"There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well."
The physical planet, Earth, was made by us as a place of "hell", in an attempt to make a world which is totally opposite to Heaven in EVERY way. The problem now is that we don't recognize HOW it is opposite to Heaven, or why it is not like Heaven at all. So let's take a look at the "laws" that run this world.
This world was based on the separation idea. This idea includes death, sacrifice, loss, scarcity, attack, competition, murder, suffering, lack, darkness, etc. This idea has created LAWS, the ego's laws, which has produced space-time, and has invented the "laws of physics". The physical planet is founded ON and BY these laws, and without these laws it could not maintain its form or function or exist at all. "Fear has made everything you think you see".
Look closely at what happens with physical matter. When two objects come close to each other, they never touch. Contradictory forces of attraction AND repulsion pull objects near and then push them away. If two objects were to touch, they would cause an atomic explosion and annihilation. That means when anything tries to join, or share, or "be one", it results in DEATH. How more opposite to Heaven can this be, that joining is death, and being separate is to "be alive".
Then consider what happens when you try to share an object. Let's say you have an apple and you want to "have" the apple, but you also want to share it. You could give it to someone, but now you have LOSS. And loss induces grief, and represents LACK and SCARCITY. To give, is to SACRIFICE. This is ego law, and totally unlike the laws of Heaven in which to give is to increase and allows you BOTH to SHARE everything.
Try to give the apple without losing it, it is impossible. Another's gain is your loss, and so you are now in COMPETITION. And the apple represents the idea of finite, LIMITATION of amounts, rather than unlimited supply. "God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."
There is no INCREASE when you give, as there would be in heaven, and it is impossible for you to BOTH have the whole apple. You can try to COMPROMISE, which is a law of SACRIFICE and SUFFERING, by having half an apple each, meaning neither person get's the whole and you both are EMPTY. And so there is no real sharing. These are the ego laws that run this world.
Also, because all objects are separate, nothing can ever share the same space with anything else. Objects cannot overlap, or they would DESTROY each other. To join or be "one", to unite in any way, results in death and destruction. This is the complete opposite to Heaven's laws, whereby when two things join there is oneness, harmony, peace and life. And so anything physical, any form, including human bodies and the planet, can never join or be one. Every single particle of matter is kept apart, separated off and different to the rest.
There is also no consistency of properties among particles of matter. While some things seem to act similarly, nothing is identical. While in God's world everything God creates is created in His perfect likeness and image, and all sons of God are perfectly EQUAL and identical in their nature, in the ego's world its "nature" is utterly UNNATURAL, CHAOTIC and NOT LIKE the rest. An apple is not an orange, or a banana. A house is not a car. A human is not a fish. Water does not behave like rocks. It is all made to be different, meaning there is NO EQUALITY.
Differences also mean that no two things can AGREE on anything, producing a state of PERPETUAL WAR, conflict, tension, disagreement and imbalance. Nothing is WHOLE within itself, everything LACKS what other things have, everything is only PARTIAL and finite and limited, and nothing has everything. This also means that no PART of this world FULLY exists.
Chemicals which are present in an apple, are NOT present in a screwdriver. The screwdriver LACKS what the apple has, sees the apple as having stolen part of wholeness from itself, and wants to destroy it to complete itself. This is all outlined in the ego's "laws of chaos" whereby we perceive that special love has been stolen by other people (ie you lost your SELF and they have what you LACK), locked up in their bodies, and we are willing to kill them to get it. Every object in the world is fundamentally in a state of LACK, LOSS, EMPTINESS and DESPERATION, producing compulsions to "seek and do not find."
And this isn't even half of what the purpose of the world is.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."
You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to oppose God, to shut out his NATURE, and to make it seem like he DOES NOT EXIST. Physical matter, is MURDEROUS. (what is not love is murder). The world didn't simply take on the form of a planet "just because". It was INTENTIONAL, to make a place governed by laws NOT OF GOD, which opposes and is UNLIKE Heaven in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE.
God's nature is that he is omnipresent. This means that God is fully present everywhere. This doesn't just mean God is really big and stretched out to cover the universe, but it also means ALL of God's being, is in EVERY location. The fullness of God is here, and there, and over there. This is utterly impossible according to ego laws, because if God were to be "fully over here", there is no God "left" to be "fully over there" simultaneously. Yet this is God's nature.
The ego, and its WORLD, including the Earth, was designed to create a PICTURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF GOD'S SON, in which God has been obliterated from existence. It does this by the physical ego laws. If you look at an object, you'll notice that this object is not the same as another object. If it's an apple, it is not the same as a television. This means, there is some of the possibility over here in the apple, and some of the possibility over there in the television set. Neither of them contains "everything". They are separate, distinct, and kept apart.
What this does, is it presents a physical "picture" which is trying to STATE, to affirm and assert, that "nothing contains everything" "no part of the world contains all of it" "there is no everything in any single object". THEREFORE... because "everything" is nowhere, and NOTHING IS WHOLE, THERE IS NO WHOLENESS ANYWHERE, SO GOD, WHO NATURE IS TO BE FULLY PRESENT EVERYWHERE, DOES NOT EXIST *ANYWHERE*! This picture then forms what you think is "nature", which is the UNNATURAL laws of the ego world. It was made to COMPLETELY OBSCURE sight of God, to make it seem like God's NATURE does not apply here AT ALL, and therefore that God is dead.
THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE WORLD AS THE EGO MADE IT. "The world was made as an attack on God." If you BEHOLD IT, ie see it, with your eyes or mind, you CANNOT KNOW GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God." Because simply, if you are looking at this picture of "God cannot exist", it is distracted you and blocking you from seeing that "God does exist." "You cannot see two worlds". Either you are in Heaven with God, or you're dreaming of planet Earth and trying to be dead.
This is why Jesus says "there is nothing so BLINDING as sight of form." To SEE FORM, to see the Earth, is to be BLIND and to NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL. The body's eyes were made to look on SIN and DEATH and believe they are reality. You think you are here observing a real world, when in fact your head is buried in the sand and you do NOT HAVE VISION. The body's eyes were designed by the ego, ON PURPOSE, to make it seem like you are sensing and looking at something that exists, but in fact is a hallucination, stuck in a box, in the dark, looking at nothingness. It's designed so that you WILL NOT SEE GOD.
In every way, the underlying FUNCTION of this planet, is MADE OF, based on, run by, and dictated by, the idea of separation and DEATH. It is a state OF death, because life which is eternal and of Heaven does not change. "Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals".
The world also is a state of DENIAL - it is the physical embodiment of the denial of God and reality. It is a state of UNCONSCIOUSNESS and death. And Jesus says "a world that denies its own existence does not exist." "There is no world."
"From knowledge and perception respectively, two distinct thought systems arise which are opposite in every respect. In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. The world of perception, however, is made by the belief in opposites and separate wills, in perpetual conflict with each other and with God. What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real."
"When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."
This world, Earth, is the ego's world, nothing but a dream, a fiction of OPPOSITION TO HEAVEN, designed to attack God and separate the Son and kill the Son of God. Or at least to create the illusion that this is possible.
Now. You can, with the Holy Spirit, change how you look AT and INTERPRET this world. "Holy Spirit is the great reinterpreter of the world". You can join His way of looking, and learn to SEE and RECOGNIZE, that this world that you think is so special and lovely in all its ways of death and murder, even at the subatomic level, IS NOT REAL. That it is showing you a picture which is FALSE, or not true. That its very FORMS, its separations, its objects, are a FANTASY about murdering God.
This leads you to True Perception and the "forgiven world", aka "real world", which entails the ability to look at THE WORLD *YOU* MADE, hell, this Earth, WITH the truth, to look at and admit to the ways that IT IS NOT LIKE HEAVEN AT ALL. The truth will show you the ways that it is in fact SO unlike Heaven that it could not possibly be created by God, it could not possibly be real, it cannot exist, and it is MADE OF LIES.
Correcting perception and approaching True Perception is STILL going to show you apples, different from oranges. Humans, different from fish. Objects colliding with each other. Plants growing and producing flowers only to die and rot. Bodies in various states of sickness. BECAUSE ITS BUILT INTO THE LAWS THAT THIS WORLD COMES FROM. You can perceive it in a loving WAY, or in a better light, but you're still going to be seeing all the shit you made up, FUNCTIONING according to the same physical laws of death, and still DOING what it always did. The fact that the "Earth" remains a "planet" at all means it is STILL built on sacrifice, loss, lack, attack, rejection, separation and death.
You can look at this death hole in a heavenly way and see a reflection of Heaven BEYOND it, or IN SPITE OF it. But forgiveness OVERLOOKS the world and the body. To say that you are forgiving when you are MAKING THE WORLD REAL, is NOT FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness looks and recognizes that this world is OPPOSITE TO REALITY. It is not real, and it doesn't really exist. THAT is what forgiveness shows you. You don't look AT bodies and AT the world - you OVERLOOK them, rendering them non-existent!
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
"It is the world you see (with body's eyes, Planet Earth) THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE."
A glimpse of reality, which shows you that everything about this world right down to the smallest particles, is operating on FALSE LAWS, and that those laws are fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, and NOT OF HEAVEN, and therefore must NOT BE REAL. And this will merely prepare you to realize, that "this world is not my home".
And this is why you go *SOMEWHERE ELSE*, to another realm, another world, the world that GOD CREATED as your home and inheritance. You leave behind what Jesus calls "the bleak little world", in which "everything in the world is little because it is made of LITTLENESS" (rejection of the grandeur of heaven), and go to Heaven. Heaven's laws are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the laws which the Earth runs on. In Heaven there is TRUE sharing, oneness and overlap is possible, you can truly merge and join with others, you can share space, you can be TRULY intimate in communion, and you can be ACTUALLY ALIVE. "There is no life outside of Heaven."
If you can recognize the way that this world is SO unlike Heaven in every way, and realize that Heaven's laws are NOTHING like the laws this world is based on, even when reinterpreted with Holy Spirit, you MIGHT be wiling to see that this world - Earth - that we MADE, in a state of insanity ("the world is the DELUSIONAL SYSTEM of those driven MAD by guilt"), is not only NOT HEAVEN, it also CANNOT BE heaven, or turn into Heaven, because it is fundamentally the idea of OPPOSING Heaven and reality. It will NEVER be Heaven. To be Heaven requires laws which simply do not support FORMS of any kind, and that includes bodies and planets. All forms are forms of error, and Heaven contains no mistakes.
So we can keep trying to glorify and spiritualize this world, to try to make it special, to pretend God would've created it, even though its cruelty and meaninglessness are utterly opposite to His nature. We can learn to forgive the hell we made, and "love it", and be at peace about it. But this does not MAKE IT heaven. It does not turn it INTO your home. It doesn't make it an appropriate SYSTEM, or state of functioning, in which the Son of God is best suited. You are a fish out of water here. "This world is not my home." "You are a stranger here."
The world now, seen through the Holy Spirit, is ONLY there as a teaching device to bring you Home, which is beyond this world. The body, is only a teaching device, to show you that the body is utterly unnecessary. Perception, which is a state of fundamental judgementalism and instability and uncertainty, was made only as a result of a rejection of reality. It will never contain awareness or reality or God and once its lesson is learned perception has NO USE. All of these things we MADE, will end, because they were never really begun. They are illusions. A fantasy of an attack on God and an attempt to destroy ourselves. "You do not want the world." "This world holds nothing that I want."
"You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost". Heaven is my home, not hell. And "heaven on Earth" is still a dream, and a poor substitute for the direct experience of Heaven itself. Earth cannot BE heaven. Its laws are totally opposed to peace and life. It was made to kill. You don't want it. You can view it in a heavenly way but you can never turn it into heaven just because you see it lovingly. Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS. Earth is NOTHING. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach." You will give up nothing, this world, and gain everything, Heaven. And that is God's will.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."
In A Course in Miracles, there is a significant theme of allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfill his function, without you interrupting it, and without you attempting to take over his role as healer and therapist. But it may not be obvious how far this goes and what this implies. So let's look at what your role in this world is supposed to be.
As an ego, you stand in the way, you direct everything, you control everything, you make all decisions on your own, you tackle all challenges alone, and you believe you have the power and capabilities to succeed independently and with no reliance on spirit. It's kind of a state of "I don't need you God, leave me alone."
In this mode, we are trying to be God. We have an authority problem. We hold life by a tight grip of attempted control and brace ourselves against difficulties believing we do not want any help.
We're unwilling to acknowledge that we might not be capable, that we are too weak, that we cannot succeed, or that we need anyone. It's an attempt to be "independent" in a separated way, attempting not to depend on God at all. It is actually a form of isolation, imprisonment, desperation and failure.
As we attempt then to become more spiritual, there will at first be a transitionary phase in which we try to keep our selfish egotism while trying to turn it into something more spiritual. This is the ego's "seeking" and not finding, which results in a spiritualized ego. The spiritualized ego is quite capable of regarding itself as a hero, a savior, a fixer, a healer, a rescuer, a saint, and exalts itself to a very high level of what it thinks of as holiness.
"All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness, in one form or another.
In this phase, the person will attempt to be the one who heals others, to be the one who has power, to be the one who can perform miracles, to be the one who still relies on themselves but with a higher demand of achievement and perfectionism. The ego self can still adopt a mode of trying to be like Jesus, but it is the trying part where it all falls down.
You might take on various healing modalities or start to tap into forms of guidance, but these will likely be limited because there is still much ego interfering. The ego still wants to be the center of attention, the doer, the one who causes the results. And in fact the ego will even use aggression, anger, forcefulness, intensity, loudness, as "tools" that it believes will cause miracles to occur. And it's fairly guaranteed that these will not work.
But it's important to try to do this, and to fail. Because in the failing you may become more willing to give up on the effort to go it alone. You will recognize what does not work. You will give up on this false hope of being a superhero, and begin to seek a deeper surrender to something larger than yourself.
As you go beyond this phase, you begin to surrender to the holy spirit, ask for help, seek guidance, and reach out beyond yourself for love, support, comfort, healing and guidance. This means a willingness to put aside your self-driven ego efforts, your "going it alone", your "being the one who does it". It means getting out of the way, not merely sitting on the sidelines but removing the ego self that would need to sit on the sidelines. It means opening up to the spirit, to the spiritual eye.
This overall entails a deepening of trust, of allowing there to be something not of you, that is there to help you. It means putting aside the idea that you will be powerful in and of yourself, and no longer being the central figure. Instead of being self-reliant, you must become willing to rely on HIM to HELP you, knowing you cannot go it alone. In a way, it's like you turn more into a medium or channel through which something "not of you", something prior to you, operates. And you want it to, and trust it to, because you know you cannot do this alone.
So what does this really mean? What is our proper role in this world? Everything points to a state in which we ourselves become an open window, a portal, a doorway, through which THE HOLY SPIRIT functions. And in this role, WE do not get to be heroes. And as this doorway, "we need do nothing" is very literal in that it applies to our own self. We no longer need to source or cause things, to be the one who does things, we merely need not interfere with WHAT HE does through us. And he WILL act through us if we will let him, which includes allowing Him to heal minds and bodies.
We're told that he will direct us everywhere we go. We're told that we will be told very specifically what to do. We're told that he will heal through us as we allow him to heal us. We're told not to place limits on what Jesus/HS can do through us. We're told that what HE allows "us" to do, ie what he does through us, is not of this world - meaning it is capable of doing things WE have no clue how to do.
We're told that WE do not understand anything, and HE knows how to heal because that is his function. We're told HE is the only therapist, not us. We're told that OF ourselves we have no power, but there is a power in us that works THROUGH us FOR us.
We're told the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of our wrong decision (all effects, symptoms, errors, manifestations, sicknesses, problems) if we will LET HIM (allow him to ACTUALLY DO IT).
We're told not to assume his function. We're told that when he heals he never fails because he knows how to succeed and cannot fail. We're told to not interfere, to not get in the way. We're told to let him literally SPEAK through our mouths to let HIM to talk others, which means literally channeling him. We're told to let HIM use our bodies, to allow our body to be a device for HIS communication and healing.
We're told to adopt His Christ Vision and to see WITH him how HE sees, so that His vision becomes shared with us - that we tune into it, but do not originate it. We're told this vision is GIVEN to us, we did not create it, so we need to accept it. Were told the atonement is GIVEN to us, and needs only our acceptance and allowance, which means we do not MAKE IT or define it.
We're told that we had everything before the separation and we must now re-receive INHERITANCE FROM GOD. What God wills that we have and be, not what we make of ourselves. We're told that we're still as God created us and that because He created us, we do not MAKE ourselves or redefine ourselves, so must stop trying to be the gatekeeper who decides what is true and false but to instead accept HIS definition of us. We're asked to make NO decisions on our own, relying heavily on guidance. The list goes on.
This all requires a laying down and surrendering of our entire ego effort for control and definition of who and what we are, what the truth is, what we have, and what God would have us do. A willingness to ACCEPT as our own, that which GOD HAS DECIDED we should have and be and share in. And to do so willingly and joyfully, knowing and trusting it is for our highest good to take on board HIS provision, decision, mind, will, power and safety. We are to EXTEND creation, we are not to invent things which are not in alignment with what God has already created.
All of this points to a clear picture that in our natural God-given state, we are not in the business of being something "of ourselves". We're not inventing or reinventing. We're not trying to make something as substitute for what God already created. We're not trying to give ourselves a function that God did not give us, some kind of heroic role that makes us look good or that we think is better than the "chore" of doing God's will "against our will".
Our only function in heaven is creation, our only function on earth is healing. We're more or less asked to completely surrender all control and resistance and unwillingness. We're asked to do GOD'S will, rather than our own separate interests. And to settle into returning to being ONLY what God has decided is true of us.
So our proper function, our natural way of being in harmony with Creation, is basically to be what God defines you to be, to act in accord with HIS will, to create WITH him, to extend FROM him, to communicate and share what HE would have us know, to perform the miracles HE directs, and to have complete total trust and dependency on him for EVERYTHING. To be in a kind of symbiotic relationship of happy dependency. "God and his miracles (you) are inseparable."
Learning to adopt this position allows you to become "a miracle worker". But not because you are a powerful independent superhero, but because you have let go and let God, you have surrendered deeply all efforts to BE God, you have given up "trying" in favor of trusting Holy Spirit's supernatural power which never fails, and you have become a conduit through which HIS POWER can move to cure all ills, solve all problems, and correct all suffering. And that means you are now allowing God to operate THROUGH you in the world.
It is humbling. We do not get to be the center of attention. We do not get to be the false savior. Our inflated spiritualized ego needs to be dissolved and replaced with SHARING. And we simply settle into being OF SERVICE to God, trusting Him in all things, doing what He bids willingly, listening to and following his instructions, and being a representative of His Will. Nor does this mean you are some kind of slave, unwilling worker, coerced victim or person who is being forced to do what they do not want to do. You must be WILLING to recognize and trust that His will is for your good.
So the question is, do you want to be on team ego, or do you want to be on the Holy Spirit's team? Are you willing to adopt HIS function, shared with him in trust, or do you want to keep being the hero of the dream? And are you willing to allow a supernatural power to move THROUGH you, in this world, to perofrm miracles which are not OF you, and which are not of this world?
Are you willing to be a FOLLOWER? A disciple? A willing participant in the great crusade and a professor of Christ?
"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."
"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
"ANY attempt you make to correct a brother (which includes attempting to heal him), means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."
"Accept ONLY the function of healing in time, because that is what time is FOR."
"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true."
"the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
"All miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."
"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan of God, which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone, but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy" and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."
"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."
""Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance.""
"I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I do."
"Only then will your MIND will to follow me. Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation."
"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."
"I must found His church on you, because you, who accept me as a model, are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him."
"RELEASE yourselves to Him Whose function IS release. Do NOT assume His function FOR Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how LITTLE is your part, and how great IS HIS."
"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."
"Yet what makes God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body.As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source.From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body's purpose really is; the only use there really is for it."
"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that he can SOMETIMES heal and SOMETIMES NOT, the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting INconsistency. He is therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict.
Can ANYTHING of God NOT be for all and always? Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."
I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.
This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.
I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.
I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.
This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.
I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.
I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.
I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.
I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.
This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.
So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".
It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.
In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.
I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.
Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.
As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.
This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.
It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.
Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.
The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.
It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.
I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.
I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.
So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.
But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.
It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?
But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.
That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.
So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.
So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.
If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.
It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.
I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.
So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.
As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.
What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.
We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.
So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.
We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.
I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.
Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.
Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.
"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"
"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."
"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."
"Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality." ALL words in ACIM are symbols TWICE removed from the truth.
The word "apple" is twice removed from reality. The thing it represents, the actual apple itself sitting in your fruit bowl, is once removed from reality. Notice that words are symbols OF SYMBOLS. Therefore the apple itself is a symbol, and is NOT reality. Everything in this world is symbolic, just as all dreams are made of symbols.
"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are."
"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin"
"The body is the symbol of the ego"
"As nothingness cannot BE pictured, so there IS no symbol for totality."
"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."
"The body can become a **sign** of life ... and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that ***it represents***." (symbolizes)
Symbols are not an end in themselves. They don't have their own identity. They represent something else. They serve as a reflection or representative for something they point to. The body for example is not a THING in its own right, it is not an end. It SYMBOLIZES something else, and therefore is an effect of something else.
"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end. "
The metaphysics of ACIM does not really exist at the level of words twice removed. The metaphysics is once removed from reality. The words themselves, SYMBOLIZE, the metaphysics. They are expressions FROM or structured BY the metaphysics. Behind the words, deeper than the words, there is a core metaphysical structure which the course's expressed statements are BASED ON or coming from.
Or to put it more accurately, the ACTUAL metaphysics takes place as STATES OF MIND, as REALITIES, as WORLDS, playing out in the mind as SYSTEMS of logical thought. A THOUGHT of separation produces an ENTIRE WORLD representing that LOGICAL STATE. So what is this "deeper" metaphysics? There is a perfectly pure LOGICAL SYSTEM, underlying both reality and illusions. But the system is not a concept. It actually takes places as STATES of mind. As experiences of "realities". Conclusions have effects because PREMISES ARE CAUSES!
Both God's thought system and the ego's thought system are based on a LOGICAL premise. God's premise is Himself. His nature establishes the laws of what is TRUE. As He expresses/creates, His thought SYSTEM functions, and follows the laws established in his nature. The OUTCOME or "logical conclusion" of His system of thinking, MUST be in accord with his nature and be THE ONLY possible outcome that could come from such a starting point.
Because God is eternal, the outcome of His thinking must be eternal. Because God is alive, His thoughts must be alive. Because God is love, His thoughts must be made of love. Because God is happy, His thoughts must be happy and lead to happiness. Because God is a creator, the living beings He creates must be creators also (co-creators).
Everything that comes FROM Him is in accord with His Will and nature, and is in his perfect LIKENESS. It HAS to be in His likeness because in a logical system, everything that comes from the ORIGIN of the system stays WITHIIN the confines of the system and thus is governed by the same laws.
These FACTS, have nothing to do with interpretations, ideals, made-up spirituality, theory or theology, or any other kind of conceptual make-believe. These are ACTUAL FACTS of reality. And "metaphysics" is based on irrefutable FACTS. It is a fact that God is a creator, and therefore it MUST be a fact that God's creation is also a creator. Regardless of whether ACIM ever mentioned that in its words at all, that HAS to be true.
ACIM happens to say "A co-creator with the Father must have a Son." But you can DEDUCE this, LOGICALLY, by following God's system of thought. Simply, God is a creative father. He passes on Himself to whatever He creates. Therefore, logically, if God Himself has a nature which results in a Son, then the Son MUST have a nature which results in a Son of a Son. YOU, as a Son, MUST therefore have creations. This isn't true just because ACIM says so in its words. It's true LOGICALLY. And that is the deeper metaphysics. Jesus has BASED those quoted statements ON that logic.
Let's look at another example, the separation from God. Without even considering anything ACIM says about separation, let's assess it with purely impeccable logic and see what we get.
Ok so God wills eternal life because God IS eternal life. God wills happiness. God wills a total lack of limits because He is unlimited. God gives freedom, because God IS freedom. The co-creative living entities that God MUST create, therefore must have His freedom. But this also means, they are free FROM any kind of limitation or restraint. The only truth is that they must function WITHIN the system of God. They cannot leave God. BUT, they can exercise their co-creative ability to freely choose to try to DENY or oppose God's will and nature, thus opposing their own. What would HAVE to happen if you did that?
Look at it purely logically. Reality is ..... light, life, happiness, peace, love, unlimited, constant, unchanging, equal/harmonious, permanent, truthful, open, immortal, etc. BECAUSE, this is what God is. So everything IN God's system must be this too. What would an OPPOSITE to this be? What would you get, if you DENIED this system and tried to bring about an OPPOSITE system?
Well, an opposite system would have to be based on the "belief" that all of the nature of God is NOT true or real. It has to be a PREMISE, that OPPOSES God's premise. So the premise is, ... darkness, death, unhappiness, conflict, hatred/fear, limitation, change, inequality/difference, impermanence, everything is false, closed, mortality, etc. Because these are the LOGICAL opposites to God's nature. And if this collection of "unpleasant" CONDITIONS is the PREMISE of the entire ego SYSTEM, everything WITHIN this "line of thinking" MUST RESULT IN, all of these things. DEATH, is the logical outcome of the ego thought system.
So the question is, does this logical conclusion LINE UP with what A Course in Miracles says. And the answer is YES. It does. In fact Jesus even says so.
"From the belief in sin (the premise), the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a ***logical conclusion***; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos ***DO follow neatly from their starting-point***. Each is a different form in the **progression** (logical thought process) of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth."
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."
"The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing."
So what you find is, if you can get a grasp of the PURE LOGICAL BASIS of God's system, and if you can then grasp the idea that the "separation" is simply the idea of AN OPPOSITE TO REALITY, you can LOGICALLY come to conclusions. And the fact is, that these conclusions EXACTLY MATCH what Jesus has described in A Course in Miracles. WITHOUT ERROR. They totally correlate to the separation, the result of separating, the OUTCOME of starting on a basis of sin.
"The wages of sin is death - ie, if you start with sin (which is the idea "an opposite to God is possible", you must end with death". Death is the suppression and denial and NEGATING OF, God's reality. It is the "end of life" because it OPPOSES GOD'S WILL which supports life.
Therefore, and this is a metaphysical FACT.... a belief in separation MUST LEAD TO a seeming "world" or "logical state of mind", wherein everything is based on an idea of sin and death. e.g. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son" - ie its the idea of God's LIVING son, pictured in a condition OPPOSITE to living. Similarly "the world was made as an attack on God" is based on the LOGIC that by trying to OPPOSE THE TRUTH, you "attacked" the premise of the truthful thought system (God), by trying to establish another SYSTEM that was totally opposite.
For example, Jesus says "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way". Why is Earth OPPOSITE to Heaven? Because it is part of a "world" or STATE of OPPOSITION to THE TRUTH. The world is thus a logical outcome of the ego thought system. It is MADE OF DEATH. It is made of denial. It is made of sin. This isn't something I need to say based on ACIM saying it. I can make this "claim", IMPERSONALLY, WITHOUT OPINION, because the METAPHYSICS accurately indicates that this MUST be the case.
Now, here is the interesting thing about metaphysics. The underlying core logic describes VERY accurately, PERFECTLY, not only the nature of God's "system" or world, and the nature of any world that tries to oppose it. Through LOGICAL REASONING, which must be "impeccable", you can actually make "statements"- symbolic word expressions once removed from the metaphysics, that were never written IN the Course itself, but which are TOTALLY in line with it. This is not an opinion or a matter of making something up. The LOGIC tells you, BY ITSELF, WHAT MUST BE TRUE.
For example we could say, anything that is opposite to God who is eternal life must be incapable of living forever. It doesn't necessarily explicitly SAY that in the course, but it MUST be true. It does however say basically the same thing in other words, e.g. "there is no life outside of heaven."
We could also say, "everything in this world opposes reality". It doesn't necessarily say that in the course. But it MUST be true. The metaphysical LOGIC, the impeccable reasoning, TELLS YOU, that it MUST be true because it is perfectly sound logic. And this world IS A LOGICAL SYSTEM BASED ON AN ENTIRELY LOGICAL PREMISE.
The really interesting thing is, the metaphysical LOGICAL SYSTEM completely removes the need for OPINIONS. Of any kind. If God is truth, anything not of God is not true. That is purely logical. It's not an opinion. In fact the LOGIC is such a COMPLETE system, with no strange fuzzy exceptions or loopholes or things unaccounted for, totally black and white in its perfect clarity and precision, that it leaves NO ROOM for ANY INTERPRETATION. NONE.
And this is why the multitude of "interpretations" of the course, ALL of which are NOT really based on pure logic, are faulty and OF THE EGO. And this inevitably results in conflict and arguments because it inherently leads to CONTRADICTIONS. The ego cannot even reason correctly. Our normal ego thought processes don't even typically function "LIKE GOD THINKS", and therefore comes to FALSE conclusions about His system of logic. Frequently. And you can see by all the debate and WAR in this forum the sheer extent of this CONFUSION, which has resulted from NOT SEEING THE METAPHYSICAL FACTS CLEARLY, errors in logical reasoning, and false conclusions that EGOs have arrived at. There is ONLY ONE TRUTH.
All we can do is look at the logical system and let IT TELL US, what the truth MUST be. If we don't, and we start trying to MAKE UP TRUTH, or DECIDE what the truth is, we are now delusional and are not following the logic and are not having REASON. We then will not MAKE SENSE and this leads to all confusion. That means, the logical conclusions being drawn here, or by anyone who can reason impeccably, COMPLETELY TRANSCENDS opinion. It REFLECTS the truth. It is FACT. That means it is not MY opinion, or yours, or anyone's. It is how things actually are.
Therefore, if you can grasp this and SEE the sense in it, you can USE the metaphysical logical BASIS of everything the course says as a TOOL. You can USE it, practically, to inform you of what the course MUST BE MEANING. You can actually hold up a quote, and COMPARE IT, to the metaphysical structure, and provided your grasp of the structure is accurate, it will TELL YOU the context in which the quote is placed, the meaning of the references, what it is referring TO, and thus what it MUST MEAN.
If you get used to doing this, you will find gradually that everything Jesus says in the course is BASED ENTIRELY ON logical reasoning. Jesus is an absolute MASTER of this. And you will then realize that all of the WORDS in the course are in fact expressions OF the metaphysics. The number of ways and forms of expression OF those FACTS, is largely unlimited. Jesus wrote a huge book expression FROM the facts. He could've written more. If you "get the facts straight", and are not in denial or making logical errors, you can evaluate everything the course's WORDS say, and CORRECTLY RECOGNIZE what they MUST MEAN, in light of what the logical truth says MUST be true.
This however is one area that we are all struggling with, because most of us do NOT think logically or impeccably enough. We make a lot of errors. And the main reason for that is simply NOT SEEING the core logical BASIS behind the ENTIRE metaphysics of the course. And so instead, we'll try to "put together the pieces" from the bottom up, starting with loose ends, trying to assemble a cohesive picture, and making a lot of errors along the way. We then depend too heavily on the WORDS. The wordings. The phrasing. What it SEEMS like it says. And we will find that sometimes the CHOICE of words can seem misleading, when you compare it to the metaphysical meaning.
What the logic can do for you though, is it can provide you with a powerful tool for discernment, it can guide you, it can tell you what Jesus's words mean, it can clarify what the words CANNOT mean, and it can help you to get past all the nit-picking arguments and disagreements that come from MULTIPLE OPINIONS, all of which result from a LACK OF true facts and too much faulty reasoning or "blindness" to the LOGICAL METAPHYSICS. All of the discussions about "is it this or that" come from this "difficulty" with seeing the logic behind it.
Does A Course in Miracles line up with a PURELY LOGICAL set of conclusions, a logical system of black and white conclusions? YES. It totally does. Was this world made as a result of a LOGICAL conclusions? YES. Does death occur because of the conclusion that MUST come "inevitably" from a premise of real sin? YES. Would we make BODIES as a logical CONCLUSION in a thought system? YES, because they are the "natural outcome" of WALLS THAT BLOCK TRUTH, as "separation devices". Bodies ARE the idea of the rejection of wholeness. They ARE limitation, as an experiential idea or state of mind.
The atonement is logical too. It is nothing but the recognition that only the truth is true. There is no real sin. An opposite to what is all encompassing does not exist. It is the TRUTH. It represents God's PREMISE and therefore results in the resuming of the extension of creation. IT HAS TO. That's part of its logical basis. This is also why by "denying the denial of truth", you LOGICALLY cancel out the denial. Because you took what is FALSE, and you tried to make it TRUE, in order to deny that the truth is true. So if you REVERSE that by DENYING that the false is true, you deny the denial of the truth, restoring the truth as the only truth. This is entirely logically based.
To restore you to reality, you must UN-OPPOSE God. You must stop "negating" the truth". You must stop believing in sin, which is the idea of God's system having been destroyed and opposed. You must surmount death, which means resurrection is nothing but an assertion of TRUTH, which is life. Everything to do with God's creation, everything to do with the separation, everything to do with the descent into the ego and death, and everything to do with healing and awakening to reality, is all ENTIRELY the interplay of PURELY LOGICAL SYSTEMS or states.
Awakening is even logical and inevitable because you, being an effect of God, must FOREVER be an effect of God, since God never changes, and therefore CANNOT ever stop being God's son. Your reality is SECURED as a result of the logic of the system. The ending of death is just as inevitable, because when you get yourself into a logical STATE of ONLY TRUTH, there cannot be a state of an opposite to life, and death is therefore "snuffed out" as Jesus puts it.
Jesus's choice of words is masterful, but sometimes potentially misleading. There is a lot of material to digest. There seems to be a lot of stuff to figure out. Sometimes things seem contradictory which are not. And our egos make a TON of logical errors. Error, ie sin, is nothing but a logical mistake. You cannot oppose God's will, so it is "error", logically, to CONCLUDE you can. Healing is therefore the undoing of error, by re-establishing the facts of reality and accepting God's premise as the only true one.
This is all the metaphysics. It's behind the words. When you GET it, you can express FROM it, and be coming from the truth. You can express 100,000 books BASED ON this and every single one will be in line with ACIM. We're inside a logical system of thought, albeit based on a FALSE starting point, resulting in FALSE experiences, and FALSE outcomes. A false outcome is SUFFERING. Suffering is inevitable when the entire SYSTEM is founded on opposition to health and life. Suffering means you are "suffering from" being mistaken about the facts of reality.
If you want eternal life and happiness, you must open up to accept the REASONING of the Holy Spirit, which is the SAME as God's SYSTEM or WAY of thinking. Thought BASED ON TRUTH will set you free.
ALL of the conflict in the ACIM community is based on NOT SEEING and NOT ACCEPTING the purely LOGICAL CORE TRUTH in A Course in Miracles. All of the disagreement about what it says, what it means, what it implies, is all based on NOT being logically sound. ALL OPINIONS ARE MUTE! Your opinion has no value, and nor does mine. We are supposed to get away from having opinions. We are supposed to recognize the FACTS OF REALITY, instead of trying to MAKE UP interpretations. Interpretations are entirely ego. The course HAS NO INTERPRETATIONS. The course is based on FACTS. It is based on TRUTH.
And truth is not an intepretation. It is an expression FROM THE PURE LOGIC SYSTEM OF GOD'S THINKING. When everyone finally recognizes this and accepts the ONE CORRECT metaphysics, there will be no more NEED for conflict, no more BASIS for confusion, no more REASON to fight about it, and no more DEBATE about what it means. Behind all the seemingly varied WORDS in the course, behind all the many EXPRESSIONS, behind the choice of phrases and the language and the way Jesus speaks, there is a PURE METAPHYSICAL CLARITY.
Do not be DECEIVED by the ILLUSION OF DIFFERENT FORMS in the course. Do not be deceived by taking the WORDS too literally. The WORDS ARE NOT THE METAPHYSICS. They are only based on it. And if you base your entire understanding on THE WORDS, you will very likely come to false inconsistent conclusions. When you get bogged down in isolated quotes, inconsistent reasoning, things taken out of context, and all the rest of it, you are missing the CLARITY of the course's truth.
Go deeper. Get behind the words. SEE the logical structures. Recognize the metaphysics. It's beyond words. It's beyond those symbols. The course is PURE TRUTHFUL FACT and it is totally consistent without contradiction. If you are confused, wondering about meanings, uncertain about structures, or any other reaction to what's said, you are not using logical reasoning and so are using blind ego interpretation. If you see contradictions, you made a logical error.
If something doesn't fit, you haven't seen the logic behind it clearly enough. And if you conclude things OUT OF ACCORD with what the LOGIC says, you are mistaken, regardless of what the words seem to say. Jesus is 100% perfectly ACCURATE in every single thing he has expressed FROM a PERFECT GRASP of the PERFECTLY CLEAR metaphysical basis of truth. HE has not made any errors. His expressions in words are not erroneous. He is PERFECTLY CORRECT. Our only challenge is coming to SEE, RECOGNIZE and ACCEPT, the CORE TRUTH behind the entire course. REASON will allow you to literally SEE SENSE.
"The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."
"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.
Sorry this is a bit longish... it's hard to explain.
The physical world is a holographic dream. But the way that it is holographic isn't very obvious. And most people do not believe it is a dream!
Firstly, a hologram is not a projected 3D image. It is not the hollywoodized concept of an artificial three-dimensional object projected in space that you can view from any angle. That very loosely is tied to the idea of a hologram and they just ran with it and turned it into a marketing exercise.
Holograms have some interesting properties which describe the way that this world is put together, and the reason why it is a dream.
You will see a hologram on most credit cards. It's the little shiny symbol in the corner which, if you look at it from different angles, appears to let you see a virtual object suspended in space. You actually seem to be able to look at it from different angles, even though it's a flat image. They use this on cards because they are hard to manufacture, requiring precise laser technology, so this offers a certain level of protection against fraudulent cards.
The idea of a hologram is that information about the whole of something is present in all of the parts. On your credit card, information about the image of an object as viewed from countless different angles, is embedded into each tiny particle of the image. It's as though there were thousands of cameras recording images of the object from different angles, and then all of these images were overlaid on top of each other. Therefore each part of the image contains a ton of information, much more than just one particle of image.
One way to produce a hologram like this is to create tiny 3-dimensional bumps which you project different images onto from a specific direction. When your viewing angle changes, you see a different side of the bumps thus forming a different image. That's a very loose approximation of how a hologram works.
One of the properties of a hologram, therefore, is that if you remove a physical portion of the holographic image, it does not lose a specific portion of the information stored in it. That's because the same information is present in all of the other parts of the image. It's like storing the same piece of data a thousand times scattered across the surface. Chopping off a part of the object does not lose information stored in that part, it only reduces the overall sum total of occurrences of the information.
In the book, The Holographic Universe, it was described for example that a person had a portion of their brain removed. It was believed by science that certain memories were stored in that part of the brain, and that removing it would definitely produce a memory loss. However, afterwards, the person still could recall the memory, it was just a little fuzzy. That's because the memory was actually stored throughout the brain in a holographic manner, meaning that "all" of the memory was stored in "every part" of the brain. Removing one part of the brain did not remove a specific portion of the memory. The memory could still be recalled and reassembled because all of it was stored in all parts. Just with a little less clarity. The brain is holographic.
So in a hologram, each specific part of an object isn't JUST that part of the object, it is also connected to and shares information with all of the other parts. This is also similar to the scientific theory that matter is energy which exists as a kind of field of potentiality, which, when you look at it with consciousness, it condenses the field into a tight point and shows up as a particle. The particle then seems to be the only part visible so you think that that's all there is to it, but the particle actually is still intimately connected to and extends into the field. Thus there is an extension beyond the form of matter.
Another word that describes this extension beyond the form, and the idea that the part contains the whole, is a "symbol". Symbols are representations of something greater beyond themselves. They are not the thing, but they're sort of a condensed representation of the core qualities of the thing. They allude to something beyond themselves, and they point in the direction of the whole of the thing they represent. They don't show up as the thing in its entirety, only as a small image which "symbolizes" the thing. And what is it that we know of that are built from symbols? Dreams.
Now, the reason that we can't usually tell this physical universe is a holographic dream, is because as much evidence as possible that each part (particle) is connected to the "all" has been squeezed out. The matter that shows up, as form and objects and bodies and worlds, are symbols representing energies that are far bigger than the objects themselves, and which connect the objects together. In other words, there is a lot of SHARING going on behind the scenes, but by the time the energy field coalesces into tight concentrations - as matter - you only see the concentrations ie forms, and you don't realize that these forms are symbolic of something more beyond them. You fixate on the form of what is visible and think that this is all there is, as though the symbol is not really a symbol but is actually the whole 'thing' in completeness.
So at the most extremely spread out end of the hologram, which is the physical universe, it APPEARS that there is no sharing. Particles do not seem to share the same space. They do not seem to be connected. Everything seems to be separated out. Objects do not really touch each other, but are held at a distance by forces. And so this makes us believe that each object does not share anything with other objects, particularly if you fixate on the object's form and appearance. This is an ILLUSION. It's an illusion composed of SYMBOLS, which you have interpreted incorrectly to be NOT symbolic, and instead see only the condensed form of the hologram, which makes you think that physical matter is entirely fixed and is showing you all of what exists.
This illusion, then, that matter is all separate and that there is no sharing going on, deceives you to believe this world is not a hologram, because you don't SEE the ways that the particles are joined together, or joined to the whole. You also don't see the ways that the whole is present in every part. You don't recognize, and your body can't show you, that this so-called reality is actually just a SYMBOLIC collection of temporary images, not a final end-state in its own right but a place that points beyond itself.
Just as your dreams at night are highly symbolic, so too the physical world is completely symbolic. There are established massive symbols in this world which represent all kinds of aspects of the separation idea. For example, outer space, empty and black and cold, symbolizes the unconscious mind, whereby instead of there being light everywhere, light is denied and reduced to tiny concentrations - which you call stars, which are symbols of the ego and the conscious mind as separated selves. If you go into it, there area many many symbols in this world representing the structure of the ego and its interpretation of the truth. The body is a symbol of the idea of separation from the whole environment, for example. It is not just a form and a finite thing in its own right, it REPRESENTS the idea in the mind that you are separate from the whole. It is a symbol with a hidden background.
Most people do not think they are inside a dream. They think that there are no symbols anywhere. Yet they might loosely say from time to that that something seems symbolic. When you have synchronicities and things seem to correlate and be "connected", that's you starting to realize and tap into the hologram, into the field of energy, which is diffused beyond just physical appearances. You're sensing and noticing that, uncannily, two seemingly separate symbols are actually related. ie you start to realize that there is something CONNECTING things together in a semi-meaningful way (synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence"), and coincidence means co-incidence, ie two things correlating, because they share a holographic background.
Dreams at night occur at what you could call a higher level of the hologram. As such, in a night dream, the seemingly concrete, fixed quality of matter is not as "dense" as in the physical universe. Therefore the reality of the dreams are much more highly and obviously symbolic, not just that the objects and events in them symbolize things you experienced in the daytime or whatever, but that they actually represent things. Dream interpretation isn't just an attempt to derive meaning from something that has no meaning, it is actually based on the fact that dreams are entirely composed of SYMBOLS, and those symbols are the structure of "dream reality" because dream reality is holographic, objects and events are representations and not things in their own right, and everything is joined together beyond just the appearance of its form.
Sometimes you will notice that you have dreams which are far more symbolic than others. Sometimes you'll have a dream where it seems effortless for objects to transform bizarrely into other objects. I remember having a dream where I walked out the front door and there was like a dog barking and something changed in my mind and the dog turned into a small child and started to talk to me and then something else happened and the child turned into an adult. This is possible because in these dreams, the "form" or the fixed condensed material quality of the reality experience, the holographic reality, is not as dense and not as concrete. Abstract weird stuff happens.
It's much easier at that level, where matter has not concentrated so tightly, for forms to SHIFT and change quite naturally and normally. Forms that shift and change, by the way, is the foundation of all "life forms" that GROW and change over time, demonstrating that their reality is not actually fully fixed. And symbols can more easily transition into other symbols at the deeper level of the abstract hologram. The very form of objects can convert into other objects, as symbols shift around.
I also had a dream once which explicitly explained to me the holographic nature of dreams. In this dream I stood on a small bridge. There was nothing else in the scene. Then around me in all directions were apparently images, but each of these images was a symbol. It wasn't that I took the appearance of the image at face value, but instead, I recognized that the images were symbolic and therefore they "led" to something that they REPRESENTED. I could literally FEEL and sense that these symbolic images were not only connected to "other realities", but that the way the image was showing up wasn't "the whole" of what existed. It was just one finite expression of what it represented.
So it was possible to actually sort of "go into" the image, into the symbol, which caused it to expand as I moved closer to the environment that the symbol represented. I was able to travel through holograms this way. And it was then possible to take some other part of the environment, and go into it in similar fashion, upon which it would also expand out or elaborate into an entire scene based on that chosen focus. This showed me that the dream reality is highly holographic and fluid and symbolic and that everything is connected together behind the appearance of the symbols.
The physical world is less obviously symbolic and holographic because it is more DENSE, and that means the shared energy field - the all - has been very strongly broken out, to create the ILLUSION that each part barely has any trace of a connection to any other part. The extreme of separation is so strong between parts that you would be forgiven for being convinced not only that each object is not a symbol at all, but that there is nothing "beyond" the form of each object, nothing is shared, nothing is connected, and there is no reality beyond appearances. This is the lowest "level" of the hologram, where the unfied field, the shared symbolic nature of this dream, has become so cemented and "physicalized" that it barely seems possible to you that it is a dream at all. So extreme is the degree of concentration and contraction o the energy here, that it's almost undetectable to sense or tell that everything is joined.
That is, perhaps, unless you are an "empath", which is someone whose mind is able to sense where the symbols lead, and can expand upon what lies beyond them as though tuning into the hologram's symbolism and travelling in Spirit to its source. This is also why empaths are able to actually tune into "real people" that show up on television recordings or in movies, because even though the recording was done in the past, there is STILL a symbolic holographic connection between that IMAGE and the actually thing it represents. The mind can go into that image and sense and explore things about what the image shows, navigating through the symbolic hologram.
This highly obscuring, difficult to discern, God-blocking, reality covering, immense illusory dream, which seems to have solidified into a consistent solid world, is precisely what you wanted! This is why you used a holographic dream to create a world of separation, an illusion, where the illusion IS that the world is NOT symbolic, it is NOT a dream, and it APPEARS to be solid and real with everything separate.
We've pushed the hologram to the limits of physical density, causing particles to remain very fixed-seeming in their arrangements, which has created the ILLUSION of a place of form where consistency is very very sustained over long period of time. Objects don't apparently change into other objects, and you as a limited mind do not SEEM to have hardly a trace of power to change objects into other objects, because they're being held in a physicalized state very strongly, unlike the conditions in a nighttime dream which is much more maleable. Unless you're Jesus ;-) Events mostly do not seem to be symbolic. Bodies seem to function based on non-holographic laws. And nothing seems to be connected to a greater whole.
Then you are left only with the appearance of the physical matter, you make up laws about it based on its behavior, and then you justify that your science is correct based on its illusion of consistency, and have moved into the "linear" perspective. But the truth is lateral, vertical, because if you move out of the physicalized EFFECT and back towards the abstract CAUSE, you become able to modify the physicalization of matter to take on a different form. And this would be considered miraculous.
This therefore shuts out the idea of GOD, which is a reality where everything is shared. This is because the world was made as a defense against God and as a way to OBSCURE the truth that God is omnipresent, that ALL of Him is fully present in all parts. In physical matter, this could not be more obscured as an illusion that the all is NOT in ANY part, and therefore that the all does not exist. That was the PURPOSE of the physical world. To hide God from awareness.
So just because you think this world is an objective, verbatim kind of reality, it's not. It's a holographic dream. And sometimes this holographic dream actually does shift and change in symbolic ways that defy all logic and scientific explanation. Quite literally, sometimes, people report cases where an entire building which did not exist the day before, suddenly materializes in a known location that simply was not there. Somehow, it simply shows up in the dream hologram because of some kind of shift in the energy focus.
Also quantum physics is starting to reveal how objects at a distance can share the same reality - that a particle of light can be in two places at once, and that changes to the particle in one location AUTOMATICALLY changes the particle in the other location with NO TIME DELAY. This is "physically" impossible, in terms of a fixed dense world of form and matter, but in terms of holographic dreams, it is TOTALLY NORMAL! In fact, that this isn't happening more often is very abnormal, and shows you the extent to which we have designed this "world" (which is nothing more than an illusory dream) to APPEAR to be very fixed and separated.
In higher, more symbolic night dreams, it's possible to do things to bend reality, modify objects, transcend physical laws, transform one thing into another etc... all quite naturally, because that's what's possible when you know that everything is ONE, and everything is joined together. Form, matter, objects and appearances, including bodies and worlds, are nothing more than SYMBOLS, and those symbols can easily shift and change "form".
Having mastery over this dream illusion gives you the ability and mastery to defy all of the so-called "physical" laws, which are merely laws based on visible concentrations of the one field, and to do things like walking on water, changing objects into other objects, disappearing sickness, reversing death, etc. The miracles Jesus demonstrated merely shows us that this dream is a holographic illusion which is completely malleable, its form is nothing more than a temporary expression of an idea, and everything can be modified.
This world isn't real. It is a dream. It's an illusion of a world. It's a temporary concentration of an idea of separation, an idea that "the all" does not exist, and the idea that nothing is shared. It takes the form of a hologram which goes from a state where everything is one, to a state where nothing is one, and every level in between. The all IS in every part, because every part is not the WHOLE, it's just a portion of the whole. You are not seeing the whole picture! And if you believe solely based on "appearances" that physical matter is all that there is, you are completely falling for the holographic illusion that nothing is connected.
Everything is connected. All is One. At at the very peak of the hologram, everything is shared everywhere. God is omnipresent. All of God is in all parts fully, and this completely defies all physical laws. The physical laws do not apply to MIRACLES because miracles are expressions of the abstract source of the hologram, from the field of mind and energy which transcends particles and concentrations of matter, and which all of the symbols POINT TO.
So yes, you're dreaming. You're inside a symbolic dream right now, right where you are, as you read this, with your holographic dream body. All is not what it seems. There is reality beyond this apparent world, and appearances are not reality. Thus there is no real world here. At most, this world is a SYMBOL, and not a finite concrete objective wholeness. And yet even as a symbol it is just a symbol in a dream, and this dream is not real, because DREAMS ARE NOT REAL. That is why there is no real world here, no real death, and no real sickness or suffering.
We are meant to wake up from the entire holographic projection and return to the abstract source of truth where ALL IS ONE.
"The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world is the picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "The hell you made".
Okay so, apparently, we MADE some kind of a world, which was designed to attack God, is made of illusions, tries to shut God out, depicts the death of God's Son, and is totally opposite to heaven as a form of hell, where bodies sin and try to prove death can happen.
So now we're in a position where we can ask a really interesting question. What do we do about this? How is this resolved? What's the Holy Spirit's solution? How should we be regarding or viewing this hellish realm of sin and attack and death that we made? What is the way to return to Heaven? How does God deal with this situation?
There are many significant parts of the Course which talk about the fact of what this world IS. It's nature. As described above, an illusory hellish dream of sin and death. In some of the perspectives Jesus gives, he reminds us of how meaningless, pointless, non-existent, purposeless, substanceless this world is.
This seems to be a very important aspect of how we overcome it. A recognition of what it is and what it is not. No rose tinted glasses, no fluffy romantic language, no trying to make it out to BE Heaven or to BE God's creation. Just a simple recognition of its illusory nature, a picture of impossibilities and nonsenser. Just a straight forward honest appraisal of what we made and why it is not real. For example:
"(mind) ... 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 substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
"There is no world" "The world sill spin into the nothingness from which it came." "Eternity will shine away the world." "A world forgiven cannot last."
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while." ... "The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?" ... "Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers." ... "Yet they are not deceived by what they see." ... Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
So in this perspective, Jesus teaches us that this world we made, is an illusion of a world, which we mistakenly think is REAL. And we're supposed to recognize it's an illusion/dream and not believe in it, we're supposed to recognize it holds nothing that we want, that it is unreal, that we are not of it, the body is not who we are, and really that none of it is happening. "All events are nowhere." It has no consequences, nothing that happens causes anything real, there is no real sin. "All changes wrought are substance-less." And this proceeds all the way to the world disappearing. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
There is no particular love-loss for the world in this view. It's just simple honest recognition of the fact that it is a world made from the denial of the Kingdom, dreamed in an attempt to attack God and His Son, it is illusory and has no real effects, no part of it is valuable or permanent, and it doesn't really exist.
There is, however, also an additional component to coming to recognize "awareness of dreaming of hell". To realize the world is not the real world. And this has to do with the Holy Spirit's reinterpretation of what we made.
The world we made, was made in total "false perception". The body was made to be fixed in a state of false perception, where it does not overlook/forgive ANYTHING. It is blinded by perception of forms. Its vision stops at the outside surface of nothing. It "sees" only what BLOCKS vision. "These eyes made not to see will never see."
The body's eyes can only report that "the world seems real" "it seems to exist" "it seems to be happening." They only see "sin is real" "bodies are sinful". We jumped all the way from perfect Heaven to total hell. We designed the world to be a total opposite to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But what does the Holy Spirit do with this hell that we made?
What he represents and makes possible, is an alternative way of looking at the hell we made. A re-interpretation of it. This doesn't really CHANGE IT, because it can't BE anything other than an illusion. You can't make it BE Heaven - God already accomplished Heaven's creation. But you can learn not to be deceived by it, so that when you see it, you don't BUY INTO IT. You don't MAKE it real to you.
"the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made".
"This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's ALTERNATIVE, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking BACK the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released, because the mind acknowledges "this is not DONE TO me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and ALL the dreaming of the world undone."
His goal is to UNDO the dreaming of the world. To take back the cause of it. To stop the making of it. To cancel it, reverse it, dissolve it, erase it, disappear it. To STOP DREAMING. This is His aim and guarantee. But before this happens, something happens to how you experience the world you made. We're introduced to this idea that the WAY YOU SEE, perception, can be modified and repurposed, so that you gradually invest in the dream less, believe it's illusions less, are convinced it is a picture of real sin and death less, and so learn to overlook/forgive/forget it.
This means that initially, it seems as if the world is really hell. Unforgiven, it is a "real nightmare". The body is designed to fixate on the nightmare and make it seem real. But we have the ability to change our mind, which changes our beliefs, which change our perceptions. We can choose again and NOT believe in what the world is showing us, and to regard the body as DECEIVING us. It's still a picture of hell. It's still "the strange world you made." It still seems to run by ego laws of death and everything in it still is limited and flawed, per the laws of illusions/death. But if you don't BELIEVE IN IT, you don't take these appearances at face value. You are not deceived. You are not tempted.
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."
"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."
"Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."
"And he will reinterpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."
"I am the light of the world" "It is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation. It brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose."
We're also told that God loves the world. Even though the world is an imaginary illusion of death, a picture of hell, somehow God still loves it so that He does NOT believe in it or mistake it for Reality. But let's be clear, that loving the world does not MAKE the world BE love. It doesn't MAKE it holy. It merely looks upon it WITH love and holiness, forgiving what is there, not believing in what it depicts. The picture of crucifixion turns into an empty MIRROR, in which you see YOUR reflection. In this, the world is meaningless in and of itself, so by taking away its meanings you reflect only Gods' meaning INTO it. This makes the world SEEM holy or heaven-like.
"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world."
"What the world is, is but a fact. (it is a picture of hell) You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose **how** you would see it."
"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right?"
What he's clearly saying here is that you have dreamed of hell, in an attempt to destroy God and His son. And Earth is still Heaven's opposite. But this hell only seems to have any reality while you believe it is real, while you are judging and deceiving. God does not believe in hell being real. He knows there is no real sin or death. So he looks UPON hell and does not make it real, does not see any proof of real sin in it, sees no evidence of real death happening, and so has no grounds for being anything other than loving. Laughing at it. Shining it away.
So now in the Holy Spirit's true perception, everything about the world is OVERLOOKED, ie not taken at face value. The world is regarded as a thin veil of nothingness hanging over the face of Christ. Substanceless, causeless, not doing anything, imaginary. An image of crucifixion still, but depicting nothing but a fantasy. An image of death and sin still, but depicting only an idle wish that sin and death can happen. It's not taken seriously. And so he does not see REAL sin in it. In this way, the picture of crucifixion is forgiven.
Here before your eyes is a vision of hell, a veil of death, which the body wants to report as real, but which the Spiritual Eye recognizes is entirely fictional and absurd. Not even worth paying attention to. But because the Holy Spirit does not see "real sin" in it, he does not project sin onto it, or judge it, or condemn it, or mistake it for reality. It is now a picture of death, interpreted as nothing, depicting fake sins, containing no real sin, and so it is forgiven. It is not seen as "full of sin". Nor is it sinless. It is a forgiven illusion, seen through and disregarded,.
And so instead it seems to symbolize innocence and holiness. If no attack or hate or judgement is laid UPON it, it's merely seen as a thin veil of illusions. It has lost its heaviness and darkness. It is now a very light picture of darkness. A thin picture of solidity. A loved picture of illusions of hatred. Because the world you made is always an illusion, always artificial, always not real, always false, always a depiction of impossibilities, and always nothing. Not taken seriously, it ends in laughter.
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone ***what more remains to keep a separated world in place?*** For place has gone as well, along with time. (end of spacetime.) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate **it could not remain where separation is impossible.** Forgiveness proves it is impossible ***because it sees it not.*** And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
"Can what has no beginning really end? The world ***will end** in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, ***will cover it***, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ***ends the world*** that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."
The illusion of forgiveness covers the evil world by not BELIEVING that it is real. By recognizing SIN does not exist. So this picture of sin is false. The perspective of the big picture reveals the world's illusion, and correctly perceives it as a deception. It REPLACES the world's meaninglessness. It SHINES AWAY the world because illusions recognized must disappear. A forgiven world is a world recognized as FALSE. A FALSE world, perceived WITH love, which overlooks and shines away the world. God erases the world with love. You cannot love it and keep it. A world forgiven cannot last.
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world 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. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. 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, illusion), ***and do not want.*** The only effort you need make, to give this world (Earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (heaven), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all-embracing. Here is it nourished, for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real."
"When not one thought of sin remains" appears to be a long-range goal indeed. But time stands still, and waits on the goal of God's teachers. Not one thought of sin will remain the instant any one of them accepts Atonement for himself."
"***The world will end*** when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible.The final lesson, which brings ***the ending of the world***, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared *****to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach.*****"
"The world will **end** in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will **end** in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will **end** in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. **In blessing it departs**, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven (symbolically) is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is ***reflected*** (symbolic)."
To turn hell into heaven simply means, to learn to recognize that the world is not REALLY hell, it is not REALLY anything. It's claims are ignored. It's proof is thrown out. It's picture of death are laughed at. It's sins are not taken seriously. It's illusions do not deceive. The picture of crucifixion is SEEN WITH love, and a **reflection** of love and holiness is seen "in it". As if looking upon a picture of devastation and war in an extremely happy mood. What it claims to be is not what it is. You override it. And then the world disappears completely.
"**A world forgiven cannot last.** It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."
"Eternity will **shine away** the world."
"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. 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, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, **no walls, no bodies**, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
"The world (Earth) 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.** (an illusion of a sin/attack/death world.) 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."