"False perception", ie being heavily in your ego, is a state of imprisonment. It's a very closed way of looking at things, it cuts you off from the light, wraps you in heavy walls, and makes everything look serious. It faces you to focus on how things look physically as if there is nothing else, and even shuts out the mind.It offers no bigger picture and dwells entirely on appearances.

In this view it becomes apparent that there are serious problems, and the problems seem impossible to solve. One thing seems to depend on another to be righted and everything seems locked in. It makes you feel stuck and lost and alone, powerless and helpless. It starts to feel like there's no way out, no solution, no hope. It is a state of psychological darkness and limitation.

False perceptions always feel imprisoning because the mind is actively trying to imprison. It's seeing things in such a way as to focus on what is wrong, what is broken, what can't be solved, what is evil, what has been done to something, how bad it is, how sorry it is, how awful it feels, how much it's painful etc. It emphases and blows everything bad out of proportion making it seem far worse than it is. It also shuts down any openness to positive possibilities.

Such a state of mind is easily driven by old unforgiven hurts, grievances, being triggered, upsets and heavy ego emotions, loss and grief, anger and frustration. It's as though the ego functions always at a very low level of consciousness and with a very dire outlook, and everything it thinks and feels and experiences is gloomy and a nightmare. When you get into that you can't help but see that way and it seems practically impossible to get out of it.

All the problems become real and you become filled with reactions, which are attempts to make it go away. But none of them work because the problem looms heavily and seems completely solid and fixed and stuck, unmovable and unchangeable, irreversible like as sin. This is what ACIM refers to really as "the granite block of sin", something that seems to be happening that seems utterly impossible to undo.

The only way out of this is to move into the light, and miracles are seen in the light. The only way to get into the light is to start to look for the light and seek it out. The light means looking on the brighter side, looking for openings which lead to freedom, looking for goodness, looking for a higher purpose, looking for a sense of calm and peace, looking for positivity and holiness. It requires stepping back and realizing that you're actually being unforgiving, and to look at what you're doing to attack through fear, and choosing to stop doing that. To break out of psychological jail.

Only by becoming more forgiving can you get out of hell. It is literally the only way. To be forgiving entails increasing the light so that you can see more clearly, and letting go of grievances and reactions. Eventually it entails taking away all sense of heaviness and darkness, strength and power, reality and irreversibility from the situation. There has to be a surrendering of control and an opening up to higher help. Seek out the Holy Spirit to help you, to heal you, to correct you, direct you, decide for you. Let yourself receive some love and light to brighten up the situation. Everything always looks better with the lights on.

Another ego trap with forgiveness is believing that you need to be at peace regardless of what's going on in life. While this might ultimately be the goal, meanwhile the things that happen in life are there because they are lessons.

They're not just happening at random. Each of us has a curriculum. That means, whatever point you are at right now in your spiritual path, which is extremely unique to you, and whatever you are experiencing now, there are certain things you are going to have to learn or discover in order to move forward.

And the way that you learn those things is that you have learning experiences, ie lessons. And usually these lessons are things that you seem to NOT WANT. And so a great big steaming SHIT comes along in your life and dumps itself on your foot and you just go about trying to shake it off, but it's really trying to help you wake up.

There is something involved in your interaction with the shit and how you deal with it and look at it and experience it, which is going to bring stuff up for you, trigger you, and cause you to have certain kinds of perceptions and thoughts and ideas. And you might not have had those if it were not for this stimuli. But before you just try to get rid of the shit for coming along to disturb you, realize that this is actually an opportunity to grow and heal and become more awake spiritually.

So you don't necessarily want to be in the business of making life SEEM to be like it doesn't have anything upsetting happening, or that it's just one big smooth ride, because that can be a form of denial, avoidance, and disassociation. And it can keep you stuck. Not saying you have to suffer willingly, but willingly is better than unwillingly, lol

Anyway... so ... forgiveness isn't about avoiding bad stuff. And it isn't just about transcending it and being at peace about it. The bad stuff is there FOR A REASON, because its a lesson in the curriculum, and you not only need it but have asked for it. And that's why it's come. Because you are ready for it. And now you need to learn a lesson from it. And if you don't learn it this time, it will come back again. You don't have a choice in that.

Be aware that the ego, especially the persona part of the ego, wants to get rid of all bad stuff and create an ILLUSION OF BLISS, which really plays into the idea that "ignorance is bliss", because in ignorance ie unconsciousness, you think you don't have any issues because you're in incredible denial. You don't want that. You don't really want a life of total ease and an easy ride, at least not until you genuinely have woken up all the way and don't have any curriculum left. Then it's truly plain sailing.

So 'doing forgiveness' should not be about making bad stuff go away, even though that's what most of us use it for most of the time. It's really to help you learn lessons and to undo what you have taught yourself already, which is mistaken. It is unlearning, which is how lessons are completed - the question is unlearned to reveal the answer. There was no problem until the answer became obscured by the separation, see.

The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found." - ACIM lesson 291 The Real World

Here's a different way of describing this.

There is a forgiven world out there, a happy dream, which is beautiful and peaceful and forgiven. It has no guilt in it. There is no threat in it. There is no danger in it. It has no power to do anything to anyone. A beautiful mirage.

When you see this forgiven world, there is absolutely no perceived cause for fear. There are no enemies. Nobody is seen as against you. You are not in any way disempowered. You are simply happy and confident and free. There is no cause outside of you. You don't see sin in anyone. Everyone and everything seems to be for you, not against you.

In such a perception of the world, you can't have any grounds for fear. The real world is harmless. You will feel profoundly at peace because nothing real can be threatened. You will feel completely confident and empowered because nothing will seem to be threatening to take away your power. And you will not be giving away your power.

But also the reason you will not be ABLE to be afraid when you are experiencing the forgiven world, is that your mind will not have any attack content in it. You will only see the forgiven world WHEN your mind is free of attack, and has realized that it was actually attacking itself. When it's taken back its power and has stopped taking its own power away, it won't be able to experience or USE fear to attack itself.

And coupled with clearly perceiving the world as it IS, which is a forgiven world of innocence, you won't be able to distort perception and will not be able to see a world that threatens you. Not because it is really a threat, but because you believe and perceive it is. So if you don't believe it you won't perceive it. Projection makes perception, so don't project attack and don't attack yourself in the first place.

As it says above, the real world cannot be perceived except through the eyes forgiveness blesses. So once your mind has forgiven itself, or rather, has undone its self attack, it will perceive the real world properly rather than a world of darkness and danger. The darkness and danger will not be in the mind so it will not be perceived, and will not interfere with perception.

The 'witnesses to fear', are your false perceptions which are based on your self-attack, which force you to perceive causes for the fear outside of you, seeming to 'make you' afraid, but really this fear is coming from inside you.

When you aren't attacking yourself you will not see these witnesses, and cannot be afraid. You literally will experience invulnerability.

There is no real cause for alarm.

Denial is a funny thing. It makes it SEEM like the thing has totally gone away, yet all that's happened is its been covered up.

We think that death is an actual end, that someone's life actually has been stopped. But death is not an end of life. Death is only a DENIAL of life - the denial that life is eternal and cannot ever end. You would have to be in denial of eternal life in order to die because otherwise you'll have to admit that it is absolutely impossible to be dead. So even if you 'are dead', you're still just in denial, because you can't BE dead, because life is eternal. You can deny it to HIDE it, but you can't get rid of it. You can STAGE your death and make it LOOK LIKE you died, but you didn't. Hah. Cover's blown.

The same happens with your sense of unworthiness, your unlovability. You think that you are unloveable and that your unlovability has REMOVED lovability from you. But it hasn't. You're just in denial of the fact that God still loves you. You're pretending to be unloveable, because you CAN'T be unloveable. God's love can't be stopped or removed, so all you can do is PRETEND to be worthless. You can't ACTUALLY be worthless. But while you're busy pretending, you really think that your worthlessness has actually removed all of the love and love's ability to love you. It hasn't. It's still there. Your worthy self is still there, hidden behind your unworthiness. They apparently exist at the same time because you are just in denial. You can't make yourself not be love even if you try.

This is also why when you feel like you are separate from God or you are ashamed or guilty or afraid or whatever, you PERCEIVE that your true self has been LOST, and that you have been CHANGED INTO some other self, and that now you're going to have a hard time getting back to being yourself as though you ACTUALLY have stopped being you... but you haven't. All you've done is be in DENIAL of who you are, which does nothing but simply cover it over with a blanket.

This is ALSO why we only need to remove the obstacles to our AWARENESS of love's presence. It is NOT because love is not present. LOVE IS PRESENT FOREVER. We are just not aware because we are DENYING it left, right and center. We're swearing up and down, there is no love, God is dead. And yet God is loving and alive. We have blocks to the AWARENESS of this fact, and that doesn't mean it is not a fact until we become aware of it. It is already a fact. God is already love. God already loves you even if you don't believe it. This is why we do not need to be taught how to BE LOVE, because we STILL are love, we just need to stop denying it all the time.

You are still Christ. You are still 100% innocent. You are still loved by God. When you let go of all of the story and drama and game-playing of pretending otherwise, you will ACCEPT and ADMIT to it, instead of hiding from it.

I see you.

My wife had said she was getting a foot cramp and that pain was coming down her leg from the middle of the shin bone downwards.

This was the site where, some 15-odd years ago, she had bashed into the dishwasher door and probably chipped the bone. She had a hard bump there ever since due to how the body had tried to heal it, which was a little painful to push on. It protruded out of the smooth shinbone and was easily visible and easy to feel with the fingers. It was an area a little smaller than a 25-cent coin.

I put my two fingers on the area and was in quite a strong inner condition, relatively free from fear. I intended that it be healed. My fingers started vibrating as Holy Spirit began to flow.

I did not say anything for a while. I felt that instead of trying to force the thing to heal, I would sort of step back and stay within my inner strength. I had a sense of certainty and knowing. I didn't feel the need to go out of my center and try to force it, but rather, remained centered in being free from fear.

She said "there's no point, it's been there for years". I said, "that doesn't matter". I was certain that this was irrelevant.

Holy Spirit suggested words: "go down". So I spoke this at the bump. I also told it to "heal". I could feel beneath my fingers a sense of "sinking" or collapsing. I commanded it again "be healed" "bone fuse together".

I could feel under my fingers two or three times the sensation of something disappearing. About a minute later I checked. The whole area had reduced down and was much flatter. The whole upper area had become completely flat. All that remained was a small area about half the size of half of a 1 cent coin which was still protruding.

We stopped there, but it was quite cool to see that there was a marked difference. She tested it herself and remarked that it had indeed seemed to have worked.

I learned from this the difference between going off-center and trying to become aggressive or pushy in trying to force something to change, versus staying clearly centered in strength and freedom from fear and commanding "from a distance". I felt much stronger and more certain this way, as though I didn't need to fight with it because I knew with more certainty that I was in the truth and it was not.

I later was asking Holy Spirit about this. It turns out that this remaining centered in truth is the same thing as "having faith". It's not wishful thinking nor blind hope. It's a sense of certainty and truth and freedom from fear or indecisiveness. I also was shown how miracle-working is very similar to how God creates, He simply remains strong in the truth and remains "centered" and then "shines" outward from there, staying within Himself but "expressing" from that point of Authority. This is how we need to be when we are working miracles, otherwise if we step down from the position of authority in trying to make something happen, we move away from strength and certainty and thus become weaker.

This is why the ego's version of power is to have power over something through force, while God's version of power is to BE IN strength (love, fearlessness, certainty, truth) and stay IN it while "emitting" the creative power.

Sometimes people try to put you down, condemn you, make you wrong, call you names, claim you sinned etc. They may have a strong opinion, be domineering or power hungry. They may even say something quite vicious designed to push you away, shut you up, or shut you off.

This is always evidence of someone who does not love themselves. They have entered into a split mind where they are projecting, and they believe always that something applies to you that does not apply to them. They point a finger as if it’s not pointing at themselves. It is a very one-sided state. You are wrong, they are right. All the accusation seems to be coming out of them into you. And this makes it seem it’s entirely you who is under attack.

People like this can be difficult to deal with. There is also tremendous temptation to take this at face value and believe it’s happening to you. Or that it even really is about you or has anything to do with you. If you yourself do not love yourself enough, those weak parts of you will be triggered, seemingly hurt, react, and erupt with emotion and upset. You may then believe your experience was caused by them, that they actually attacked you.

If you do love yourself you will be unmoved. If you do not believe about yourself what the person believes about you, you will not be triggered. You will be clear it is not about you. Your forgiveness of yourself makes you immune. It then becomes clear they are talking about themselves, hate themselves, and are in a state of self attack. It also becomes obvious that how the attack appears on the surface is not what it really is.

The person is in a state of not realizing they are actually attacking themselves. They have disassociated from their self condemnation. They are in denial that they are hurting themselves. They are being murderous and harmful because they really believe and perceive that their attack is having no effect on them. They are not in their right mind. Self hate has blinded them, and now they are accusing a brother of their own sins. And they believe they can get away with it. They are unloving toward you not because you deserve it, but because they don’t love themselves.

If you can not buy into this performance, recognizing this attack as a call for love, realizing the person has made several errors, you have an advantage. Their self attack is something you can use to diffuse their attempted projection. It’s now your function to heal them, to love them, by reminding them of what they are ACTUALLY doing to themselves. You can look out for their innocent, holy self. Look at what they are doing to themselves in the interaction, NOT what they are doing to you.

You can now diffuse it by presenting the fact of what they are doing to themselves. Lovingly. To make them aware of how they are not loving themselves. This puts all the attention back on them and makes it clear this has NOTHING to do with you. You therefore are protected by love, cannot be hurt, and no-one can make you lose your peace.

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere."

Since change is death, and changelessness is life, notice how the ego has arranged the world so that when there is a lack of change, death seems to occur. For example if you were to stop breathing and have no change in the breath, there would be death. And yet this is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth. Because in truth that which never changes is alive forever, and any change indicates that an END has come.

The ego's idea of death is the idea of life. The ego's idea of life is the idea of death. What appears to be life is not alive. And what appears to be only indicated by death is eternity. The entire dream world portrays this inversion of the truth, and has expressed it in PHYSICAL FORM, as a PICTURE of the TOTAL INVERSION of reality.

Death attempts to steer you away from stillness, while "life" disrupts all stillness with its constant modifications and interruptions. Eternity is a constant state of perfectly sustained perfection forever, in which nothing changes because it is constantly perfect. Nothing happens to it, there is no sickness, decay, suffering or death. It goes on forever, because it DOESN'T change, nor does it need to change to be what it is or to last.

All things which change, from the very beginning, have the mark of death upon them. They are inherently forms of death because of the very fact they are born in a moment of the denial of what came before. The fact that "life begins" with non-existence tells you that it cannot have eternal life, nor last forever. And so from its very inception it is doomed to create illusions of life, through growth and progression and morphic alternatives, but inevitably must fail to succeed indefinitely, because it was conceived in the moment of death which we like to call "birth".

This world is back to front, inside out, and upside down. Its pictures represent an attempt to oppose the truth. Every form testifies to the opposite of what it is and thereby acts as a decoy, distraction and temptation to believe anything other than reality. Life is death, and death is believed to be the doorway to life. Cessation of movement is considered lifelessness, and yet total stillness is the fullness of eternal life.

The dream of death, the illusion of life, couldn't be more of a lie in this respect. Its signposts all point away from the truth, using images of guilt, sin, death and fear to warn you off, that if you would pursue anything beyond them, you might discover their lies and instead uncover eternal reality. Be not deceived by what this world shows to you, it was made to tempt you away from your home, not to be your home. Your home is with God, where changelessness and perfection are forever guaranteed. And where everything lives forever.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

Practicing forgiveness is really practicing immortality. Because you are an immortal being, you cannot be hurt or attacked or upset by anything. You are literally incapable of suffering.

The whole idea of being a victim is absolutely alien to your nature. The idea that other people have done something to you, is a total joke. The notion that you can be hurt or made to be sick is an absolute lie.

The whole reason you find other people to be not guilty is because they CANNOT have done anything to you, due to your absolute invulnerability. There is no sin - this is the whole point of it. Nothing real can be threatened so no-one can sin against anyone's immortal soul.

It's not just about sort of low-level things like taking back projections and trying not to guilt people and not judging and all that. When you ask yourself WHY you are doing that, what it's based on, it becomes clear it's based on the fact of your absolute invulnerability in God.

Forgiveness is a SYMBOL of immortal life, endless changeless eternal life. As you practice affirming what is TRUE, you are affirming your invulnerable nature. You can't be blaming anyone for anything because this insinuates that you've died a little bit.

Ultimately we're all here playing a game of death, pretending to be something that can die, making it die, to pretend that we're dying, when all along we're not even capable of dying. Every time we position ourselves as victimized or attacked or hurt we're trying to make out that something can happen to change God's perfect permanent creation. It's impossible.

We should be telling ourselves with regard to all the things of the world, all forms of attack, or forms of sickness and suffering, THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot be true and it cannot be happening to immortal beings. It is not only not true, it is not a part of you, or a part of anyone.

This reveals that all suffering is OUTSIDE of you and is NOT yourself. All upset feelings are not YOUR feelings. All guilts and fears are not being had by YOU. How can someone who is absolutely perfect forever have such things be a part of themselves?

You are pure life. You are eternal. You can't even change or be changed by anyone or anything. God guarantees you will exist the same forever. You will always be. Nothing can change this. Not one thing in this entire world can influence your immortality even slightly.

"Swear not to die, thou 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." UrT29G1

"The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love." UrS3B3

This section of the course is fairly explicit about how God created many sons. It also uses the term "one with him", which does not in any way undo the fact that there are many sons, showing that "one with" does not mean "there is only one".

As I type this, Jesus is clarifying for me that oneness means "joined". Multiple individuals who are joined. Notice also at the end of this section it says God’s holiness is *PART* of us. That means some part of us IS God Himself, and some part of us is a distinct creation with its own free will. Being JOINED to God therefore does not mean we are ONLY God. God has CREATED sons!

Are a mother and her baby, "joined" by an umbilical cord, "one" self? Birth is after all a SYMBOL of creation, followed by a SYMBOL of separation.

"Creation is the sum of all God’s Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain.

Forever and forever are God’s Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done. God’s Thoughts are given all the power that Their own Creator has. For He would add to Love by Its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed be forever one will still be one when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.

Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God.

We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God’s memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God’s Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.

Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His own creation shares; Whose holiness is still a part of us."

Last night I was talking with Jesus about letting go, and I was thinking the words "I need to surrender" ....and Jesus interjected and changed the word 'surrender' to "let go" .... so then I repeated the modified words. ... I need to let go, except Jesus again interjected and added on some words.... "trying to be God".

And then I was stunned. The realization that I was trying to be God seemed to 'fit' my ego exactly, not just sending me off on some other ego tangent or train of thought, but actually kind of 'disabling' my entire ego for a moment. I felt like I had absolutely no come-back, and no defense. It was true. I felt in myself not just a kind of mental unmasking of myself, but even right down into my torso, as if I've just been stripped bare of all defenses and could do nothing but be stunned from head to toe.

It seemed brilliant, on Jesus's part, to make this observation. The ego - my ego - our egos - really are trying to be God. Our attempt to separate ourselves off form God and to then have various characteristics that would normally be God's characteristics, but without Him, is TOTALLY us trying to be God.

I believe I am God when I am in charge, in control, or having dominion over the world. I believe I'm God by making myself right about things. I believe I'm God by making decisions on my own. I believe I'm God by believing that I know stuff and am informed enough to direct outcomes. I believe I'm God when I think this is 'my own life' and that I am the one who is in charge of it. But it seems more fundamental than this even. It runs to the ego's core.

The ego is literally trying to 'take over' and 'take away from God' everything that God is. It wants to take away God's power, God's fullness, God's mind, God's reality, God's thought system, God's heart, God's eternal life, everything. It wants God not to have it, which means a choice for death, but at the same time, it wants to have all of this for itself without any of the 'conditions' that come with these things - the conditions of Heaven. Or real responsibility.

So I am trying to be God. Holy shit. This doesn't just speak to one portion of 'my life' but to ALL of it. I need to let go of trying to be God. We all do. Can you feel how much of your ego self just 'drops away' when you say this?

I let go of trying to be God.

All the uptight tension and control and fear and attack and manipulation and engagement with stories just falls away when we admit this. And when we do let go of trying to do this... in surrender, and allow God to be God, and allow ourselves to be His creation (not the other way around), the authority problem melts with it.

The authority problem is us attempting to be God, which causes us to be at war with God, and in constant struggles. Letting go of trying to be the one who is God lets go of all of that role-play... it is a heavenly surrender.