"To forgive is to OVERLOOK"

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven"

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

The function of forgiveness, is to look beyond error from the start, as pro-active "fore-giving", a giving of love which recognizes innocence and does not allow the mind to MAKE an error. Forgiveness is the perception in which errors are not seen at all, because the mind is not making or projecting errors itself, and so this "pro-active" attitude sustains a state where there is no error, ie there is no sin, and so long as you stay focused on this you will not produce any.

If you slip up and fail to forgive, you will make an error. You will go into the belief in "sin is real". And by going into it, you will use judgement to try to explain (justify) why you couldn't be forgiving. e.g. that someone "really did this or that", calling for you to "have to" be justified in judging due to what you think happened. But what you think "happened" is an error in judgement, an error in your own perception. An error that your own mind made-up, as a result of leaving the state of forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit therefore does not MAKE errors, or produce perception of sin, and so perceives only that there is no sin. He looks past errors to the truth, using reason. This form of sight literally "overlooks", as in, DOES NOT SEE, errors anywhere, as if the errors (if they were to exist) have become totally transparent and have disappeared. He looks only to the face of Christ and innocence and recognizes that there literally IS no ego, because there IS no error or sin, and the "forms of error" which the body's eyes look at and can't see past (physical objects) are overlooked entirely.

The world, as referred to in "the forgiven world", that being simply Earth and the rest of this universe, IS AN ILLUSION, and it is the form of error. To look at it is to be blinded by perception of form. To look past it is to overlook it and see beyond it. In this way, forgiveness literally overlooks the world entirely, forgets the world, ignores physical objects, and looks past it to the face of Christ. This is "forgiving the world" doesn't entail keeping it and looking AT it in a forgiving way, it entails OVERLOOKING it, recognizing it is NOT THERE, and realizing that it - being made of the idea of sin - DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS NOT HAPPENED. In this way forgiveness overlooks the world itself, not just misperceptions of it, and looks beyond this world to another - Heaven.

As such, "a forgiven world cannot last" because if it IS forgiven, it WAS an illusion, and IS NOT real, and therefore CAN be overlooked, not seen, regarded as nothing, and forgotten entirely. A "forgiven world" is an OVERLOOKED world, a world NOT SEEN, and NOT THERE. A world that never existed in the first place. And so forgiveness recognizes the world is an illusion, not a reality. A forgiven world is an undone world, and it disappears. This is why it cannot last. If you forgive it, you will make it disappear, because there is no sin and the world is the idea of sin. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

The ultimate elephant in the room I think is God ... because a) he's very big and b) hardly anyone seems to talk about him.

Have you noticed that? We talk about holy spirit, jesus, forgiveness, miracles, bodies, worlds, guilts, fears, sickness, death, and all that. ... but I hardly ever see anyone talking about God.

"God" is in fact the most frequently occurring regular word in ACIM. You'd think we'd be talking about God more?

You could also say the whole course is about your relationship with God. The separation from God is the only problem, and reunion with God is the only solution.

So it's not really so much about the world, or the body, or people outside you, or worldly events and forgivenesses, or even our relationships in the world. It's actually about something deeper than that, something that comes even before your own creation.

Your relationship with your source, where you come from, what created you and wills you to exist. We've interfered with our relationship to God, and it is precisely that relationship that needs the healing.

In the separation, we denied God, shut God out, rejected love, threw away the inheritance of what God was giving us, pretended not to have a father, didn't want to be loved, disconnected our minds from spirit, and basically closed ourselves off to him.

That's essentially the whole problem. Everything else is based on that. The sense of separation from God is the only problem to be corrected. Which means, we have to acknowledge first of all that we have in fact shut God out, and secondly that we now need to let God in again and recognize our relationship to him.

The love of God must be received again. The power of God must be owned again. The gifts of God must be opened to again. The inheritance from God must be reclaimed. Your oneness with God must be restored. Your identity as part of God must be owned up to. Your location in God as your home must become your anchor. Your reliance and dependence on God in symbiotic relationship must be trusted again. Trust in God has to be developed again. And you have to be willing to extend God's love and power again as a co-creator.

What seems to be separation from brothers, issues about projecting onto the world, struggles with sin and guilt and fear and sickness and death, that all comes later. That's all symptomatic of not having God in your awareness. God - or love - is literally all you need. God is the answer to your prayers. God is the solution to all your problems. God is your strength, your power, your innocence, the light in which you see, the love with which you forgive, the life in which you resurrect.

God is everything to you. There is nothing else.

"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other."

"Your creation by God is the only foundation which cannot be shaken, because the light is IN it."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"God is my refuge and security."

"The Name of God is my inheritance."

"God is my strength. Vision is His gift."

"God is my Father, and His Son loves Him."

"God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him."

"God is my life. I have no life but His."

"I call upon God's Name and on my own. The Name of God is my deliverance from every thought of evil and of sin, because it is my own as well as His."

"I want the peace of God. The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal"

"God is my Life and YOURS, and NOTHING is denied by God to His Son."

"My only function is the one God gave me."

"I am as God created me."

Your body is just a piece of software running in the God Computer.

The brain is a central processing unity (CPU) and is one of many processors in the body. Or you could think of it as a sub-set of the software which performs a particular task.

The brain and all other processors do not do anything other than execute commands. The brain does not create commands.

The body executes all commands exactly and correctly. It does not invent commands itself, has no will of its own, and does not think.

The mind is not a by-product of the brain. That would be as though to say that the CPU of the body computer comes up with it own software programs, or that the software has the power to change itself.

The software programs MUST come from outside of the computer itself., from an actual source of WILL, capable of writing programs in the first place. And that intelligence must be able to function WITHOUT a body and without a brain!

That intelligence must be able to think without needing a body in order to think. It must be creative.

That mind, that intelligence, must also have designed the body computer itself, the CPU (brain) and all other parts. It must have devised all of the software that operates it.

Therefore the body computer is INSIDE of the mind, just as the programs which run on a computer come from OUTSIDE of the computer, created by an operator who tells the computer what to do.

Just because software runs inside the computer does not mean the computer is the source of the software. Similarly just because it SEEMS as though the mind operates inside the body, that the mind is created by the body.

The mind - the programmer - WROTE the body software, WROTE the brain, and WROTE all of the programs which the body/brain executes.

This is why looking for mind or thought within the brain, as though the brain is a "cause", or that the brain has a "will", or that the body has a "mind of its own", is completely a mistake.

The body does not have a mind of its own. It is just a functional machine, a device. YOU as mind put instructions into the device to tell it what to do. And it does that, and only that, exactly and correctly.

No matter what you tell the body computer to do, it will do it. If you tell it to depict health, it will. If you tell it to depict sickness and death, it will. It always produces a correct result because it does not pick and choose what instructions to follow.

YOU are therefore in COMMAND of the body, the world, and all illusions. YOU are the one who is writing the scripts (programs). YOU are the author.

Except that, it goes even further than this. God is really the only author of reality and truth. He is the only author of bug-free programs. He is the only one who can create the perfect program (Christ) which can in turn extend God's design to produce further perfect programs (Christ's creations).

But when you tried to become a SEPARATE PROGRAMMER, you tried to override God's program, shut it out, and replace it with a program of your own. Thus your ego wants to be fully in charge of the dream, to have power of it, and to even perform miracles, PROVIDED it gets to stay separate from God.

Fortunately miracles require sharing with God, so the ego will never be able to access God's power. Therefor the ego will never be able to rewrite the true program of Christ, and will never be able to actually corrupt anything.

Just as all bugs and errors and viruses and rogue programs are WIPED UNCONDITIONALLY from memory when you reboot your computer, when you awaken to enlightenment, God will REBOOT YOU, and after the reboot, all that will be left is the perfect program of Christ. A totally new, fresh system, untainted and undefiled. And you will express love and love will be your only output.

Love has a fundamental rule that it MUST be shared, otherwise it is NOT love. This means that love is tied to oneness. You must be one with your brother IN ORDER TO experience the state of love. They must be included in the love, included in who and what you are, otherwise love is absent.

When two separate people see themselves as separated off, but try to love each other, the love is CONDITIONAL. It is a special love. They may feel the love strongly or even describe it as unconditional, but so long as separation is preserved the love is limited. Nor will it be felt all the time.

In order to truly unconditionally love, there must be no conditions on who or what you are, which means your must INCLUDE your brother as part of yourself. Your must have shared interests and joined minds. You must be in total agreement and appreciation.

ONLY by sharing can you love, because love is the opposite of selfishness. It's a feeling or state that you experience WHEN your mind is OPENED UP to include others. A mind that is shut down, exclusive, isolated, limited and alone, is not a loving mind.

You also cannot be loving IN ISOLATION. It cannot be that you are loving fully and yet other people are EXCLUDED from your love, or from your self. Love must go out and it must extend and it must be given and shared without any strings attached. Otherwise it can't be love. And that REQUIRES ONENESS.

When you see yourself as one with another, as including them, encompassing them, uniting with them and sharing everything with them, THEN you will automatically feel love. Love isn't actually something that you can just invent on the spot. It is not something you MAKE. It is not something that you switch on or add as if it wasn't there.

Love is actually an inherent part of reality and of God's law and nature. It should be felt all the time. But if it is not being felt, it is because it is being blocked. That means there is denial and limitation and conditionality. Therefore in order to feel love for someone it's not a matter of you deciding to "invent some exclusive love" just for that person, which simultaneously shuts others out. In order to ACCESS to love, we are really talking about you accessing A SHARED STATE in which all love pre-exists and dwells AS GOD.

To love, therefore, requires you to enter into union with God, to share with God, to be open to God. And that means being inclusive of all God's children. It means shared identity, holy relationship, innocence, recognition of your brother as part of yourself, a willingness TO INCLUDE, and a complete absence of any kind of exclusions or exceptions. Love is then felt automatically without any effort whatsoever. It is simply there when you share. It is what true sharing feels like.

You can try this for yourself. Attempt to see someone close to you as being a part of you. Attempt to extend yourself to include them, as though enveloping them in the bubble of what BOTH of you are together as one. Recognize they are part of you and therefore everything applies to both of you. Share with them. You WILL notice that a feeling of LOVE just comes out of nowhere. This is because you have MET ITS CONDITIONS.

"Love MUST be extended. Purity is not confined. It is the NATURE of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation."

"Love MUST be total to give Him welcome"

"ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED."

"Where there is love, your brother MUST give it to you, because of what it IS. But where there is NEED for love, YOU must give it, because of what YOU are."

"Love goes out because of what it is"

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

"Love is one."

"Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same."

"Love is not learned, because there never WAS a time in which you knew it not."

"Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one."

"And every one I give returns to me, reminding me the law of love is universal."

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION."

"Love IS extension."

"In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle."

"Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and YOU are love."

"For if love is SHARING, how can you find it except through ITSELF? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself."

"LOVE IS FREEDOM."

"Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."

"That is because the function of love is One."

"How gracious is it to decide all things through Him, Whose equal love is given equally to all alike. He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him."

I received a large envelope in the mail. It was from a medical group that we depend on currently for a treatment. I wondered what it could be. Or more to the point, I feared what it might be. Was it a bill? Was it a notice of termination? Was it more rules being laid down to control behaviors? Was it some serious requirement we were going to have to go through? All this ran through my mind in a matter of seconds in reaction to "seeing it." And I hadn't even opened it yet.

I then remembered, that this is a prime example of reacting in fear to some "portion" of the world. Something in the world seems to happen, some "dream" seems to occur, and then I perceive it. And if I perceive it is REAL, forgetting that it is complete fiction and isn't really happening, I MUST experience some portion of the hierarchy of illusions. Some measure of fear, threat and danger must arise, to correspond to the perceived severity of "the problem that came out of nowhere".

So then I remembered, oh yea,.... there is no world. This is me reacting to part of a dream as if it is real. And so I saw, wow, look at how my mind just went right into FEAR, the instant that I saw what this envelope was, and allowed its "reality" to enter my mind. By not remembering this is just another dream episode, my mind was "snagged" or caught up on the dream, as if bound to it and part of it.

The automatic go-to reaction was to be afraid as a result. Yet the instant that I thought to myself, "there is no world, this is just a dream", the fear melted and I felt happy and light and safe. I stepped outside of it. I reframed it. I remembered this little "event" is nowhere and nothing. And I saw how strange it is that I would go into automatic, uncontrolled fear, just as a reaction to having made an envelope real. Having then told myself that all manner of defensiveness is needed, in the form of fear, to prepare myself for what this was going to "do to us".

As I stepped outside of it and laughed, with the fear gone, and trying to stay in the happy awareness that there is no world, I noticed how I probably for all my life have "reacted to dreams" in this way. Each time some thing seems to happen in the world, there has been this "being caught up in it". And each time I am caught up in it there is suffering. And along with that there are upset feelings and fear and stress. And it's all because I thought what was happening was real.

In fact it then seemed really strange that I had chosen to go into fear at all, because there was absolutely no call for fear and no apparent reason to be afraid at all. If the dream was not real and there wasn't even really an envelope, then there was no basis for any reaction whatsoever. And this revealed just how pointless and arbitrary fear is, like some kind of un-checked auto-responder, that just activates unconsciously, with little regard for whether it's even justified. Like a habitual reaction. And I probably had been doing this all my life.

But now here I was, feeling safe and light and happy and bright, because I had remembered for a moment that "this is just a piece of a dream, it's not even really there". I thus opened the envelope and inquired as to its main message. It was, to my pleasant surprise, a refund check for $150 for "overpayment". lol

But it is a lesson. It has shown me another fine example of just how this works. This ONE PROBLEM. Forgetting that you are dreaming. Believing it is REALITY. Thinking that what's happening is ACTUALLY happening. Losing sight of any kind of awareness and just becoming unconscious, ego, reactive and fearful, suspicious, defensive, vulnerable and weak. If the world is real you HAVE to be afraid, and everyone who has been living this way their whole lives doesn't know any other option. I know I didn't.

It's all what happens when you dip down into false perception and bind yourself to the dream, lose yourself in it, go into the darkness of it and take it seriously. Then as you lift up, as you remember THERE IS NO WORLD, your mind just floats right out of it and makes light of it, free from it, saved from it, happy and safe from it. And in that light, there is no concern for what the dream seems to show, or what the event seems to be about. You are not inside the event, because you are not lost in the dream. Being lost is the mainstay in this world, and few have found themselves as yet.

"Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers."

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die, yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"Miracles restore the awareness that you are the dreamer of the dream."

"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."

When your mind is filled with love, it projects a perfectly healed body, free of pain, symptoms of sickness, suffering, damage of any kind. And it especially does not produce death. This healthy body is a symbol in the dream, pointing towards innocence and representing a sign that attack has not occurred. It teaches anyone who looks upon it that they must be innocent, because the absence of harm of any kind in this body image proves their sins have not produced effects. This weakens your brother's belief in his own sinfulness and facilitates healing.

"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."

When your mind is not filled with love, you are unloving towards yourself and towards your brother simultaneously. This attack is an attempt to create a gap of separation that comes between you. The body itself represents this gap and symbolizes the attack. It is the wall that you use to try to demonstrate that you are separate, as a separation device.

Having used the body for attack, the body itself now depicts your attitude towards yourself and others, which is a sick attitude of attack, thus showing up as what the world terms sickness, symptoms, damage and physical suffering. This body image now symbolizes death, and it does not point towards or represent innocence and life any more. It instead points away from it and accuses your brother of having produced effects in you, proving to him that he must be a sinner. This strengthens his belief that he is a sinner and imprisons him further, rather than healing him. It is an attack.

"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."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

"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."

"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."

"The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

In order to thereby exonerate both your brother and yourself, and to prove and demonstrate with absolute conviction that forgiveness has truly occurred, in which there is no sin and therefore no effects of attack, the effects themselves must be removed from the body. The body HAS TO BE HEALED. It must be restored to a condition that it was in prior to the attack, and it must only teach and symbolize life and innocence.

If it is kept with conditions of sickness or damage or broken malfunctioning parts, the body remains an accuser. And because the body is proving and teaching and symbolizing sin and attack, it proves that your mind is not TRULY forgiving your brother and yourself. If you were to truly be healed, on the mental level, your body would be healed also.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"A broken body is PROOF the mind has NOT been healed."

The fact is that if sickness or damage remain in the body "after forgiveness", the mind DID NOT complete the forgiveness. The forgiveness MUST bring healing to the body image also, so that it can symbolize and teach and depict a representation of, and point towards, innocence, harmlessness, healing and wholeness. If the body stays damaged, it continues to teach your brother of his sinfulness and does not heal him, and therefore proves that you also are not healed.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing 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."

"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 final result of forgiveness MUST BE that not only is your brother's mind healed, AND his body is healed of anything you did to him, but also that your mind is healed, AND your body is healed of anything you did to it. Until that occurs, forgiveness has not been completed and the mind is still sick.

"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."

"The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness."

If you do not PROVE that your BELIEVE that health and wholeness and healing and life and harmlessnes are the ONLY TRUTH, and you fail to DEMONSTRATE it with your body, by healing the body of all signs and symptoms of sickness, all disease, all damage, then your belief is UNATTESTED and WITHOUT CONVICTION. You have not put your money where your mouth is and you are lying, because the only way for the body to BE in a state of sickness if for you to MAINTAIN ATTACK, without which the body could not stay sick. The body MUST be healed in order for your mind's healing to be complete, because they are intimately related.

"Health (physical health) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief."

When the body is healed and is no longer sick, it now COMPELS BELIEF in another that they must be innocent. It has a healing, teaching power. It is a demonstration of miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

The signs of accusation and blame are the physical symptoms. They will be taken away by the Holy Spirit, if you will let him. So that he can restore the body to the picture that HE WANTS IT TO SHOW, to teach the healing that HE wants to use it to teach. The picture of innocence. The picture of immortality.

"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."

This is what you must USE the body for, within this dream, WHILE you have one, before you disappear off to awareness of Heaven. When you are a teacher of God, fulfilling a function of "awareness of dreaming", and using the body only for communication (which is healing), the body must be healed and it must not show any sign of damage or attack or effects or consequences of sin or guilt in any way. To do so is an attempt to teach two things at once: 1) healing is true, 2) attack is true. And through such a demonstration no-one can learn anything because it is contradictory. The body is now showing a different PROOF than the person is CLAIMING.

"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus is black and white about this. Either you heal TOTALLY on ALL LEVELS - mind, emotions, body, OR the healing is not complete.

Sick bodies and dead bodies are not part of the aim of A Course in Miracles and are not something that Teachers of God are supposed to teach or demonstrate to others, or themselves. You are only to demonstrate symbols of LIFE and immortality through the body, so that it can become a sign of life and a witness and testimony to healing and harmlessness. Sickness and death of the body are a failure to accomplish this, and a dream of death cannot be left by death only by truth, which is first approached through mental and physical health. The happy dream must entail a healed body as well as a healed mind, not merely a state of mental "transcendence" of sickness that keeps the body sick and continues to teach death.

"Only the mind and body need atonement."

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

Summarized in this classic statement - the CENTRAL LESSON, from the manual for teachers:

"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. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is.He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

And this classic from "sickness is a defense against the truth":

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

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

You can't sell God, because God is not tangible. So what's the dam issue with supposedly being guilty for selling spirituality?

You can't really sell spirituality because you can't sell Spirit. You can't hoard and deny spirit to someone and then charge for it, because spirit is free.

Love is the only reality which can be shared, and love is the only "thing" which can be exchanged, being present everywhere already and open to all. Anyone can have access to it already, for free. You can't get it from anyone else, and nobody can take it away either. It's available to you right now freely. Because it is freedom.

Everything else is an illusion. Everything in this dream world, all of the ways that people do stuff. Whether they are selling objects or services or time or effort or information or therapy or whatever, it's all the same illusion.

It is the spiritual ego that has come up with this idea that "spirituality within a real dream" would be a sin. That first and foremost, the dream is real, and secondly, if you try to do anything spiritual for ego purposes within the real dream, that's a sin. Fuck that stupid logic. It's nothing more than the ego's attempt to spiritualize the dream while simultaneously repressing that spirituality behind a wall of sin.

So now this behavior over here, you know, selling knock-off goods for a huge markup and making tons of evil profit... that's ok and acceptable. But, if you try to sell someone a loving service or some healing or spiritual education or something that really helps them in a worthwhile way, then, you know.... SIN BE UPON YOU!

This is all because of the ego's back-ass claptrap system of logic. Bad and evil and terrible nasty things are okay to charge an arm and a leg for, but truly helpful beautiful love and spiritual inspiration which might get you out of the dream - NOooooooo... not allowed to mix that with the nasty evil money. No way.

It's bullshit. It's basically the ego's split mind, in which it has created a persona and a shadow. All of the stuff the ego approves of and wants to keep it puts into the persona, and all of the guilty sinful stuff it shoves into the shadow to get rid of it. The ego has a huge interest in getting rid of any real spirituality. So it shoves it into the guilty shadow department.

So it now divides up the world into "good and bad" and "right and wrong", and firmly puts any kind of spirituality into the "wrong" camp and anything that symbolizes much more "egotism" into the right camp. And now it's okay that the right stuff be acceptable and paid for, but you dare to charge money for the wrong stuff, suddenly it's a sin.

ITS ALL THE SAME! You especially should charge money for your spiritual services and products and you perhaps should be getting even MORE money for that than you would get for selling a pile of doughnuts. Why is it LESS VALUABLE?

I've seen so many well intentioned, good-hearted, spiritual people, develop a spiritualized ego version of value, where they try to symbolically implement spiritual concepts into their behaviors in the illusion. This is LEVEL CONFUSION! It does not work. And in almost every single example, these people's endeavors either never barely get off the ground, they flounder and struggle and then die, or they just flat out die before they get started.

This world is not READY to function on a basis of never-ending generosity and gratitude and freedom and selfless giving. To expect it to do so is to set up a tiny tent in an unnoticed corner and be basically ignored. The system will not acknowledge you. People have LEARNED that money symbolizes value, so why is it not okay to align money with what is truly VALUABLE? Why can we charge for guns and wars, but not for peace and love? SINNNNNNNN!!!!!

And then there will be this super-selfless symbolic notion of "money is evil" and "profit isn't spiritual" and .. you know, you should not have any more at all if you are spiritual because money is "real ego" and illusory spirituality within the dream is "not ego". So... only charge for the parts of the dream that you deem as ego and don't charge for the spiritual parts. It's bullshit. Self deception.

So many potential "spiritual businesses", or services, or people trying to create a community, or people opening up retreat centers, or creating courses, or spending hours and hours writing books, or putting their heart and soul into healing practices, just basically FLOP because they have fallen for the ego's trick of a level-confusion based model of what's the right thing to do. ie... ALWAYS, do not earn money from your "spirituality" in the dream, otherwise you are SINFUL.

i.e., if it doesn't LOOK LIKE it's spiritual, and if there isn't a lot of SACRIFICE happening, then you better say some hail Mary's. And heaven forbid you might actually value yourself and your time and effort enough to ask for money and make some profit. I mean, okay, let's all start a non-profit organization and have the absolute bare minimum of income to get by and barely be able to expand the business at all, it can't possibly grow because there isn't enough cash flow, and it just sits there shriveling up.

Imagine just how amazingly helpful a "spiritual business" could be if it actually were profitable and made some money and not only supported the people who were providing the service, allowing them to enjoy abundance, but also produced enough funds to expand and produce far more materials, goods, services, and helpful support, than could have been possible on a bare-minimum income. Why not?

Why do we have to grovel for donations and suffer in the gutter of hell trying to scrape by just because we're being all spiritual and "good" and buying into the ego persona of people-pleasing, self sacrifice and loss? Like, what is actually going to happen if you strike a profit? Will there be a lightning bolt? Is God going to judge you? Will you be a SINNER? How about some healthy guilt?

It's one thing to let Spirit guide you and be all lovely and everything is free and "don't mind me", but ... IS IT EFFECTIVE? Is it working? Not really. It's a matter of playing small and having false humility. Just make some goddam money and get on with it. Then use that extra money to be even more effective at helping people with even more products and goods and services.

Sure money isn't that important, really. It's just an illusion. It's not meaningful. It's not something you want to keep accumulating for some ego desire. So don't do it for that reason. Do it because IN THIS WORLD, according to the stupid rules of this society, you need to function based on money in order to find success and be effective. It's the rules of the game. It's the system that we're immersed in.

Try to go outside of this and unless you have really, really strong faith and miracle-working power, you're going to find yourself poor. I've seen it happen to many people who deserve better. There is nothing wrong with making money and enjoying it. Is it real? Is it a real sin? Does it prove you are really a sinner? Can you do it without believing that it is sinful or guilty whatsoever? Wouldn't that be SPIRITUAL?!

Don't be yet another heartfelt wannabe trying to be of service to God and not using any of the tools that are possible when you can afford it. Don't set up shop and be all.. you know, I won't charge anything, I'll just barely even mention that I would ... maybe accept donations, if you shoot me first. And .. maybe I should pay YOU to take this stuff off my hands? Wouldn't that be truly selfless.

This is all just symbolism. Trying to make the dream spiritual and trying to behave in a certain way within it in order to "be" spiritual or seen as spiritual. Don't do that. It's an egotistical belief in sacrifice and limitation. That's not the abundance God has planned for you and its not the abundance God wants you to experience. Why can't you be RICH AND SPIRITUAL? What does it matter if your spirituality is going to override any sense of sin or guilt relating to the riches anyway? Then you can REALLY make an impact on this crazy world.

The only reason people do all this is because of the belief that the WORLD IS REAL, and therefore if you are "being spiritual" inside a real world, you must SACRIFICE in order to not associate yourself with the parts of this real world that are clearly the realm of the ego. And so this is nothing more than the age-old attitude of believing the world is real and that it contains some good parts and bad parts. That's NOT SPIRITUAL AT ALL.

If the world is not real, and sin is not real, and you can't be guilty, and there's nothing to fear, then WHY THE FUCK NOT make some money and enjoy it and get yourself into a situation where you actually CAN make a big difference because you have the FUNDS to pull it off? Many things in this world you simply cannot do without money. You can't run a website without costs. You can't create books without a cost. You can't provide a training course without some costs. You can't heal people without it costing some time. That's just how it works here. Accept it. It's okay to require money.

Are you comfortable only with a donation? Then that shows you how much you believe in sin. Are you able to move past donations to maybe an optional, soft-sell? Hmm.. okay... you still believe in sin. Can you go all out and make TONS OF MONEY from your enterprise? hmm... totally and utterly sinful right? NO! It's hilarious to think this can prove sin or make separation real or that God would blink an eye and be pissed at you. Wake up.

Knock yourself out. You can't sin anyway.

Often it is thought the Holy Spirit merely represents a state of right mindedness. As if to say, he is sitting on a cloud as "the truth" and inviting you to join him. This then suggests that if you will take certain steps in his direction, you'll eventually meet with him and share dinner.

Perhaps he might send you a little message, a hi-how-are-ya from above the clouds. Maybe you'll get a little inspiration or thought that points you in a new intuitive direction. Or maybe even a vision or feeling. But this is by no means the extent of the Holy Spirit's power.

"The Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

The Holy Spirit meets you wherever you are at, uses whatever communication you are able to trust and feel safe with, and can relate to you even in your darkness. Even in the midst of ego, suffering, sickness and despair, the Holy Spirit is there. He knows everything you are experiencing and why.

But He goes beyond this. He is literally capable of reaching down into your illusions, into your mind AND body, and can ALTER the physical, emotional and mental conditions that you have produced as a result of your wrong decision. He can correct physical sickness. He can move mountains. He is unlimited in His ability to express God's power.

So we need to open up to this idea, that moving towards God isn't just about you figuring things out with your ego, or saying the right words, or having the right thoughts. It's not just about removing some blocks to awareness so that you will ACCESS the Holy Spirit's state of mind. By all means that is the long-term goal, so that you can become miracle minded. But before that, you can benefit from the HELP of the Holy Spirit, where you are.

This means, the Holy Spirit can literally do FOR YOU, of His own power and will, that which you CANNOT do. He can reach into your body and reverse sickness. He can remove symptoms. He can heal anything at any level. He can heal your mind. He can remind you of what you are. He can undo ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES of your wrong decisions. Even your most heinous ego decisions which led to all kinds of manifestations, symptoms, effects and problems, can ALL be undone BY the Holy Spirit, IF you will let Him.

And in this undoing, there is very little that is asked of you. In fact, all that this requires is a LITTLE WILLINGNESS. It also requires the development of some trust, because naturally if you are about to expose yourself to a supernatural POWER, and are wanting to have this power do something seemingly "to you", even at a physical level, manipulating your body FROM SPIRIT, you're going to have to develop some trust and comfort with that. And if this idea of a spirit being coming into your body and doing stuff on its own, with your permission, seems freaky, it may take some time to develop this. If the idea of a discarnate spiritual entity operating on you is frightening, you do NOT really have the trust yet. And so trust is needed.

Trust can be developed not by your proficiency with ACIM or with mind correction or anything that you necessarily do yourself. It is developed by SURRENDERING CONTROL. This means surrendering ego, giving up fighting, dropping special relationships, being WILLING to let go of a position of victimhood, relinquishing control over events and essentially just letting go of everything.

This letting go of ego, allows you to OPEN UP TO the Holy Spirit. It means you are being WILLING, because now you're saying, I am here, do whatever you want to me. It means I will not stand in the way, I will not try to control things, I will not resist, I will relax, I will allow, I will trust, and I will let you do this for me, through me. You have to make ROOM for Him. You have to give him PERMISSION. Because this is a matter of free will. He cannot help in areas that you are not willing to allow him. Your free will determines how open you are.

A willingness to move in the direction of forgiveness, is an invitation to Him. A willingness to admit to being mistaken. A willingness to drop the ego war. A willingness to consider your brother is not guilty. A willingness to WANT HELP, genuinely, without fear, in such a way that you actually are willing to receive it. If there is fear, the fear says NO. The fear says stay away. It says I don't want that. You have to therefore move away from fear of the Holy Spirit, into TRUST of the Holy Spirit. This is what the whole process of awakening is really about - stopping trusting the ego and learning to deeply trust the Holy Spirit.

If you trust YOURSELF, if you trust YOUR ego, your mental ability, your intellect, your strength, your figuring out, your understanding and learning, your doing it all alone, you are NOT asking for help. You are saying you don't need help, you can do it yourself. You have to admit that you CANNOT do this yourself. You have to fail, at doing it yourself. You sometimes may even have to hit a wall of destruction and suffering before you're going to be WILLING to seek a better way, to admit you simply CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS on your own, and to reach out for genuine help.

Until your dependence and reliance on yourself is brought into question, you will not be willing to be open to the Holy Spirit. Fear of what He might do to you "against your will" will keep him away. Love does not enter where it is not welcome, and love and fear are incompatible. Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear. TRUST is absolutely essential, and that means throwing up your hands in a moment of surrender, waving your white flag, admitting you can't do this, and therefore being ready to LET HIM. To let go and let God.

It is then that He can be received. You are inviting Him in with your trust. You are allowing Him. You are experimenting with this relationship. Will you let Him in a little more? Will you let Him heal something in you? Will you invite Him to come into your body and do something to it, while you watch on the sidelines, so that you can learn it is safe? Will you really let Him into you? And even further, will you let Him work TROUGH you for others?

The Holy Spirit is EAGER to help everyone in this way. To help you recognize, you do not NEED to do this all on your own. He is fully present, willing, and able, to heal you FOR you. To reach down from above, scoop you up, and raise you up to a higher state of healing and wholeness. He is a Mighty Companion, there to HELP. He's not just some long-distance romance who sends you love letters.

He wants to get in your face and express through you. He wants to use your body. He wants to turn your body into a picture of eternal life so that it can symbolize immortality in the dream, to demonstrate to those grown tired of the fetid stench of death, and with a power greater than a thousand tongues, that there IS NO SIN and there is NO PROOF. The symptoms are gone, the suffering is gone, because of Him. Not because of mental gymnastics, not because of our prowess at thinking course thoughts, but because we LET HIM IN and HE SAVED US from ourselves. With our permission of course.

As Jesus says do not place a limit on what he can do through you or you place a limit on what he can do FOR you. FOR YOU. Means, HE DOES IT, not you. He does something TO you, FOR you, on your behalf. "Miracles are intercessions, they intercede for your holiness." You need an intervention! DIVINE INTERVENTION. You are not alone and God has sent POWERFUL HELP. USE it, allow it, let it do its thing.

This isn't all about being an amazing student or an amazing thinker or speaker. It's about surrendering the ego, TRUSTING God, DEPENDING ON God, and letting yourself BE HELPED. To receive love and healing, the likes of which you have NO IDEA how it works. You do not understand miracles. He does. Get some help! Going to the atonement isn't a lonely wandering journey like some kind of heroic quest. Help arrives, LONG BEFORE you get there. God has sent His angels. Use them. God has sent the Holy Spirit to HEAL YOU. This is HIS FUNCTION. Until you have allowed him to heal you, you cannot SHARE His function. And if you try to "heal yourself alone", you will fail.

"Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. THE WILL OF GOD CAN FAIL IN NOTHING."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist."

"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."

"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."

The Holy Spirit is here, with you, right now. Waiting for you to say, come in, heal me, I accept you, i receive you, heal me, love me, I trust you, I allow you, I receive God's healing love, I surrender, I let go, I relax, come Holy Spirit, come into me, heal me. I trust you.

Each thought system starts with a logical premise, which determines everything that comes from it, which are perfectly logical conclusions. This is true of both God’s creation and the EGO’s world, which are logical outcomes.

The separation from God followed NEAT, LOGICAL steps. The thought system of the ego is run by impeccable logic, just as God’s thought system is. The outcome of each system depends entirely on its logical premise. At the CORE of A Course in Miracle’s metaphysics is PURE LOGIC.

If you can understand the logical premise of each system, and if you can follow the progression of logical conclusions based on that premise - which is IMPECCABLE LOGICAL REASONING, you will correctly understand ALL of the metaphysics of the course. Where everything fits. The TRUTH about the entire separation from God, states of awareness, what is true and false, what is real or unreal, who created what, how the systems MUST function etc.

It is all TOTALLY LOGICAL. If you struggle with logical reasoning you may have difficulty SEEING the logic or following it.

This literally means, that states of mind, states of separation, the making of the body and the world, all of the mechanics of special relationships, sin and death, the nature of the physical universe and its laws, ALL OF IT, is a LOGICAL CONCLUSION. Correctly discerning what the logic IS, HOW it progressed, and WHY that makes SENSE, is the key to accessing the core metaphysics in the course. Once you do this, you can refer to this metaphysics as a cheat-sheet, a reference to TELL YOU, what ANY statement in the course MUST MEAN, where it fits, and what JESUS MEANS. GUARANTEED.

"T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a LOGICAL CONCLUSION; a valid STEP IN ORDERED THOUGHT. 3 The steps to chaos DO FOLLOW NEATLY from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the PROGRESSION of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one STEP is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The WHOLE DESCENT FROM HEAVEN LIES IN EACH ONE. 7 And WHERE YOUR THINKING STARTS, THERE MUST IT END."

"The ego's LOGIC is as IMPECCABLE as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"The Holy Spirit USES LOGIC as easily and as well AS DOES THE EGO, except that His CONCLUSIONS are not insane. 5 They take a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. 6 WE HAVE FOLLOWED MUCH OF THE EGO’S LOGIC, and have SEEN ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 7 And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming CLEARNESS seems to be clearly seen. 8 Let us now turn away from them, and follow the SIMPLE LOGIC BY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES the SIMPLE CONCLUSIONS that speak for truth, and only truth."

"The Kingdom is the RESULT OF PREMISES, JUST AS THIS WORLD IS. 2 You may have carried THE EGO’S REASONING TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION, which is total confusion about everything. 3 If you really saw this RESULT you could not want it. 4 The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. 5 You are willing to look at the ego's PREMISES, but not at THEIR LOGICAL OUTCOME. 6 Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? 7 YOUR CREATIONS ARE THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF HIS PREMISES. 8 His THINKING has established them for you. 9 They are exactly where they belong. 10 They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. 11 Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the PREMISES that will determine what you accept into your mind."

"Look calmly at the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. 2 To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of yours. 3 And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist."

"In one sense the ego's fear of God IS AT LEAST LOGICAL, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego."