Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

The purpose of sickness is to make you and the body seem to be "one".

The ultimate goal of sickness, which is "death", is the attempt to fully unite who you really are with the body, so that when the body is destroyed, it is claimed that "you" are destroyed.

The whole point of this happening is our attempt to destroy the Son of God - Christ, by associating His identity with something which CAN appear to be attacked, like tying a metal ball to His ankle and throwing Him in the ocean.

Sickness therefore is the way that we attempt to destroy ourselves, to try to prove that we are not God's Son. The closer that we can get to achieving this, the more it would seem we have become "the ego" - a fully separate self, which is symbolized by the BODY. If we are the body, and if the body is destroyed, then we would seem to be destroyed along with it. This is the illusion of death.

Forms of sickness vary, but pain in particular is a good example. Pain screams for your attention, day and night. It blasts your awareness with such a loud signal in the body that all of your waking moments are consumed with it. It is a particularly effective way to associate you with the body, because it leaves very little room for ignoring it.

Similarly, other "severe" diseases and so-called accidents can produce such intense long-term suffering such that the body is thoroughly identified with, and believed to be the Self. When the body is challenging you constantly with reminders about how sick you are, how disabled you are, how suffering you are, and how much pain you are in on many levels, it acts as a device for shutting out God. And it can lead to hopelessness, and eventually to death.

In the ego's glorious moment of triumph, it *seems* to achieve the death of the Son of God, through destruction of the body. The body can ONLY be destroyed IF the Son of God has fully granted permission for this to occur, i.e. has done it to Himself, and therefore has chosen to die. (Or at least to seem to, because He is immortal.)

Sickness then is only there as a way to bind you to the body, so that you will seem to be pulled away from God. God is the truth, and sickness puts distance between you and God. Therefore, "sickness is a defense against the truth" because it seems to allow you to escape "into" the body, in effort to find a way to move closer to death, because death is seen as the opposite of Life. Life is God, so death is an escape from God.

If the only purpose of sickness, in defense against truth, is to SEPARATE YOU from God through intimacy with the body, then the HEALING of sickness MUST entail a movement TOWARDS God and away from "body reality". The person must dis-identify from the body, and recognize that they are not physical.

Another way to express this, is that you must realize that the truth of who and what you are is not "form". The only way this can be true, is IF form itself is NOT truth. While the body and its experiences remain true or real to you, you will believe that YOU are those truths. That you are physical and that you can be hurt.

Withdrawal of "reality" from the body, and therefore from all form, is the path to healing sickness and death. In other words, withdrawing a sense of truth from what is actually an ILLUSION, and placing that sense of truth back where it belongs, aligned with the REAL TRUTH which is of God.

If you believe that the body is ever "really sick", or that what you're witnessing is a "real sickness", or that something is "really happening" to you or others, as evidenced by all of the signs and sensations of suffering, then you will be stuck. You must shift your perception to recognize that what you're SEEING is actually an ILLUSION OF SICKNESS. It is not real sickness, because there is no such thing.

What you're seeing, what you're experiencing, as sickness, is actually just an ILLUSORY IMAGE which is PRETENDING to be sickness. It is not really there. It is not really happening. No matter how it appears, no matter the severity or mildness, no matter the form or how long it's been present, it cannot be reality. Otherwise YOU will become the sickness, and the body, and you will die.

Either God's truth is the truth, or the ILLUSION is the truth.

Either God's truth is real, or sickness is real.

Either God's truth is the only truth, or the body has truth to it.

God did not create the body because the body is not real.

Learn then that when you perceive sickness, IF there is a measure of reality to your experience of what you're perceiving, you are MISTAKEN, and you are actually seeing an illusion, but are thinking that it is reality. You have GIVEN truth to it "I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me". Because you GAVE it truth, you can withdraw the truth from it. To do this you have to PLACE the truth somewhere else, and recognize where it really is. Shift the truth to be God's truth, and the truth will be removed from the sickness.

The truth is true and nothing else is true. The body is not the truth. Sickness is not the truth.

Work on this until you can literally look at the sickness and NOT BELIEVE IT. Recognize it is an ILLUSION. It's like a three-dimensional fake hologram being projected by a Spirit that is floating around in space pretending to be physical. It is not a REAL sickness, it is make-believe!

When you can look at sickness as NOT REAL, you will find yourself feeling HAPPY. You will be happy because you are not making errors, you are being forgiving, you are not falling for the illusion (it's a mind trick!), and you're not buying into it. You will find yourself smiling as you affirm and see "this is not real".

Recognizing that illusions are not real, lifts FEAR from you, because fear is a reaction to perceiving a real illusion. You could only be afraid IF what you see is really happening and IF what you see was not designed by God. Only real illusions can frighten! If illusions are NOT real, they cannot frighten. But you must BELIEVE that they are not reality. You're seeing something that isn't really there, it isn't really happening, and it is quite literally.... NOTHING.

Sickness is nothing. Death is nothing.

This "collapsing" of the illusion, this stripping it of its illusory reality, this taking away of belief in it, this withdrawing of the conviction that it is true and therefore suffering with reactions, is all part of forgiveness. Overlooking the error. Overlooking sin. Overlooking an illusion that you always thought was reality, but is in fact smoke and mirrors.

Your body's eyes will show you sickness. But your MIND's EYE will show you the truth - that the sickness is an illusion. The mind then is shining a light of truth - God's truth - and this has POWER to disperse and undo and correct what appears to be the sickness. IT MUST GO! Jesus has said, "illusions that are understood to BE illusions MUST disappear".

When someone is upset, it isn't real.

When someone is sick and suffering terribly, it isn't real.

When war is happening, it isn't real.

When someone is dying, it isn't real.

If this stuff were real, we would HAVE to be very upset! We would have an extremely hard time not being upset by this, because our mind is actually convinced that it's reality and will react to it with fear and suffering.

But imagine that these things are NOT real? This is just a dream, an illusion. You could see these things and NOT BELIEVE THEM, and LAUGH!!!!!!!!!

Too radical? Too ridiculously crazily outside the box of normal thinking? Too wild to be true?

This world is not your home.

Now, pause a moment, and watch out for an ego reaction of guilt. My intention is not to make anyone feel guilty. Nor is it Jesus' intention. But he is trying to educate us with deep honesty about what sickness is and is not so that we can be more easily freed from using it to hurt ourselves. We need to be willing to look at this, it's part of the course. We are adults here, right? We can handle it.

Jesus's statements simply tell us that all forms of sickness are part of an attempts to make our body sick, in order that we can hold it up as proof that our brother is a sinner, accusing him of having caused the effects/symptoms. We show him sickness, evidence of attack and sin, to imply that we have been affected against our will, thus able to scapegoat him and accuse him of sin. Scapegoating isn't just psychological, it is physical.

And furthermore, Jesus is clearly teaching that the body, as a symbol, CAN symbolize innocence and forgiveness, through its physical healing. A healed body teaches and demonstrates and proves that there has not been sin, it exonerates your brother, AND it helps to heal his mind. Your physical health, stemming from your psychological health, becomes your brother's health. When the body is sick, it accuses your brother "Brother, at your hand I die". This happens are psychological, physical, and metaphysical levels.

If you want to love yourself and your brother, the body MUST depict only a symbol of heath and wholeness. Otherwise it is serving the ego's purpose of making sin real. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

*** Physical sickness is a symptom of an unholy relationship with your brothers! ***

Jesus demonstrated this principle through the resurrection. Here's what he says in passages from "The picture of crucifixion" and "The fear of healing." These are POTENT teachings not often accepted in ACIM circles.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved."

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

What if you decide that you are not going to die?

Immediately this flies in the face of everything the world's population holds as true and inevitable. It flies in the face of an entire weight of collective thoughts and beliefs about what is normal and natural in this universe.

You wouldn't be the first to accomplish this either. St Germain for example was known to be "in a body", maintaining agelessness, for several centuries. Babaji is known to be hanging around without aging. There are others.

Jesus calls for every A Course in Miracles student to accomplish this also. He asks us to swear not to die. He tells us to choose resurrection, to not attack the body, to not make it sick, and to heal it. He asks us to make it a picture of health not a picture of crucifixion.

He asks us not to make the body age, or decay, or be sick, or die, but instead to maintain it in a state of guaranteed perfect health indefinitely, for as long as this is useful. That could mean thousands of years, or just a few.

You probably have assumed all your life that just because everyone else's bodies grow old and die and no-one can seem to cure death, that this is the only option. That death is inevitability and it's your fate. Particularly that death cannot be reversed, yet alone prevented.

You see the seasons come and go, the leaves die off, the flowers wilt, the animals turn to carcasses, and people are put in the ground. And we think this is normal and natural and unavoidable. Something to be "accepted" and adjusted to and made out to be something you can do "in peace".

But Jesus is asking a much higher calling for us. He wants us to use the body as a symbol of eternal life, a breath of immortality, to those who have grown tired of the fetid scent of death.

He wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to heal and resurrect the body through miracles, to present a picture of total health and loveliness to your brothers so as to teach them there is no sin and no attack.

He wants us to demonstrate, in person, physically, that there is no death, and that we have power over death. And that means that we make it possible for this exact body we have right now to not die. To not decay. To not grow old and withered and look like a prune. And to be incapable of corruption.

Are you willing to take up this challenge? If you're going to take this course the whole way then it is going to require of you at some time to actually commit to not dying. You cannot have a shred of belief in death or experience of death in your mind and being if you are to reach the end of the curriculum, which is resurrection - death's total opposite.

So you might as well decide right now. I am not going to die this time. I am going to move towards health, life, happiness, wholeness, healing, miracles, the power of the mind over the body, and I refuse to simply go the way of the worms along the funeral procession of death and decay.

How about you decide today, that you will not intent to die this time, you will not merely unconsciously accept notions that you will die, and you will not allow the body to die. It is your challenge to become miraculous and to heal the body's ailments and cure its diseases and undo death itself. To demonstrate your immortality using the body as a tool to prove your mind is stronger than death.

Few will rise to the challenge. It seems ridiculous. It seems impossible. It flies in the face of everything. Just stop and think for a minute. What if in this lifetime right now, with this body, you simply are not going to go through death? What if you're going to simply keep this body, heal it, resurrect it, protect it through miracles and the Holy Spirit, and maintain it in perfect functioning? For as long as you like?

Once the body is being healed by a sane mind, it cannot become sick, nor can it die. So now it is not possible to leave it through death. "A dream of death cannot be left through death but by truth". Truth means resurrection and life.

The body becomes a shining symbol of immortality and you can longer leave it through sickness or decay or suffering. The old doorway to darkness is closed. And the only way to then leave is to simply lay it aside, without decay, without attack, without sickness, in which the body does not corrupt or destroy or symbolize hell. And then it disappears.

What if you don't have to die physically? And what if you can resurrect all the way to invulnerability and immortality? And what if you can prevent the body from being attackable? And what if you do not have to keep aging? What if you can fly in the face of everything the world believes and choose not to die?

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

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

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one."

Your mind has the ability to be either constructive (creative) or destructive. Using the mind for destructive purposes is what the entire ego thought system is about. The whole world was made in an attempt to destroy God and Heaven.

The mind, in its healing and accepting of atonement, has to be restored to being PURELY CONSTRUCTIVE. That means that any destructive tendencies or attitudes have to be healed and corrected.

A destructive tendency is anything that emphasizes the SEPARATION that has seemed to come in between you and others, or you and God, in any kind of relationship. An attempt to DESTROY relationship has produced a WORLD, the inner contents of a seeming "gap", like the pits of hell. And it is into this world that you seem to go when your mind becomes destructive.

If you desire to create, you desire to extend God's love and life and power. This extending goes out without limit and is shared with everyone fully. It is a full embracing of all your brothers in love and light. It is a complete joining and union with them.

This extension of creation and the shining of light are miraculous. It represents health and union and harmony and peace and perfection. To extend God is to be in support of The Kingdom and thus to fully support your brothers with love and His life-giving force.

This isn't merely a state of equality, it's a state of GIVING in which you are constantly maintaining the perfection, innocence and immortality of your brother, as your brother's keeper. It is a way of INCREASING what He has, therefore denying lack or weakness. Being constructive is to GIVE power, to GIVE life, to GIVE love, and to thus MAINTAIN eternal life through constant supply.

"Miracles supply a lack. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."

Becoming destructive, on the other hand, is an effort to do the opposite. It is a desire NOT to share, not to extend, not to create, not to love. It is a rejection of eternal life and thus entry into what seems like a world of mortality and death - a dream of death. Attempting TO DESTROY, is to insert some kind of separate illusion in between you and others, to focus on it, to give it reality and truth, and to believe in its existence.

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

This focusing on destruction is what makes the world of bodies and forms and objects. A world of sin. It is how the planet is held together. It's what makes sickness and death seem possible and real. It materializes as seeming vulnerability and attack and all forms of illness. It falls short of joining with your brother in love, and instead dwells upon what we call "his body", emphasizing its reality and its faults, to try to believe that your brother is NOT an immortal being but a mortal object of attackable flesh and bones.

While our focus is deceived by, tempted by, attacked by, joining with, focusing on, making real, giving truth to, agreeing with, the world of bodies, which comes IN BETWEEN you and your brother's real selves, we are being destructive. This destruction could be mixed in with some FORM of support or help, such as feelings of sympathy and sorrow, compassion, caring, concern, worry, trying to fix their bodies directly, grief when the bodies are harmed or lost etc. All of which are really DESTRUCTIVE attitudes aimed at emphasizing the REALITY of suffering rather than being truly helpful.

To be truly helpful, we have to look at the ways we buy into the dream, the illusion of spacetime, the world, and the bodies of ourselves and others, believing they are total reality, and instead learn to LOOK PAST them to the light of truth. The real truth about others is that THEY ARE PERMANENTLY IMMORTAL, and they cannot EVER have a fault or a weakness or a sickness or any kind of suffering. That is what must be given reality, truth and strength.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

And to overlook means to NOT look at, or to not see, what is being overlooked. In effect to be blind to it, through the proper use of denial. To reject that it is EVEN THERE, putting our WHOLE focus on the extension of love and the recognition of the total truth about another.

"The world you see (the world of bodies) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision (the ability to SEE your brother as he really is)."

Vision does not focus on the body or the world or the things seeming to happen on the canvas of spacetime, in efforts to be support and truly helpful. To HEAL requires looking PAST these things to the ACTUAL truth, and not being hung up on what the gap in between seems to claim. To look out FROM love, TOWARD love, completely skipping over everything IN the gap of the world, so that THERE IS NO GAP. There is no gap, because there is no world.

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies and mistake them for the Son of God. It looks beyond bodies. That is its holiness. That is how it heals."

We have to examine, where is it that I am buying the bullshit lies of this world, the bodies of others, the appearance of things. And why am I thus AGREEING that these things are true and real, instead of rejecting their falsehood? We have to learn to look PAST these things to the reality of the immortality of our brothers IF we are to OFFER THEM immortality. And only by looking WITH love can you look AT love, which is BEYOND the body.

"Never was love in the world of dreams."

Love erases the dream. It heals the dream away. It shines it away. It closes wounds. It undoes tears. It repairs malfunctions and interference and terror and pain. Because unity has no separations, sins or guilts within it, and is perfectly smooth and harmonious and loving and strong.

To STRENGTHEN your brother is to constructively support him. To GIVE LIFE to your brother is to constructively support him. To offer him HIMSELF, equal with the love in you, is to remind him of who he really is. To EMPOWER him is to put him in touch with the innate power that GOD GAVE him already. And to deny HIS denial of the truth about him, weakens HIS belief in his own separateness, and thus HEALS the rift between you.

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."

To be truly helpful is to resurrect. It is to literally SUPPORT the true nature of your brother. To uphold it. To sustain it. To reinforce it. To brighten it. To enliven it. And to ensure it.

"Do not allow your brother to be sick."

Your brother CANNOT BE sick because he is immortal. Believe only this and he wil be healed completely. Buy into his sickness and you merely become sick along with him, and now you both are weak because you suffer together, and there is no hope because you are not giving any. You must not buy into the sob story ego bullshit of your brother or loved one. It is NOT TRUE of them. It's entirely false. And the only story you should be believing is the story of his IMMORTAL CREATION and PERMANENCE, AUTHORED by God.

We are learning to be truly supportive and truly helpful. Putting aside our DESTRUCTIVE uses of mind, our ego, and embracing ONLY constructive, creative powers, which are miraculous.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

This world we seem to be in, is not really a world. It is an illusion of a world, hallucinated by an insane mind, imagining that something impossible exists. It is a meaningless world. It is not good or bad, or evil or holy, or positive or negative, it is absolutely nothing at all.

What we call "the ego" then picks out certain parts of this singular illusion, and says that some parts of it are more alive than others, and other parts more dead. We GIVE it this meaning. We say, ok, this form and shape and behavior means death, and other forms and shapes and behaviors mean life.

And so we assign death to certain states or conditions. We say ok, there's decay and decomposition and damage and seeming lack of life or motion, so we're going to call this death. And when there is motion and vitality and symbols of aliveness, we're going to call this life.

This is literally what you made up. You decided some parts of the one illusion mean death just based purely on appearances. As Jesus says, life and death then seem like opposites in the SAME illusory world, made of ONE substance, and you then decided within that scope that "death ends life". Or that some of the illusions cause other illusions to change and lean towards the "dead state" that you gave the meaning of death to.

It's all made up. There is no part of the illusory world that is more alive OR dead than another part. A dead tree is not really any more dead than a living tree. A dead body in a grave decomposing is really not any different to an exuberant newborn baby smiling at its parents. Nor is a healthy dude at a gym any more alive than a seeming sickly old woman in a hospital. It's all the same stuff.

The ILLUSION is that they are NOT the same. That's the whole trick of it. The suggestion that some FORMS MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT to other forms. That their FORM IS their meaning, and their meaning sets them apart as not the same.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived."

"The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"Therefore, He (Holy Spirit) OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

In the big picture, ALL of the contents of the illusory world are EQUAL in the illusory nature, EQUALLY unreal, and EQUALLY nothing. There are NOT parts which are more alive, and there are NOT parts which are more dead. The body and the world are not alive, or dead. They are neither and nothing.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR."

What this means is the body as a meaningless illusion in a meaningless world, cannot HAVE any properties inherent to it. The world HAS no inherent meaning. When you USE it for an ego purpose, you actually distort the body and steer it towards unnatural states which produces what appears to be physical sickness and death. But as we just said even these states are illusions equal to the rest.

When the mind uses the body to bring the word of God, or the perspective of sanity in which the world is all one illusion, to those who lack this awareness, ie when we love and extend God, we stop distorting the world into states of difference, contrasts, conflicts and opposites, and this lifts away from the "body image" the signs of sickness and attack and conflict. Thus the body "resurrects" to what SYMBOLICALLY is a state of health and life. But even this is still not really life.

There is no death because it only seems to happen in a made-up world with made-up meaning based on made-up forms. A dead body is no more dead in truth than what we call a living body. They are totally the same illusion. One illusion of strange separate things, to which we've assigned arbitrary meaning based on nothing in particular.

WHEN the mind can recognize this, it is no longer participating in the hierarchy of illusions, recognizes both "life and death" as the same one illusion, and now has power over ALL states of matter. It has become miraculous because it sees no order of difficulty. It is no longer believed to be any harder or more difficult or strange or intense or chronic or stubborn to make one thing change into another thing.

Then it becomes EASY to change one state of matter into another, just as Jesus demonstrated materializing food and converting a branch into a snake and back, raising the dead and so on.

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED."

"You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed."

You become able to change material objects into any particular form, as part of your awakening to the fact that they are in fact ALL THE SAME. Overlooking their differences is forgiveness. Recognizing there is only ONE PROBLEM is forgiveness. Seeing the world as having no meaning of its own is overlooking illusions. Recognizing that a body IS NOT REALLY DEAD, and is no more dead than another living body, allows you to convert that body back to the living. Or at least to the symbolic illusion of living.

There are a number of stories in the book "The saints who raised the dead" which is a great read to hear about actual miracles. For example one saint visited a woman who was insane, and had attacked her children and killed them, and then was actually chopping them up and cooking them and eating them. And some of the parts had already been eaten. Totally greusome story yes. However, the saint arrived and, knowing none of these appearances were TRUE, performed a miracle and re-constructed the bodies of the children, putting all of the material back together into fully-formed, fully functioning, unharmed and seemingly totally alive and happy young kids again.

In another story, a man had died and was buried and had already been in the ground for several days starting to decompose. Surely this would mean that it was "too difficult" to resurrect the person to life. But a saint arrived and performed a miracle, recognizing that again the states and forms of matter meant nothing at all. And raised the body up out of the grave and recomposed it into a healthy living body, and the man walked away happily.

There are NO LIMITS on what your holiness can do because your holiness has the power of God in it, plus the awareness that this entire world is NOTHING, and so how can it be DIFFICULT to do anything? All forms CAN be changed precisely because they ARE illusions. Nothing here is permanent or fixed or beyond help. It is precisely because the world is NOT real that it CAN be changed by miracles.

"If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found."

You made death. You invented death. You decided it is death. You made it up, imagined it, labelled in, assigned it to certain forms, and tried to separate it out from other forms. It is not any of that. Death is no different than life in a world of singular illusion. Raising the dead should be effortless for someone who knows this deeply and uses it.

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

Let's take a closer look at sin and find out why no-one has ever sinned.

"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

""Sinless" means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God's you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful."

What is sin?

Simply, it is the attempt to reverse cause and effect. You are the effect of God, and God is the cause of you. When you attempt to reverse this, so that you are CAUSING GOD, this is "sin". It would mean God is now affected by you, changed by you, against His will. That means you have attacked Him and changed him. The belief that you CAN do this, and that you HAVE done this, is the belief that sin is REAL. But this is IMPOSSIBLE.

There is a simple fact to keep in mind. You CANNOT change God in any way. You cannot cause him or affect him. You cannot do anything against His will. You cannot attack Him or make Him be something He does not want to be. Which means, literally, YOU CANNOT SIN against Him. You cannot cause God, therefore you cannot sin. Your hands are tied. You cannot attack anything real.

This also means that IN REALITY, nothing real can be threatened, nothing real can be sinned against, nothing real can be CHANGED, and therefore SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE. You literally cannot go against, oppose, object to, resist, attack, defend against, or do anything TO God or anything real. Sin is literally impossible. Sin literally CANNOT HAPPEN, and HAS NOT HAPPENED. And this isn't mere theory, you literally HAVE NOT SINNED AT ALL.

It is vital to absorb this FACT, because it lays the foundation for correctly framing what's to come next.

You have not sinned, you cannot sin, sin cannot occur, you cannot attack God, you cannot change reality, and you cannot cause the death of life. SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY.

Now. As you find yourself in a DREAM WORLD, Earth, reading words on a screen, you are not being aware of reality. You are not effectively "IN" reality. The world is an attempt to overthrow reality and replace it with unreality. The world is unreal. It's a dream of death. It's an ATTEMPT TO SIN, despite the fact that actually doing this IN REALITY is impossible. It's your best effort to TRY to PROVE that sin is not only possible but has occurred.

You MADE UP a bunch of dream illusions to try to paint a picture of what it might look like *IF* you had sinned. That picture is this world. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." It's a picture of THE IMPOSSIBLE. "It is the world you see that is impossible." In this world, NOTHING HAPPENS. "All events are nowhere."

Yet this world SEEMS to contain things happening, seems to feature bodies attacking bodies, and seems riddled with sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." And if we BELIEVE that this world is REALITY, we WILL believe that the "sins" that occur are REAL sins, mistaking FANTASY SINS for reality. These ILLUSIONS of sin, IMPOSSIBLE sin seeming possible, are literally nothing but fiction, with NO REAL CONSEQUENCES against anything real. God is not affected by it, nothing real is threatened by it. You literally have NOT CAUSED ANY DAMAGE OR HARM EVER.

The fact remains. You literally cannot sin. You can't even begin to sin. This world is not real and so anything "happening" here is not REALLY happening. If you break a window, you did not break a real window. You broke a dream window. If you killed a flock of sheep in a fit of rage, you didn't. You merely dreamed of doing so. If you think you did some terrible crime that is punishable by death and suffering, you are ATTEMPTING to hold a deathly judgement against an INNOCENT Son of God, BY MISTAKE.

Because here's the fact of the matter. If you cannot sin against anything real, and therefore sin is impossible, you believing you HAVE DONE SO MUST BE MISTAKEN. You MUST be confused. You MUST be delusional. You MUST be out of your mind insane if you think it's even POSSIBLE to sin, yet alone that you have, or "have the proof" to show for it. There is no such thing as evidence of sin. There are only lies and illusions of sin. There is no real sin. ALL SIN IS FAKE.

Only by being very mistaken does anyone BELIEVE they have sinned. Only in confusion are we convinced that it's even POSSIBLE to cause something against its will. Only by being in ERROR having made an error of discernment does it seem plausible or "happening" that there can be "real death", "murder", "war" and the like. These are DREAMS of hell, not real hell. They are illusions of sin in an illusory world.

You have never sinned. You will never sin. God finds you guiltless, sinless and innocent forever. This is what you need to wake up to - accepting this is FORGIVENESS. The overlooking of sin, the overlooking of guilt, the overlooking of death. There is no sin, or guilt, or suffering, or sickness, or death. ALL of it SEEMS real, SEEMS to be happening, SEEMS like an awful terrible nightmare. But it is nothing BUT a nightmare. It's a nightmare to BELIEVE you can sin when you can't, or that you HAVE sinned when it's impossible.

You cannot sin. You will not sin. You have not sinned. There is no sin. No one has ever sinned. No one can sin against you. You have never sinned against anyone. YOU ARE NOT A SINNER. You are ETERNALLY INNOCENT. This is the only verdict the Holy Spirit will accept about you because He knows without a doubt that your idea of sinning is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE and completely illusory.

You are DREAMING of sinfulness, suffering and death. You are punishing yourself in a hell of your own making for NO GOOD REASON. You are finding yourself guilty for having DONE NOTHING. You are not criminal, sinful, or guilty. You have never hurt anything or anyone. You are EXONERATED because IN REALITY SIN DOES NOT EXIST. If you think it exists, you are unaware of reality.

Belief in sin IS THE PROBLEM, not the sin itself. This whole world, the entire ego separation, the dream of death, is ALL about your BELIEF that you DID SIN, in DENIAL of the fact that YOU DID NOT. The WHOLE THING is a case of mistaken identity and false accusations. A claim that you accomplished something you could never do. It's an attempt to invent the evidence and give it credit/reality so that it SEEMS to prove you DID commit a horrible crime against God. YOU COULD NOT, NEVER DID, NEVER WILL.

So this whole world is A MISTAKE. You are MISTAKEN when you believe you or others are sinful or guilty. "BELIEVING in" sin being true is the actual issue. Your belief is mistaken. Your belief is madness. Your belief is an ERROR. And all errors can be CORRECTED. You believing you CAN and HAVE sinned is NOT TRUE, it and this error in thinking needs to be corrected so that you will REALIZE, you never did anything AT ALL. You accused yourself FALSELY.

No matter what you think you did, no matter how extreme or severe or what the consequences seemed to be, YOU HAVE NOT done a single thing EVER that God is upset with you about. You have ONLY been very mistaken. You have only ever had "mental illness", believing something is possible that isn't. You've acted insanely because you were not in your right mind. No one in their right mind believes in sin because the authority-problem notion of "I can change reality" is utterly ridiculous.

Mistakes call for FORGIVENESS AND HEALING. To forgive is to overlook the error and recognize the truth. You have not sinned. There is no sin. "And in this view are all your sins forgiven." A mistaken person merely needs healing, not punishment. You deserve forgiveness and healing, not condemnation. You have simply been confused and have mistaken illusions and dreams of sinning for reality.

Not one single sin in the history of the planet has ever happened. There is no sin anywhere. All "doing" is illusion. Everyone is eternally innocent. God finds you worthy, and loves you forever. Sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You are holy and always were.

When I rest within, go within, focus within, dwell with God within, stay within, remain calm, be at peace, connect to my holiness, step back from the world, disconnect, etc.... I feel that where and what I am is centered and calm and dwells inside of me.

Within me according to ACIM there is an inner altar, where we are host to God. And also that deep within us there is a place of complete holiness. And we're also told we can find a state of rest in an "I need do nothing" state, where we can experience a sense of calm and rest "in the midst all the busy doings on which you are sent".

The more that I forgive the world and recognize it does not exist, the more I only have "left" what is within me. If everything seemingly external or outside of me, which also includes the body, is not there and does not exist, because there is no world, then all I "have" is what is within my mind. In my awareness.

I find myself becoming aware of this inside state of calm and holiness more and more often. If I put my attention there, it's like turning my mind away from the world and looking within. Focusing on where I am coming from, not on where I am going to. Stepping back from the world and stepping back from my stepping out, and simply remaining deep within. And this inner state is abstract and simple and one and whole, not a myriad of forms and differences.

Within me there is a place of peace and calm and surrender and inactivity. It's a quiet, holy state. It isn't out there, or externalized, or projecting, or losing center, or being caught up in illusions, or upset, or thrown around by the world. It's like just sitting centered within yourself and in what you are and not leaving yourself. Not abandoning yourself. Not being pulled away on another wild goose chase.

When I move away from this state, which seems to be very natural and easy to move into as well, my focus and attention shifts to the external world. To the body. And now if my mind goes into ego, and it goes into believing the world is real, it now starts to lose sight of that inner calm. And now the mind seems to reach out, attach, hold onto things, psychologically and energetically.

Each time this happens a seeming "bridge" forms, which is based on the idea of horizontal cause and effect, or being affect-able by the external world. It feels like a cord, tying me to something. And by believing in external causes and sinners I then feel this sense of vulnerability and accessibility, wherein because I am forming these bridges of horizontal causation with external things, my attack can flow out across these bridges, and external attack can flow in to me as well. They are beliefs in affecting and being affected.

Once I am attacking and receiving attack, my psychological experience is that I am vulnerable, attackable, unprotected, and what is external can seem to come all the way into me and make contact with what I am, and attack it, and now I am affected, and now I am having effects and upsets and emotional reactions. And now I am thrown off center and am lost, and have lost sight of my inner self, and the calm is disturbed, and all sense of holiness and peace thrown out the window.

Then I forgive. I remember there is no world. And as I forgive I dismantle these inroads, these bindings and attachments and beliefs in something external having access to my inner self. And as I do, as I recognize the world is not real, it does not exist, it is not causal, it is not happening, this wipes the world off the plate of my mind. Everything external is a lie. And now what is left? All that's left is what I am within me. And what I am is deep within. And it is calm and peaceful and holy and innocent and light and gently happy and in the presence of God. And it is already there, waiting for me to just uncover it and be it.

So now what I'm noticing is, I am spending progressively more and more time within, being what I really am, and less and less time without, lost and being untrue to myself and wildly reactive and upset and terrified, caught in a dream and tempted by illusions. So it seems then that remaining within, centered, in my inner calm place, is where I really am, and if I were to just stay there, I would not lose sight of myself and bleed out into the world. And I wouldn't react to figures in a dream, or even feel particularly engaged with the world.

It then is like being passer-by, remaining within, with God, and looking without, but not moving out into the world mentally. Not abandoning my post. Not running away from the inner altar. Not getting distracted and deceived and alarmed and threatened by the external. And so I just remaining within. Like a turtle in its shell, just peeking out at the world but not thrusting myself into it. Not losing my center or going off on some tangent of a wild goose chase after dreams and fantasies of physical spiritualization.

So then if I walk the world, from within, and an remaining within as I do so, keeping in the inner holy calm while I do so, I am no longer lost in the world. I am above the battlefield. I am outside the spacetime. I am further than any illusion can reach. I am beyond the ego. Because ego is always all about going without, externalizing, abandoning yourself, leaving yourself behind, moving away from what you are, seeking and not finding, seeking anywhere but within where you already are perfect. And now I be passerby, watching, noticing, but staying close to God within.

Paradoxically, when you go within, you access the light, and then the light can project and extend outward. You do not shine the light by trying to force light out of you into the world. You do not shine light by leaving your light bulb. You do not illuminate the world or be the light of the world, by confusing yourself with what goes out. Love and light extend on their own. You only have to go within and join with the SOURCE, plug yourself into the electrical socket, and then you light up, within.

"Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin."

And once you have an inner light, it automatically radiates and extends and shares. It seems counter intuitive but the only way to give to others is to receive. And as you receive the inner light you automatically give it. Provided you don't try to take it away from yourself and sacrifice it in trying to give it to another. You are to be the light bulb, not the photons. You have to be in the inner holiness in order to have power over what is exteranal.

Going within allows you to extend and project light without. You have to move within, and become closer to God, in order to have something worth giving. And as you give it, you do not abandon your intimacy with God otherwise you stop having anything to share. And as you connect to the inner light, this also transcends the outer, and so joins you with other minds in light, because it is deep within you that you are connected to others, who SEEM to be external and separated off. We are joined together by mutually going within, so that we transcend the world, and thus are not at a distance.

There is a saying, "If I do not go within, I will go without". And this is the whole thing. When you stop dwelling within, you lose yourself and lose everything. You lose touch with what you are and with God. And the light dims and you cannot shine. In a sense, by moving inward which seems to be away from others, you actually reach a state of joining and sharing. You can't access this joining and sharing state by forcing yourself outward, because that actually produces special relationships, attachment, ownership and control.

All that remains when there is no world, and there is no body, and there are no temptations, and there is no distraction, and you are not confused with the world, and you do not believe you are a physical object, and you recognize the world was just a dream, and you reach enlightenment, which is what God gave you. What is coming from God. And what comes from God is received within at your inner altar. And this is where you are host to Him. And when this is all you have left, and you have nothing of the world, you are ready to go home.

In your attempt to move away from God, you are basically trying to disown yourself.

You do this by denying who you are, covering up awareness of who you are, and displacing your sense of self onto anything that you perceive as "not me".

What you do is you take part of your mind and retain it as conscious awareness (your persona), and then shield it from the rest of your mind which becomes unconscious (your shadow).

The unconscious part of the mind is disassociated from, denied and rejected. You hide it from yourself so that you can pretend to be only a limited identity.

What is then part of your own unconscious mind then seems to "project" outward, creating hallucinations of an external world. Since you've placed a barrier between your conscious awareness and "the rest of yourself", you do not experience what's out there as yourself.

So now it seems like there is an entire world that is not you, filled with identities and people who are not you.

At the same time, in order to disown yourself, you have to give ownership of yourself away. That means your sense of identity has to become the possession of some other self, namely the ego.

It is not that the ego has any power of its own to take possession of you. Your attempt to disown your own self produces the ego. You make it everything it is on purpose. And yet at the same time as disowning yourself, you appear to grant it permission to possess you.

It seems then that the ego is a separate entity, largely in your unconscious, filled with all the unwanted parts of yourself which you judge as unacceptable, wrong, bad, guilty etc. Yet at the same time, the ego is also in the conscious persona which is at war with the unconscious. It is the separation between them that is the ego.

This unconscious repository of darkness is your "pain body". At times your pain body, the emotional body of the ego, will take possession of your conscious mind/persona, becoming extremely anti-persona and believing the exact opposite of what the persona-self believes.

When this happens it quite literally is like being possessed by some kind of dark twisted being who is very strongly in denial, very deeply opposed to any kind of truth, and it can flood the mind with negative fearful thoughts.

It in a way feeds off of you, in that by throwing your own repressed stuff into your awareness (ultimately as an act of attempted healing), your mind becomes overwhelmed with fearful reactions and this generates a negative energy which it appears to feed off.

Depending on how much separation you have experienced in your existence, will somewhat determine the 'body' of pain i.e. everything you judged or rejected, which has become stored any our unconscious and which needs to be purified and released.

Going through this process is often something that is randomly triggered and seemingly unwanted and horrifying, because it is as though a person can become literally possessed by some dark being, losing significant awareness, going into an unconscious state of paranoia and fear and guilt and dwelling upon the past.

For some people the pain body is so strong that it can produce violence and suffering, while for others it may come and go more quickly. It returns to being somewhat dormant if the person is able to maintain a non-reactionary consciousness, i.e. awareness. But if it is allowed to take over awareness it can turn a person into seemingly someone possessed, who you may barely recognize, and who may suddenly become what many people would consider either depressed or mentally ill.

These periods of "release" of unconscious dark baggage are punctuated after a usually short period of time with a period of relief in which a lightness and happiness takes over. This is similar to what happens when you have a cathartic cry, which initially is painful and dark and upsetting to go through, but at the end once the energy is cleared out you may find yourself laughing.

Ultimately this is a process of healing and release and a way for a person to let go of a large body of unconscious pain which needs to be permitted, allowed, accepted and observed, without becoming too lost in the clouds along the way. Since we repress a great amount of negativity into the unconscious, or otherwise known as the "shadow", there can be a lot of self abuse to be cleansed.

Ultimately the ego itself is not an entity and nor can it truly possess you against your will, but since it is something that you yourself set in motion and gave power to, you have to go through a process of allowing the shadow and persona to cancel each other out. The conscious mind is overcome by what appears to be mind-altering and even behavior-altering unconsciousness, but it is only happening because the person has become ready to work through their baggage and release it.

If this is happening to you or to people you know, you might think they are crazy or that something terrible has happened medically. No many people understand this. But at some point sooner or later you as you progress on your steps towards returning to your true self, reclaiming your identity, waking up to reality and accepting God's truth, it's going to mean you need to purify and flush out all of the ways in which you have created separation in yourself, and so it's as though the lid is lifted off your denial, producing a profound release. And so this really is a part of the awakening process.

This may be the way that you proceed in your path, to varying degrees, or it may not be. It can be very difficult and extremely confusing to go through. But we are all heading home to God one way or another and for some people it takes a direct expression of unconscious fear, guilt and rage, in order to cleanse the mind of the darkness which has been stored there. We all have our skeletons and we all could use a closet spring-clean.

None of use are stuck in the ego. Nobody is a victim of evil. Nothing is happening in our mind that we haven't put in place. And our own ego, our alternate identity, is just a part of our own self that we've pretended to split off. It is no more a separate entity than that it is our own self pretending to not be our own self. And so it's an interesting paradox that as we attempt to disown ourselves, we become owned by ourselves, albeit around a wall of unawareness. Moral of the story being, you cannot stop being what God created.

We're all loved by God and there is no real way to be separate from Him.