natural inheritance, this ability to work miracles, to reverse all sickness and death, to not only correct perception but to CORRECT PROJECTION. To UNDO everything we have PROJECTED. AND that ultimately includes your body, everyone else's body, all sickness, all death, all forms of separation, all objects, all planets, and this entire ILLUSORY UNIVERSE which is a PROJECTION coming from the mind.
So don't stop at "I will just change how I see the world." "Seek not to change the world, seek to change your mind about the world. Perception is a RESULT (effect of projecting) and not a cause (the body that shows up is not alive!). "And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless." ie... change your MIND, your body and the world MUST CHANGE to reflect the content of your mind. Without exception.
There are people who wake up in this world. There are people who are awake in the dream. There are people who have purified perception to such an extent that they seem to be seeing the real world or something close to it. They recognize that they were contributing sin to what is here, projecting it "onto" the body and world. But what they usually do not realize is, THEY are projecting the body and the world. And therefore, typically, they age, and they die. And then they reincarnate and make another body. Why? Because they did not get to the level where they woke up FROM dreaming, and FROM perceiving.
To wake up FROM the dream, you have to get in touch with the fact that you are the DREAMER of it, the one who is PROJECTING IT, and you are the one who is PUTTING ALL OF ITS OBJECTS OUT THERE. This puts you in touch with miracle working because now you are able to enact VERTICAL PERCEPTION, cause and effect are now vertical not linear, and you recognize the power of YOUR MIND to manifest absolutely anything in this dream, or change it, at will. Because you will realize, you have been DOING THAT all along. Your body was coming from YOUR MIND, and your mind only.
To wake up from the dream requires the undoing of dreaming, which overrides ALL perception, deals with separation at ITS CAUSE, and therefore DISAPPEARS THE DREAM UNIVERSE. That means, the disappearance of the physical universe, including precious "planet earth", which was never anything but a mental projection. All that is then left, is God's creation, which is Heaven.
I took a deep dive into every single statement about "the real world", to find out all possible implication of what it IS and IS NOT referring to.
It is clear to me that what Jesus calls "the real world" IS "the borderland of thought" in between the world we MADE in false perception, and the reality of Heaven. The real world is a REFLECTION of heaven, seen in forgiveness through the eyes of Christ. It includes your ability to see WITH love, looking with forgiveness upon/past the world you made, so that the world you made in attack is seen in the holy instant present as the forgiven world.
The real world also clearly comes BEFORE your re-entry to heaven, and this is backed up in numerous statements. It is entirely within the realm of perception and consciousness, as the highest state of consciousness possible prior to awakening to knowledge. It is still a DREAM but it is a happy dream, a forgiving dream, in which there is no idol worship or illusion or fantasy. And Jesus does distinguish that it has "reality" to the extent that it shares or reflects the reality of heaven.
The real world was also given by God to REPLACE the world you made. In essence, you MADE hell, which is an illusory world of sin and death. Then the Holy Spirit answered this in the co-making of the real world, which is like an alternative dream. A dream of forgiveness and light and love. It REFLECTS heaven, but is not heaven. It is true perception, salvation, atonement, the miracle, right mindedness, and is GIVEN by God. God GAVE you this real world to replace the one you made, made by the Holy Spirit.
God loves the real world, because it is seen WITH love, and seeing the world you made WITH love makes it impossible to see the world of sin and death. Forgiveness overlooks bodies and looks beyond to the light of the real world, the face of Christ. BY loving the world, the UNREAL world is not seen, because love influences perception. And by projecting love, the HOly Spirit projects the real world for you to see, IN PLACE OF the unforgiven world.
What I found also are many statements clearly discerning that the term ILLUSION refers to an UNFORGIVEN world only, to false perception. The world we originally tried to make without God/Holy Spirit. The world of sin and death and sickness. The world of bodies and forms and planets. That is the world WE made, through unforgiveness, and through attack and guilt and sin and fear.
Jesus refers to THAT world as "an illusory world" and quite consistently, all references to ILLUSION appear to refer ONLY to that world, not the forgiven/real world. Because IN the "real world" state you reflect truth and DISPEL all illusions, RECOGNIZING what is there. This is why true perception is ACCURATE perception.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." thus refers to the false perceptual world of bodies, UNFORGIVEN, unreal, untrue, in which the truth is obscured and lies seem like truth. A world seen without any reason or sanity or light. A world of deception. When you approach true perception, ILLUSIONS are seen through and undone and removed, and so true perception does not see an ILLUSORY world, it sees "the real world". The world as it is WITHOUT the distortion of illusion, and free from the ego's shadow. It's kind of like the world with minimal ego.
The real world, or the sense of it "having reality", doesn't mean it IS reality as in Heaven, but it does mean it is "as is", founded on love, and is not MIS-perceived. True perception is accurate perception and LINES UP WITH what knowledge or direct sight would see. It is truthful.
I also saw references indicating that THE VEIL, which is a reference to the physical world hanging in front of the face of Christ (whereby the face of christ is another synonym for the real world/true perception), refers ONLY to the unforgiven world. The veil entails the world of bodies, the granite block of sin, the forms of error, the gap, etc.
This veil is SEEN THROUGH AND PAST to see the real world/face of Christ. Also when you see the real world you DO NOT SEE the unforgiven world of sin and bodies. It is forgotten. And in its TOTAL forgetting you ONLY see the real world. And as Jesus says, you will barely have time to thank God for this before he takes you home. The veil of illusions parts, the real world is seen, then you go to heaven.
There are numerous references to you FIRST arriving at the real world, the borderland of thought between the world of sin that you made, and actual Heaven which is God's Kingdom, and THEN God taking the last step to take you home. Out of time, into eternity. Out of bodies, into the light of eternal life. There is a clear distinction between Heaven and the real world, whereby the real world is at most Heaven's REFLECTION, and is seen through the eyes of Christ. And also interestingly, we are to recognize Christ FIRST, before we move onto the love of God.
So the "real world" is a state of light and awareness and wakefulness, WHILE still dreaming. It is a DREAM OF being awake. And in this sense as you approach the real world you DO seem to be waking up, becoming more aware. And at the real world you are practically fully awake, but slightly asleep still. Only moving on from the real world INTO heaven do you fully awaken. But prior to this you can be exceedingly wakeful while still in a body.
The real world, being a reflection of heaven, also is a state that reflects sharing. Holy relationships reflect real relationships. There is equality and a kind of oneness. There is a lack of separations and divisions. A kind of unity is seen spread across chaos. And what used to be a world of sin and death is reinterpreted in such a way that a hidden song of gratitude and light is seen and heard radiating from it. Sights of war and death are reinterpreted, through perception, as harmless and gentle and welcome. And the healed peaceful mind projects peace and love and sees only peace and love in it.
Note that seeing from love, you look toward love, which is a light BEYOND BODIES. The illusory world, the veil, is seen through, and overlooked, by forgiveness, through extension, which is christ vision. The world is seen as "forgiven" because it is recognizes as an illusion and is not seen as real sin. It is seen PAST. And this overlooking makes the illusory world seem holy and forgiven. But simultaneously sight (spiritual eye) reaches beyond the illusory world TO the light of the real world. Eventually it sees ONLY this light, as the veil disappears, fully revealing the face of Christ.
After this, the real world DOES END, because it IS a dream, except for the eternal love that was reflected in it through thoughts of love, which are saved as gifts. Because the real world IS still a dream and it vanishes as true perception is converted into knowledge. Being FULLY in the real world is like being on the OUTSKIRTS of the world, standing on the edge, not involved, not confused, not caught up in the world. Being passer by. Seeing from love and truth. Illusions recognized and dispelled. In a state of mind outside of separateness and form. Awareness of dreaming. A borderland of thought just shy of heaven and outside of heaven's gate.
I have a lot of quotes, but here's a handful of the clearer snippets that I highlighted along the way...
"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven"
"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made"
"your new and ONLY real perception"
"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight."
"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."
"For you share the real world as you share Heaven"
"When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you, and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself."
"If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son ARE the world’s reality, the real world MUST be IN HIS MIND"
"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death."
"For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal." (eternal means something a bit different than "will be there forever", because the real world does end).
"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."
"relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you"
"Make the world real (loving, innocent etc) unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit"
"In His sight, the Son of God is perfect" "He will SHOW you the real world"
"The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world"
"And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen" "He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you"
"we will look upon the world as God "created" it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen"
"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"
"And perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the ONLY reality."
"as His from Love. And He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. "
"Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake" (sleep means false perception, waking is true perception, but is not the FINAL awakening FROM sleep)
"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."
"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.
"The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance"
"You will first DREAM of peace (the real world), and THEN awaken to it (heaven)."
"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is SO little and SO easy to cross that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all ugliness, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."
"The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone"
"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."
"the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose."
"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"
"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, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the T(634) - 461 - past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home (heaven). "
"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? "
"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness (the veil is the unreal world seen in false perception only!); the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery"
"The holy relationship, a MAJOR step toward the perception of the real world, is LEARNED. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew."
"In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."
"The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will, JOINED with the Will of God."
"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."
"There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and WHEN you reach it is APART from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS, received instead.
This is the journey’s end. We have referred to it as the "real world.""
"Salvation IS a borderland"
"Salvation (real world/forgiven world) stops just short of Heaven, for only perception NEEDS salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so can not be saved. "
"The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence which can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion"
"The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray (idols are part of false perception)"
"And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."
"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. "
"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone, because its purpose is forgiveness, NOT idolatry."
"The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived, but wanted not."
"Thus is the real world’s purpose gently brought into awareness, to REPLACE the goal of sin and guilt. "
"Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror"
"This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror."
"The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified."
"As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. "
"Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come. We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world."
"and the sight of the real world which has come to replace the unforgiven world you thought was real."
"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth"
"Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered."
"Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts. The real world pictures Heaven's innocence."
"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear (world you made without hs, false perception), and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found."
"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"
"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. "
"There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."
"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."
"hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear. There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes. "
"How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon."
"There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident."
"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. "
"Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the ONE-MINDEDNESS of the Christ Mind"
"Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. "
"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."
"THE FACE OF CHRIST has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the Face of Christ is perception"
"But the Face of Christ is[5] the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world."
"Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God. "
To understand the separation from God, consider the relationship between light and darkness.
At first, light is everywhere in heaven. Then in the separation, the presence of light is resisted by trying not to will that there be light. This "puts the brakes" on creation, as an unwillingness to extend love, and a selfish attempt to retain everything for yourself. This is kind of like a light bulb that does not want to let its light shine because it wants to keep the light for itself.
When the light is shining, all is well. When there is a blockage or a denial of the light, the light SEEMS to dim. And now a seeming shadow or darkness forms. The shadow appears darker, as though there is less light there. As if light has gone away.
If you look carefully, you may notice that the shadow totally DEPENDS on the light being blocked. When the light is not blocked, there is no shadow. When the block appears, the shadow appears. And the shadow has no say in this.
On the one hand, a discerning mind should recognize that the shadow itself doesn't really have ability to assert its own existence. It can't decide to stay on its own. It can't resist the light. Nor can it cause light to go away.
Really, the darkness isn't ACTUALLY darkness. It's the absence of light. These are not the same thing. Light being absent, and darkness being "present" are different. If darkness is truly present, then darkness actually removes light as light's equal and causes light to go away, or can resist it.
In the separation, all that we really did was block the light. We blocked it with blocks to awareness, which are forms of denial, unwillingness and resistance. By being unwilling to will with God, we were unwilling to extend light. These are attempts to stop light from shining, to hold back the extension of love, and to INDUCE darkness.
Having done this, it seems like we go into a darkened state of mind. What we're going into is the appearance of a "lack of light" or "absence of light". We don't actually go into an "actual" darkness. There is in fact no such thing as an actual darkness. Similarly to how there isn't really evil or hell.
"Just because "nature abhors a vacuum," which is true enough, it does NOT follow that "a vacuum is filled with hellfire."
"Those who have not yet "changed their minds" have entered the "hellfire" concept into it."
The sane recognition that darkness is only the seeming absence of light, produced by a blockage, cast as a shadow, is what it means to recognize that this blockage is just a MISTAKE or error. There is no real darkness there at all, ONLY an illusion that makes it appear light is absent.
When you fail to recognize that the blockage is just an illusion, you start to believe that the darkness is, itself, a "positive creation", something which can cause light to go away, some kind of "actual real evil".
This is also the difference between mistakes/errors and sins. A mistake is recognized as simply a "lack of light", whereas when the appearance of light lacking is given artificial attributes of reality, it is considered to be "real darkness."
We lend it the darkness reality, truth, power, causation, will, a mind of its own, etc... and now what is really only the ILLUSION of light being absent, is now interpreted as the PRESENCE of active living darkness. And now we believe that this darkness has the power TO HIDE something, to actually blot it out.
This is the insane egoic belief that darkness has power over the light, and can cause light to go away. That darkness shines away light. It is the belief in evil and in sin and of having POWER OVER GOD. It is the authority problem and is level confusion. It is the belief that separation is real, and that guilt is true. And it is also fear. And believing that darkness can hide stuff induces fear that something evil IS hiding in the dark, which you cannot see.
"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."
"It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet, it is only the hidden that CAN terrify, NOT for what it IS, but FOR its hiddenness."
By believing that what actually is only an ILLUSION OF light's absence, is actually the PRESENCE OF a "real darkness", is the entire ego thought system. It is the belief that sin is real and death is happening and impossible suffering can occur and that hell is evil and real. That the boogie man is hiding in the dark shadows. It's the stuff of nightmares.
When we denied the light of heaven, we pushed our mind into a darkened state. A state of the appearance of the lack of love and light and life. This was only really a state of the ILLUSION that light CAN be absent.
It's an illusion because light is actually permanent and can never be destroyed, and so DENIAL is the belief that it's not there, even though it is. Believing that light is not present, when it is, must mean that you believe something is true which is not. This is an ILLUSION. There is deception and temptation because something impossible seems possible.
This means also that so long as there is a state where light seems absent at all, there IS illusion. The state of light's absence is ITSELF an illusion, because it's not true that light can really be absent anywhere. So when it APPEARS that light is not present, in any way, this can't be TRUE, but it SEEMS true to insane minds.
The really big thing is this. WE MADE A WORLD OUT OF THIS DARKNESS - WITHIN the illusion of the lack of light. It is in fact THE lack of light. Another term for a lack or light or love, in ACIM, is error. The seeming lack of light appears to be an erroneous world.
"For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."
Then, if this erroneous world is believed to be REAL, it is converted from the ILLUSION of light's absence, to the belief that it is REAL DARKNESS. That this world is in fact, the PRESENCE of a world. That there really is a world there, alive and willfull and with mind and power and causation. A world which has OVERTHROWN the Kingdom. This belief is a misperception of the illusion of the lack of light, and nothing more.
What this means is, the world we made, which includes the planet Earth, originally was simply the illusion of light seeming to be lacking. It WAS the 'absence'. It was a mis-creation, or a sort of failed creation. A limited expression, infused with unwillingness and denial. It was made in the thought of the denial of God, and as an attack on God. An attack on light, if interpreted as "actual darkness".
Then as we moved further into believing in it, we invested this illusion of light's absence with the qualities of God, such as reality and truth and power and life and will and causation. And now what merely was **IN TRUTH** an ILLUSORY WORLD, in the shape of the ABSENCE of light, was converted by our belief in it as "REAL DARKNESS" to a WORLD OF SIN.
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh"
What this means is, a world which is in fact ONLY an illusion of light's absence, and exists ONLY so long as the light REMAINS blocked, NOT made of light, was invested with greater belief in order to ASSERT that it is in fact a REAL DARK PLACE - a real living hell.
The physical world is this world, a world made of shadows cast from blockages in the mind, invested with belief and given reality, to try to convince ourselves that hell exists instead of heaven. This is the world of bodies and of forms and planets and other objects. And this world exists ONLY WITHIN our false perception. ONLY IN THE LACK OF LIGHT.
"The world is false perception."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible."
"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true."
Note that another word for sin is insanity. "Sin is insanity." Which means that investing darkness with the belief that it is reality, is insane. This is because darkness is NOT the presence of evil, or of ANYTHING. Nor is it s REAL darkness. Just as planet Earth is not really hell. But believing that the earth is real, IS a belief in sin, and DOES cause you to experience the Earth as though it is a REAL hell.
What we're now describing here is false perception, which really is the false BELIEF that an illusory world made of darkness is reality. It is the kind of perception which takes the physical world to be real and true and valid. It is a deceptive perception, in which something which IS an illusion is MIS-PERCEIVED AS a reality. Just as darkness ie lack of light is mis-perceived as the real presence of evil.
The Earth, in its original construction, was born of error, and projected outward, and believed in by insane twisted minds, which both produced it through their denial of light, and reinforced it through their belief in evil. This is why ACIM refers to it as "the hell you made."
"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."
"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."
"The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions."
The body was also made as part of the illusion of light's absence, masquerading as the PRESENCE of a "real something". But the body is really nothing at all, just as Earth is nothing at all. This is why there is no world and the body is not an actual positive creation. The body and the world DO NOT REALLY EXIST.
The body is given senses designed to reinforce the world of apparent SIN, ie Earth believed to be "real darkness", to give it reality, to make it seem real, and to give it all the meaning it has. This is in order to reinforce the idea that real darkness exists. This was its original evil purpose. This is why we "made it" by NOT creating reality.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"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."
To the ego, creation means taking something that does not exist and trying to give it life, in terms of taking the ILLUSION that light can be absent and reinforcing it to the point where it seems darkness has CAUSED light to disappear.
As such, Earth was made by us to seem to REPLACE the world of light that is Heaven, to blot it out and hide it and destroy it. Indeed to destroy the light of God and his children. "The world was made as an attack on God. A place where God (light) could enter not" etc. It was born from an evil thought - a mad idea.
What then needs to happen, is the UNDOING of all this distortion and lies. This confusion and hallucination and the belief that Earth (darkness) really exists. What we need is forgiveness. We have to re-trace the steps. This means that first of all, we need to recognize (as described) how we got into this mess, and what the mess IS.
The mess is, that we have denied God's light, which has produced the UNTRUE ILLUSION that light is indeed absent, which has taken the shape of A WORLD OF BODIES, and which has then been invested with reality and fear and evil thought to try to GIVE IT immortality and reality. To make it permanently replace heaven. However, this is not possible.
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that"
"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."
What we then need to do is recognize the facts. If we have belief in the world as "real", or existing, or causing, or happening, or being valuable, or having power over the light, or able to kill immortal beings, or capable in any way of enforcing darkness and suffering, then we DO believe that darkness can make light go away. And as such Earth is interpreted as REAL hell.
This is the belief that the world of bodies ***IS NOT an illusion***. Believing it IS NOT an illusion, IS A DENIAL of the FACT that it is. It's an inability to see and recognize that the world is made of light's absence, and CAN ONLY last so long as the light remains absent. It's even more heavily the belief that the world is actually real and has REPLACED the reality of Heaven.
If we believe this in any way, we need to look at this and undo this belief. We need to stop believing that the world IS real. That belief IS FALSE PERCEPTION and is a belief in evil. What we've put ONTO the world, given it is ONLY an illusion of light's absence, is the heaviness of sin and guilt and value and meaning. We've tried to turn an ILLUSION of a world into a reality, to convert "lights absence" into "darkness's presence."
All this projected meaning, the "perceptions about the world", the sin and hate and guilt we throw onto it, the condemnation of it, the false beliefs about it, is all part of our attempt to reinforce the idea that the world IS real and DOES have power over God and his Son. If you believe it REALLY IS sinful, then you are using it to stay in the illusion that darkness really exists. Which also means that to NOT do that, you have to STOP believing the world is real.
So then we set about withdrawing these projections of "real sin", and of reality, and of rebellion, and of attack and harm, and of guilt and fear, which we have put ONTO AN ILLUSION OF A WORLD. We have in fact laid illusions ON TOP OF ILLUSION, in an attempt to DENY that the world IS an illusion, so that we can MAKE IT REAL to us. This is a DOUBLE DENIAL.
"But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion."
"It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult."
When, through forgiveness, we lift away from the world our belief in sin and guilt, we in fact lifting away REALITY from it. We are withdrawing BELIEF in it. We are stripping it of value, and meaning, and all the heavy dark USES of the world to victimize and to attack. We are taking back our FUTILE attempt to PROVE that darkness can destroy the light, that death trumphs over life, and that the Son of God can be killed in the flesh.
Once we stop doing this, the world that we have been "attacking", in an effort to LEND IT reality, in order to keep it, begins to be RECOGNIZED FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS. Since a false perception of the world makes it seem REAL - because false perception is a CONFUSED perception, a true perception of it does THE OPPOSITE. It takes AWAY its reality. It strips it of its causal power. It diminishes it in your sight. And it reduces its value to you. It removes what it is NOT, and reveals what it IS.
At the end of this process, the world which lives in and is made OF the illusion of light's absence, is seen NOT as a world capable of destroying life, or of sinning, or of inducing guilt, or of making life into suffering, but instead it is RECOGNIZED as ONLY AN ILLUSION OF LIGHT'S ABSENCE. In effect, its TRUE nature, is not that it is real, but that it IS NOT REAL.
"Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all."
"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."
Recognizing the world for what it IS - a FALSE appearance of the absence of God, does not mean recognizing that it IS real or true. Recognizing the truth ABOUT the world, does not necessarily imply that the world IS true. Only that we are looking at it WITH truth and seeing it "truly", to find out ***IF*** it is true. Seeing what IS ACTUALLY there. But it is entirely possible that what is ACTUALLY there, IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT a reality.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
The world in fact ONLY exists as an illusory world. It is like a veil of shadows and darkness. It PRETENDS to be a world - a something. It is really, in truth, THE ABSENCE OF A WORLD. It is the seeming form that shadows take when light is blocked. It is ONLY the interior seeming contents and shifting patterns of the SHADOW cast by light's blockage. And as a result, the dark world is really ONLY an illusion. Believing it is real sin is a SECOND error designed to convert illusions into reality. This is like 3 levels.
1) Heaven/reality (no illusory world, only the world of light).
2) Illusory world regarded as unreal (true perception).
3) Illusory world regarded as real (false perception).
More to the point, the world is in fact, in its "true form", seen clearly and accurately, NOT a world made of "real sin", NOT a world that can cause anything to be threatened, but ONLY a world that IS FICTION. It is smoke and mirrors. It is the illusion that there is no light. It is MADE OF denial. It is the denial of existence, and so it denies ITS OWN existence.
"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."
When the "lack of light", which can at most be an ILLUSION OF a lack of light, since light cannot be really lacking, is recognized for what it IS, it is NOT regarded as a "real" anything. It is not a real world, or a real darkness, or a real sin. Its TRUE nature is that it is an ABSENCE of anything real, and an illusion of LACK.
Like a shadow, the world then CANNOT LAST, IF the blocks to the awareness of light are removed. The world DEPENDS ON this "separation" in order to maintain its seeming existence. If you lift away the dark blockages and the denial, and the light comes in, the darkness IS GONE. This is because darkness can ONLY SEEM to exist PROVIDED light seems to be absent. It is a lack, and not a presence. Forgiving it brings light in, and makes the world GO AWAY.
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."
The darkness does not TURN INTO light either. Light shines it AWAY, because darkness is just a sort of fictional label we give to "the part that seems lacking". A name for the lack ITSELF. But lack is not a positive creation, it is more like a "hole" in creation. A seeming place where light was not allowed to enter. A place where God was not allowed to dwell. Where life was denied.
When the light comes, that which is the absence of light and not the presence of darkness, SIMPLY DISAPPEARS. It at first appears to become lighter, because light is beginning to REPLACE it. It seems to be a mixture of darkness and light. It brightens and sparkles and seems fresh and new. Sin is lifted from it, guilt is removed from it, and REALITY IS WITHDRAWN from it.
"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, remembering that all power is of God."
BUT, at the same time, the presence of the darkness is decreasing, BECAUSE the light is increasing. The LACK of light is going away. "Miracles supply a lack." As such, anything "made of darkness", or which was really merely the ILLUSION that darkness was present, is now shown to have been really NOT the presence of ANYTHING. Like it was just some dream that passed by. And so the shadow world now simply FADES OUT and vanishes and disappears and is gone forever, leaving NO TRACE. In truth, it WAS NEVER REALLY ANYTHING.
"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."
"An unremembered world will leave no trace behind its going, when God's gifts have been accepted as the only thing you want."
"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."
This is why ACIM teaches that "there is no world." The world, Earth, this planet, this physicality, is NOTHING pretending to be something. It is nothing other than a ILLUSION of a world, made of the LACK OF A WORLD, due to the REJECTION of heaven, masquerading as existence. It is what you end up with, limited and withering and half dead, when you try to BLOCK LIFE. It is a world of DEATH. It is made OF death and HAS no life.
"Without the idea of death, there is no world."
"There IS no life outside of Heaven."
"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven (in the "darkness"), only the conflict of illusions stands (illusion of light being absent); senseless, ***impossible***, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven (interpreting the illusion of the lack of a world AS a SOLID world). Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."
"it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere.
There is no world, ie there is no Earth, because at MOST it is comprised of and DEPENDS ON maintaining heaven's ABSENCE. It REJECTS reality. It is not compatible with life. And it has NO REAL PROPERTIES of its own. It is utterly slave to the shadow projection, dependent on the maintenance of blockages, and dwells SOLELY in denial. It cannot exist WHERE there is light.
"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. "
As the awareness of the light increases, the LACK of light decreases. The illusion that light is not HERE lifts, like a veil. The veil of a "solid world" becomes transparent. Heavy sin and causation and evil are lifted FROM the illusory world, SO THAT it is not believed to be real. And the more light infuses where it seems to be, the LESS it can be seen. The world fade OUT, and heaven fades IN.
Eventually, upon opening up to the FULL experience of the light, the face of Christ appears, "Gone are bodies in the blazing light on the altar to the son of God.", the Earth is literally SHONE AWAY by the light and REPLACED AND UNDONE FOREVER, it literally DISAPPEARS, and its NOTHINGNESS is truly apparent. There then IS no world. There is ONLY light, and "Heaven is all that remains."
"Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
Earth is the ABSENCE of reality and the ABSENCE of heaven. It remains only so long as heaven is blocked. And once heaven shines, the world is shone away forever. When believing in real sin, earth reflects hell. When NOT believing in real sin, earth is recognized as a meaningless MIRROR in which heaven's LIGHT is temporarily reflected. And then the world VANISHES just as eternity is finally permitted its full expression, and where there was darkness now there is only light, and the world cannot be found.
This is why we are to be THE LIGHT of the world. This is why we are to see the REFLECTION of heaven's light ACROSS the CHAOS of the illusion of light's absence. And this is why ultimately the light itself will shine the world away completely.
"What SEEMS eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of man; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."
"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."
In ACIM we're told about "the real world" and many people have different ideas about what that's referring to. Here's my take on it. It took me quite a long time to realize this.
Contrary to popular belief, the real world is actually another name for Heaven. God's creation. Reality. This is why Jesus correctly uses the word "Real" in relation to it. It is the Heaven that God created, which also is another name for the Sonship. It is described for example in this quote:
"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."
The shining forever only takes place in Heaven. It's not a temporary shining or an intermediary place. There is no Earth there, no bodies, no walls, and no sun to cause "night and day." No buildings, no streets, nothing physical. It's talking about Heaven.
Now, in some OTHER statements Jesus makes, he is speaking in a context of having perception still. And when He is speaking within this context, He refers to "the real world". But is now referring to the real world, Heaven, from a perceptual standpoint. So now what he's calling the real world, is the PERCEPTION OF the real world. It's a symbol, within a dream. An interpretation or judgement, a partial glimpse or reflection of Heaven within the separated state. He refers to that "image" of the real world AS the real world, because you are PERCEIVING the real world - heaven - but this is not the same thing as being IN Heaven.
"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."
"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."
Jesus says for example that you can PERCEIVE the real world, which means that you can be still OUTSIDE of the Kingdom, looking in from a separated state - because "perception is a separated state". It's like window shopping.
"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."
"The forgiven world", is actually a reference to Earth/this universe which is seen through, past, and beyond, as a thin veil which covers the face of Christ. The "face of Christ" is another synonym for the PERCEPTION OF the real world of heaven - sort of an outside exterior look at the surface of Heaven from a separated state. The forgiven world is Earth, the real world is Heaven. And "the real world" (perceived) is what you see BEYOND "the forgiven world" (earth) when you overlook it with forgiveness but are still having perception. And "those who perceive still need healing" and "perception of the truth (perception of the real world) is not the same as knowing it (being IN IT, one with it)".
"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 (perception of heaven), reaching quietly and gently across chaos (earth/hell/forgiven world), and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf (part of the forgiven world, NOT the real world) becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection (signs are symbolic, not the ACTUAL thing - the perfection seen is the real world BEYOND the forgiven world of the leaf). 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."
Similarly "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" really means that you look at/through/beyond the forgiven world of Earth, it becomes transparent, and you see BEYOND IT, to the real world, and it is the real world that is GOD... that you SEE BEYOND the physical, beyond forms, and seems to be "in" what you physically see, because you're seeing both the physical AND the real world at the same time. This does not in any way make the forgiven world REAL, NOR does it associate it with God. God is IN what you see because he is BEYOND the forgiven world that forgiveness is OVERLOOKING and seeing PAST, TO reality. And when you forgive the world and see God "in" it, the world disappears and reveals there is ONLY GOD, no world.
"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."
"A forgiven world cannot last."
Once the face of christ is seen, ie real world is perceived, the forgiven world - the veil - actually disappears from sight completely, because "it is impossible to see two worlds."
"This world you see (earth/forgiven world) MUST BE DENIED (not put on a pedestal!!!), for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS (there ARE TWO WORLDS, heaven and earth, and Heaven is HERE, Earth IS NOT HERE). 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." - its like a seesaw, you can be up or down but not both. As true perception dawns, false perception ends. As heaven is recognized, earth is forgotten.
"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ (earth/forgiven world) is powerless before His Majesty, and **disappears** before His holy sight." (thus earth can't be holy)
"Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light." (body is made of darkness - "the body is a dream" "the body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and projected outwards.")
Here for me is the key distinction between these "four" different worlds/terminologies:
Unforgiven world" Earth/this world, not overlooked, it is an illusion, and IF YOU BELIEVE IT IS REAL, you are delusional and insane and are blinded by perception of form. You are not seeing PAST form so are no forgiving. This makes the world seem like a real place, a real nightmare of hell. Where "things happen", people suffer, and there is real death. THIS is "the world you made." It has nothing to do with God, and the Holy Spirit DOES NOT see it because His forgiveness COMPLETELY overlooks it and fixates on the real world.
Forgiven world: Earth/this world, overlooked with forgiveness, seen through, recognized WITH truth of true perception as BEING FALSE, becomes transparent and disappears when the face of christ/real world is seen. True perception overlooks it. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Teachers of God (not advanced) still see it overlaid on top of the perception of the real world as a thin veil and so can operate "in" the forgiven world/earth from a state of "mostly awake" or "Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers". This awareness is NOT awakening. It is "conscious sleep", because dreams are still being DREAMED.
Real world (as perception of heaven from outside): Also is the same thing as the face of christ, and "the real world still is but a dream". This perception OF the real world isn't reality, it's a reflection of Heaven within the dreaming state. It seems heaven-like and "holy" but it is still an illusion. Perceiving this FULLYy you NO LONGER SEE planet Earth and cannot remain in this state longer than an instant before God scoopes you up and you return to awareness of BEING IN Heaven.
Real world (as Heaven itself): Being IN heaven, with no perception, no forgiven world, no bodies, no buildings etc. This is the living world of light. God's creation. The sonship. Reality. The REAL world that is not earth in any way.
"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike (no perception IN the real world of heaven). Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done (includes atonement). And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God (all physical forms/worlds). God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant (perception of real world has made it impossible to see physical worlds), and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause (forgiven world disappears in this perception of light). For where God's memory has come at last (in heaven) there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies (no f'ing bodies in heaven!), and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
Here for example is a reference to how Heaven, the REAL real world, can reach into THIS world - the forgiven world.
"This aching world (Earth/physical/unforgiven world/hell/even as the forgiven world) has not the power to touch the living world (real world of Heaven) at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world (Heaven IS ANOTHER WORLD - the REAL world). But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here (outside the Kingdom, in this illusory world), BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you (from Heaven). 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 (earth/unforgiven world), and do not want (earth holds nothing that I want). The only effort you need make, to give this world (earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (God created Heaven not earth), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE. (Earth, un/forgiven world, is FALSE!)."
"The world you made (earth etc) is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself (heaven)."
God created the real world of heaven: "The real world (heaven, perceived) is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade (earth will disappear). But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son ("And God so loved the world (heaven) that he gave it TO His only begotten Son - God doesn't give planets."). Your ONE reality (heaven) was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him. (in heaven)"
Now, the Holy Spirit is a simultaneous MAKER (not creator) of the world you made. You made hell, but he repurposes it to direct you towards Heaven, and to change your perception of/making of it so that you stop interpreting it as hell and reinterpret it as a REFLECTION of Heaven, once removed from Heaven. HE, therefore, made "the real world" as in, the PERCEPTION OF the world GOD CREATED, Heaven, from inside the dream. And this real world is the face of christ. It is NOT EARTH. He ignores, overlooks, cancels, everything of the forgiven world and points beyond it.
"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it (heaven), but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made (you made earth in error/sin), BECAUSE it has another Maker Who CAN reconcile its **goal** with His Creator's purpose.
In His perception of the world (forgiven world, totally overlooked), nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness (and "to see a sinless body is impossible" because perception does NOT SEE bodies). Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."
You can only perceive bodies if you believe in sin. You can only see bodies if you are Unforgiving. You can only see bodies/the forgiven world if you are NOT fully forgiving! Because a forgiven world cannot last and sinlessness is not OF the forgiven world, it's of the real world. Holy Spirit totally overlooks Earth and bodies and the forgiven world and fixates on the real world, temporarily through perception OF the real world and simultaneously IN the real world (heaven).
The Holy Spirit offers a happy dream to replace the nightmare dream that you made. It does not replace the world you made, it reinterprets it, OVERLOOKS it, and looks toward Heaven. The world you made as opposite to Heaven is hell, this planet, this universe. Spacetime. It is opposite to Heaven in every way. Holy Spirit allows you to forgive it and overlook it and forget it. This does not mean looking AT IT and LOVING IT. IT means learning TO SEE, by NOT SEEING THE WORLD - not allowing "perception of form" to BLOCK YOUR SIGHT. To look away from dark dreams of hell towards the light and eventually beyond it entirely. The real world is BEYOND the forgiven world. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision.
"You will first DREAM of peace (forgiven world/perception of real world), and THEN awaken to it (in Heaven/THE real world). Your first exchange of what you made for what you want, is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love (false perception vs true perception). In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams (earth + symbol of real world) where ALL perception is."
"And the real world is but your welcome of what always was (perception of heaven gets you ready to wake up TO heaven). Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening (being IN heaven) to what you have NOT lost. "
"The world you made" and "The world you see" are this planet and the surrounding environment. All of spacetime. You are not supposed to hold it dear or value it or want to keep it. *****SIGHT OF IT, IS COSTING YOU*****. "This world you see (earth, with body's eyes) MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ****YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS****. (very key mechanic, one or the other not both) 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." - you cannot see earth if you see heaven, period. You cannot see even the perception of the real world/face of christ and still see physical objects.
"You do not really want **the world you see** (earth + space), for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built (yes physical houses) have never sheltered you. The roads you made (yes physical roads) have led you nowhere, and no city that you built (yes like chicago, new york, london) 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." (get rid of that shit!)
"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."
True perception, perception of the real world (heaven), the face of christ, the happy dream, are all the same. Perception is always within the dream, OF the dream, or as an interpretation of heaven. It can reflect heaven or rather you can shine heaven's light into the dream from heaven and illuminate it and shine it away or overlook it, and see YOUR reflection of your IMAGE of your real self there. Once removed from reality.
"Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth."
Knowing occurs only IN heaven, not through perception.
Notice also there is a huge difference between the REFLECTION of heaven, and ACTUALLY BEING IN heaven.
"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them (YOU are the reflection), are ready at last for Heaven. There, ***holiness is not a reflection***, but rather the ***ACTUAL CONDITION*** of what was but reflected TO them here (on earth, BUT IN YOU, Earth does not become holy). God is no **image** (reflection are IMAGES in a dream), and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth (ACTUAL holiness). When **no perception** stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own (perception is gone), the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The **reflections** that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time (within the dream of spacetime), but bring eternity nearer or farther.
But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time (beyond spacetime!) Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its ***reflection IN you***, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."
PERCEIVING the real world (heaven) is seeing the "face" or "surface of" Christ from the outside. Outside the kingdom essentially. "The world", aka Earth etc, is a block - a literal physical blockage - a wall of sin - the veil - standing before and in the way of sight of heaven. Jesus refers to it as "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes are totally blinded by and cannot see past. PHYSICAL sin.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world (earth) forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
So as stated in you cannot see two worlds, once you FULLY perceive with true perception, you become INCAPABLE of seeing the world of bodies. The veil - which houses all the bodies and planets - DISAPPEARS, and now you PERCEIVE Heaven only. This is perception of the real world. What many people think "is the real world". But this reference, this perceived IMAGE of a real world, is a dream. ie "The real world still is but a dream"
The world of bodies, planets, animals, forests, civilizations, galaxies, is a dream world. It becomes the forgiven world. HELL, becomes forgiven. And this "forgiven world" WAS made of the idea of sin and separation and death. And by forgiving it, you are OVERLOOKING it, which causes it to DISAPPEAR. If you forgive hell, it will disappear. If you overlook sin, things MADE OF SIN, will disappear. If you overlook the separation, THE GAP, which contains spacetime, will disappear. And leave no trace in its going.
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin (earth is made of sin), for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world (spacetime world) in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. (spacetime ends) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible (bodies cannot exist in heaven, they rely on spacetime). Forgiveness proves it is impossible (no exceptions) because it sees it not (forgiveness, complete as the atonement, DOES NOT SEE THE WORLD OF BODIES). And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty. This is the shift that true perception brings"
Once the world is forgiven by all beings/souls, the forgiven world will entirely vanish. It is made of darkness. It is the ABSENCE of light. It is the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." It is opposition to reality. It is denial. It is made of the attempt to claim that light does not exist and darkness exists. When the light comes, light shines away darkness because darkness is not a real "thing". It's merely the illusion of the absence of light/love/God, and being an illusion it vanishes when it is recognized as such. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot stay without illusions."
"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them."
"And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless."
"No darkness abides ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, so your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your OWN mind." (yes, your OWN mind, as an individual mind, one of many)
"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."
"The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes." (body's eyes cannot see reality ever, and it also cannot perceive the real world!)
"The body is darkness."
The universe, as we know it, the physical, with Earth and other stuff, will disappear in the light. Earth does not translate INTO light, because it an ILLUSION of light's absence. It does not BECOME heaven. Earth is the ILLUSION, that there is an absence of heaven. It's a lack of light, which is impossible. "It is the world you see that is impossible." It's NOT THERE NOW. It's just an illusion, not a real thing. IT doesn't have an "it". When there seems to be darkness it is only because there seems to be a lack of light. There is a huge difference between light's seeming absence, and ACTUAL real darkness. Real darkness does not exist. The world, does not exist. It will simply vanish as an hallucination. There is no world. There is no body. There is no earth in heaven.
"Eternity will shine away the world."
"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
THERE WILL NOT BE A SINGLE SHRED OF EARTH KEPT WHEN IT IS SHONE AWAY BY THE LIGHT, just as all darkness VANISHES COMPLETELY when you switch the light on. "Illusions leave NO TRACE in their going."
"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 (because to SEE it you will NO LONGER see earth). For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."
And yes it does say literally, the SUN.... will vanish.
And then... there's being IN heaven.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (earth) 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 (earth does this) 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."
Yes the physical planet earth, hell, is opposite to Heaven in EVERY WAY. And God would've have to have been SPLIT MINDED In order to make it because he DID create Heaven and heaven is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Earth's nature and laws. "The laws of this world go against your nature." So he could not have created Earth AS WELL as Heaven. And earth IS NOT Heaven, it's a "sorry outcome".
"He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. " (you think you abide in, live, in reality, on planet earth. It is not reality, it is hell)
You can go beyond this world to the world of light, Heaven, which God created as your true home. Your REAL HOME. The REAL world.
"Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams. (talking about PERCEPTION of the real world/forgiven world).
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which ends together as you pass beyond the door." (into heaven).
"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy (perception OF the real world from outside). It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. (forgiven world has disappeared). The bridge between that world (perception of the real world) and this (Jesus talking from INSIDE OF HEAVEN - the REAL world) is SO little, and SO easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different (yes, two entirely different worlds, earth and heaven). Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world (earth/forgiven world/perception OF real world) at all (from beyond it). This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time (spacetime) into eternity (heaven), and beyond all ugliness (YES EVERYTHING IN SPACETIME IS UGLY - the forgiven world is ugly), into beauty that will enchant you (the beauty of HEAVEN ITSELF), and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."