The way existence is set up, you're supposed to be completely provided for by God, you're supposed to be connected to His Mind, you're supposed to receive unlimited Power and Love from Him which you extend all the time, and you are so sustained and empowered by this that you feel totally safe and looked after.

As Jesus says, miracles are everyone's right, but when they don't happen, something has gone wrong.

So if the miracles aren't flowing, and the love's not extending, and you're not being sustained by God, and you're disempowered, and you're alone and afraid and feeling weak and vulnerable, it's basically because you're trying to work against the grain. You're trying not to exist.

There's really no other options in this. There's no alternative that works. The options are either:

a) Join with God and be happy and healthy and fulfilled and abundant and joyful forever, or

b) Go off on your own and rely on your own little self to be terrified in an overpowering world of madness, unhappy and certain of death.

There's no other way to access true happiness, health and abundance without God being involved. You can't have the cake and eat it. The ego wants to suggest you can do perfectly fine all by yourself, thank you very much, but it's not true.

There is suffering. There is weakness. There is fear. There is powerlessness. There is degradation and decay. These are not what God wills for you. This isn't how it's designed to work. But you can't be free of these things and simultaneously stay separate from God. It doesn't work. It's the separation from God that cuts you off from all of these good things.

So either you kind of suffer in isolation and eventually seem to die, or you turn to God and open up to eternal life. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but we seem to fight it tooth and nail.

Maybe we've just forgotten how good things could be if we were to fully trust God, and think that we're doing pretty fantastic all by ourselves. There's no comparison. As Jesus iterates many times in ACIM, the ego is offering you next to nothing. You're going to be giving up nothing and gaining everything when you go with God's plan. He just wants you to be happy ;-)

P.S. this is sort of sounding borderline judgementalist christianity attitude where people tell you their belief applies to you whether you want it to or not and that you're going to go to hell if you don't fall in line with 'how things are' .... lol.... yes, parallels, but let's get things straight... we will all return to God eventually and God loves unconditionally. So no worries if we delay. We just might be happier if we don't.

Jesus is literally asking us to become spirit-identified rather than body-identified, to recognize that our body is merely an image being projected by our mind (which we can stop projecting at any time), and to learn to stop seeing ourselves AND others as bodies.

That's no small request either. We are so used to being bodies and seeing bodies, we think it is normal and natural.

One thing to realize is that a body is not a first-hand experience and it is not the origin or source of a person. It is a secondary layer placed OVER the inner spirit to try to hide it.

So when you are looking at a body and you see fish and bones and eyes and a face and you think that as you look at THAT, you are SEEING the person, you are not. You are seeing a wall of denial and separation. A disguise. It's designed to BLOCK you from seeing the person that is "trapped" inside, locked up in the body and unseen by anyone.

The body is a device for separation. And the golden rule always applies. What we see in others we see in ourselves. In order to become aware that we are not a body ourselves we have to overcome all forms of separation and all attack. And only when we can not see ourselves as a body will we be able to see past the bodies of others.

This is also the meaning of "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind".... ie, if you can get to where you have awareness of God in your mind, you will STOP seeing bodies entirely because God is not a body. If you are seeing God, you are not seeing form. You cannot see two worlds. So this does NOT mean that you see God "in the world", it means that God is ALL THERE IS and THERE IS NO WORLD.

It's a huge challenge to actually get to an experiential state where a) you do not believe you are a body at all (genuinely), b) you do not see your body as your self, c) your sense of identity is not attached to the body whatsoever, d) you do not see others as their bodies, e) you recognize that all bodies are fictional puppets that people dangle in front of them to pretend to interact, and f) that you do not need a body at all in order to exist as divine spirit.

Overcoming the body is the same thing as overcoming death. If you can become free of the body consciously and deliberately without using death to do so, you no longer need a body and can make it disappear. It will become transparent and will vanish.

Everything about the ego appears to present one way that you can win, and one way that you can lose. It always suggests there's some way to get away with something, to escape the effects of something. To be the victor, to get without giving or give without getting. To be free of problems which still exist, or to find a kind of loophole where, if you just play this game the right way, with skill and education and careful selection, then you'll escape from suffering and find salvation.

Of course it's a bullshit lie.

This world is setup with duality, in which there appear to be "opposites". This is because this world is made from the idea of "an opposite to love" or an opposite to heaven or God. "Earth and heaven are opposites in every way."

It therefore contains opposites. And those opposites *seem* to always be far distant from each other, having nothing in common with each other. Did you fall for that by the way? To the observer, we are blinded by "form", especially given how forms all appears to look different and unalike. Who would suspect an apple and an orange ARE the same thing.

But this is a vast illusion.

The whole point of these oppositions and differences is to get you to believe that there IS a difference, between choosing one thing or choosing another. That some choices are better than others. That if you take this side or that side you will be safer or richer or more successful or less threatened or happier or more spiritual or whatever.

It's a trap folks!

It's a trap because no matter which side you choose, no matter which option, no matter which pill the red one or the blue one, no matter which side of a war you take, no matter who seems to win or lose, no matter how clever you are or how intelligent or how successful you are at navigating the world and making "the best stuff happen", you are LOSING.

You always lose whenever you take any side, whenever you buy into the illusion of differences, whenever you think there is one thing you want in this world more than another. Whether it be that you adore the puppies and kittens and cute babies, moreso than the ugly dogs and cats and old people. Or whether it's that you like your state's teams to win and for the others to fail. Or whether it's that you are right in an argument and the other person is a loser. Or whether you are filthy rich or filthy poor.

ALL of these options are designed to get you to do one thing and one thing only.

To settle for some PART of the world, at the exclusion of the rest, so that you will make that part special (special love) and reject the rest (special hate).

The sole purpose of this to the ego, which has absolutely no concern for whether you choose A or B, is that you choose at all. That you differentiate between illusions. That you become selective and that you want to accept only some thing and not others. That you will take a side and be against something else.

The result of this "choosing between illusions" is that you choose separation. You emphasize the ways that one illusory form is better or worse than another. And this drives a rift inbetween the two. It makes one thing look like a horrible attacking enemy, and another look like a glorious savior or hero.

So we're left with the rather uncomfortable truth, that everything in this world has been designed by the ego to be a losing situation no matter what you choose. No matter which side you're on, or who wins or loses, you still lose. You lose because as soon as you believe the illusion of separations and differences and appearances and forms, you are buying into the ego. And that's an instant loss.

Whether you prefer sunsets or sunrises, the ego has some news for you. Whether you like cats more than dogs or democrats vs republicans, it doesn't matter. If you believe in the difference that appears to distinguish them as opposite to or not the same as each other, you are buying into the ego. And that means you are believing that accepting only part of the whole is better than accepting the whole. So now you've gone from wholeness to partiality, and that's a reduction in how much you there is left, so you just destroyed yourself.

The sorry fact is, this world was set up so that there is NOTHING here that's going to save you. And if you choose any of it, ANY of it at all, you will suffer. This is the deep meaning behind "this world holds nothing that I want". It's also why happy sunsets and kittens are just as much an ego temptation to want to keep some things and not others, to keep you in the dream, and to keep you from wanting God.

Could this world offer you anything that you want, if the TRUE CHOICE is not between crappy bullshit ego substance A, and crappy bullshit ego substance B.... but rather, between ALL of the crap, and God? That's the only real choice you can make. Do I want a world of opposites where nothing is wholly satisfying and you are guaranteed to lose because everything is a compromise/tradeoff, or do you want wholeness and fullness and satisfaction and completeness, with nothing missing and everything welcomed equally?

"Beyond this world there is a world that I want."

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"M-13.4. God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. 2 Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? 3 Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? 4 Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? 5 No one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. 6 Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice its values would demand of him. 7 To them he sacrifices all his peace. 8 To them he sacrifices all his freedom. 9 And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. 10 Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"

ACIM is simple. You've given your power away to illusions which have no power of their own. You have projected causality outside yourself, making you an effect. You think the world is responsible for causing you, so you try to persuade it to cause you in ways you prefer. This is all backwards. Reverse this causality and you're done.

We keep making up perceptual stories about how something out there has power over us. It's causing us, affecting us, doing things against our will. And each time we believe this, we perceive this. And with each perception comes the fear of being under attack. Even believing something out there is "making you happy" must induce fear.

"I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all."

Every single facet of victimhood is a belief that something has power over you. Every single form of suffering is a demonstration of your belief that you are being affected. Even death is an attempt to prove you are totally powerless. This is bullshit.

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

"You made sickness and death (with your power) and therefore can abolish both (with your power)."

When you reverse cause and effect, to place the levels in their correct order, you don't merely "disempower" that which you thought was causing you. You BECOME powerful, and re-claim the position of having POWER OVER everything else. You have power over it because YOU ARE CAUSING IT. You are broadcasting the world.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

To take back your power, is to become EMPOWERED. Being empowered, you now have THE POWER. Power is ability. It means you can accomplish something. You can cause something to happen. You can create or make. You cannot be victimized or attacked. Power is immortality.

Once you have your power back, do you think you'll sit on a fence and merely observe the world, as if someone else had the power to put it there? Do you think sickness and death will still have power to enact themselves against your power?

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"I am under no laws but God's."

Having power OVER the world, which YOU MADE in the first pace, which YOU GAVE laws to, means you can change and break the world's laws. It means nothing can choose for you and your will is unopposed in what it can do.

You have power over the world because its power is less than yours. In fact it has zero power. Which means when you exert your power, the world cannot resist. It doesn't have the power or strength to oppose your will. What you say goes. You make it so. You override the world and its laws. You write something new on the wall.

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you."

The Course is all about taking your power back and then using it to help others. Having power over the body, power over sickness, power over death, power over time and space. No longer being at the effect of anything. No longer being under limits of any kind. No longer being incapable or unable to do anything. No longer suffering against your will. No longer tolerating. No longer waiting for someone else to save you.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." NOTHING!!

Either

a) cause is outside you, you are at the effect, powerless to stop it, or

b) cause is inside you, you can affect all illusions, you have power over everything AND CAN EXPRESS IT!

Choosing B is choosing the atonement. "An untrained mind can accomplish nothing".... but a trained mind, which believes in its own power, and does not see itself as powerless, can accomplish ANYTHING. Having a healed mind isn't the end of accomplishment, it's the beginning. Miracle mindedness is merely the state of true perception FROM which miracles - the POWER OF GOD - are expressed.

You are ALL POWERFUL. You have power OVER this world. It is NOTHING to you. You are in command.

You really have only this choice.

A) Love

B) Hate

Just as Jesus says that what is not love is murder, and that even the slightest grievance is murderous, so too it is true that if you are not being FULLY loving you are not really being loving (at all) and therefore are in a state of HATE.

Now, it does not seem to most people that they are being hateful when they are not Loving. This is because so much of the hate has been made unconscious.

Sin has been denied with guilt, guilt has been denied with fear, and a veneer of fake innocence has been drawn over the mind. This innocence, seemingly all that is left in conscious awareness, creates the ILLUSION of unawareness that you are "being hateful" at all.

The result is that you feel relatively neutral, seemingly not enraged, seemingly quite calm most of the time, and seeming not to be actively hating. But this is because you are lost inside of layers of denial and unconsciousness. It renders your current perspective as though you are not intending to sin at all, and are relatively mild and weak.

But we have to at some point more honest about this. Jesus says love cannot be fully understood until the love is WHOLE, and without that wholeness it is not really love. It seems we can have degrees of love but that also means degrees of hate. He says we simply do not RECOGNIZE just how much we hate our brothers. Similarly, when we’re just casually coasting through life on unconscious autopilot, we do not recognize that we’re spending almost all our time in some form of hate. If it’s not total love, it is hate.

This is quite sobering and if we can own up to this without guilt, we’ll be able to use this information to recognize that whenever we are not being totally loving, we MUST be hating. We are not merely in some neutralized state. It is love or hate, those are the only choices. There is no escaping this. So that means, if I am not fully loving right now, I must be in SOME way hating.

Equipped with that information it now becomes easier to RECOGNIZE that, if I’m not being loving, I’m hating in some way, and so this helps me to be motivated or attentive to the "need" to return to being more loving. It identifies that what I thought was neutral or ok is in fact negative and hurtful in some fashion.

We’ve become far too used to letting moderate hatred slide by without correction. Or as Jesus says, too tolerant of mind wandering (away from our love self). Recognizing that I am actively "hating" and realizing that I’m really not being fully loving towards people, brings AWARENESS, and that’s a good starting point for wanting to change my mind.

When we try to make sense of things, we use logical reasoning. You do this all the time even if you don't realize it. You take what you "know is true" and build a conclusion from it.

Everyone tries to make sense of things. Whatever seems to make sense, you accept as true. When something doesn't make sense, you feel confused or regard it as false. This actually means you are HEAVILY dependent on whatever the logical process produces as a result, and usually don't question the process itself.

Everyone has a sense of what is true and what is false. What is true for you is the result of your reasoning. Your reasoning might be very accurate, or it could be very confused, but either way you end up with a conclusion.

The main way that people reason is based on a simple SEPARATION BASED method. It's based in separation because it defines whether or not something IS OR IS NOT something. A similar way we do this is trying to determine that something is EITHER THIS OR THAT. But with the clause that "it cannot be both". ie ... it's a model of NOT BOTH. SO it is "exclusive" and AGAINST equality.

Because the physical world itself, spacetime, is built from the separation idea, physical objects appear to be "separate" from each other. And being NOT equal, they are all DIFFERENT. This arrangement of "separate and different" objects lends itself very well to this kind of "either/or" reasoning.

So you can use this logic to say, my car is either in the garage or parked up front. Or, I will have the ham sandwich not the turkey sandwich. Or, my body is male not female. Or, this is my house not yours.

This kind of thinking maps exactly and very well to the arrangement of the physical world, because the physical world was MADE in an idea of separation. It has separation infused into it. And so Object A and Object B seem to be separate options. Either A, or B.

What this world, and this kind of reasoning, is EXTREMELY poor at, is dealing with matters of SHARING. It has no way to deal with the notion that something applies to BOTH, or to A AND B at the same time. It works very well when things are kept in separate boxes, sectioned off. But it has no way to deal with the idea that something is in two places at once, or that the truth applies equally to two things, or that two things are also one thing.

So in this world we can't usually say, I am sitting in my car AND I'm sitting in my house. Or that I am a human and a fish. Or that both me and my wife each get 100% of the pizza. These kind of ideas seem like nonsense or "not possible". We'd say, they are false.

The thing is, while THIS world is based on separation logic, as a THOUGHT SYSTEM founded on the idea of things being completely separate, God's reality is TOTALLY UNLIKE this.

God doesn't think in terms of separation. He doesn't think in terms of separate boxes. He also doesn't think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. He doesn't draw contrasts between things in this way. He isn't exclusive or special or isolated or one-sided or treating one thing differently than another.

Also, given that God is whole and perfect, when God creates, God creates wholly and perfectly. This means that whatever God creates, has properties which are fully inherited from Himself and his nature. Like father like Son. But this means that, what is true of the father is true of the son. It means they are BOTH something. e.g. they are both holy, both innocent, both have everything, both are creators, etc. In fact this goes to such as an extent as to say they are ONE, and yet they are two, because they BOTH exist even though they share everything.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

Similarly the Golden Rule, which is God's law, which is based on the idea that what is true of one thing is true of another and all things are treated equally, DEPENDS ON the idea that what is true of me is true of me AND YOU. That BOTH of us get to have everything.

That ME AND YOU are exactly alike. That what is true of me, is true of you, and vice versa. This is perfect equality. And it even goes so far as to mean that there is no compromise, lack, scarcity, or competition, because everyone has FULL access to everything simultaneously. This is true sharing.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

However, this kind of equality, with a single truth applying to all things, where the truth is SHARED, and where BOTH elements are "as one", cannot be handled by the either/or logical process. In truth, for example, any thought of God contains all the thoughts of God. Any son of God is all the sons of God. This DOES NOT COMPUTE to the separation-based reasoning.

The ego, using separation thinking, would say, a son of God HAS TO BE EITHER, here, or there. He has to be in this box, or that box. He cannot be in both. God would say, that is totally untrue, that one son of God shares all of himself with another son of God, and BOTH of them are in BOTH boxes at the same time. That you are LITERALLY IN your brother, one with Him, as though he is part of you. This is absolutely sensible, rational, logical, and perfectly impeccable based on HOW GOD THINKS.

What you'll find is that, anything to do with God, his creation, his mind, heaven, reality, the sonship, sons/souls, holy spirit etc, absolutely anything that existed before the separation and without ego. .. is governed NOT by laws of "either this or that", but by laws of "both and". Laws of equality. Laws of identicality. Laws of oneness, which TRANSCEND BOUDARIES.

Therefore, whenever you think of any of these TOPICS, and you start trying to draw conclusions about these topics, IF you use either/or separation based logic to do so, you WILL come to COMPLETELY FALSE conclusions, but these conclusions will seem to make sense. They seem to have consistency, but they are based on a false premise (separation), and so are not sound or valid.

For example, God has created a sonship which comprises many sons. But it is also true that each of these sons IS the other sons. For example "one brother is all brothers. one mind is all minds". A son isn't just a "separate son", it's a son who IS ALSO the other sons. And there are many sons who are each other as well. And this is not in any way a contradiction nor is it anything to do with separation in the ego sense.

But if you use EITHER/OR based reasoning, and you look at heaven, you'll tell yourself, EITHER .... a) God has one son or b) God has many sons. And you'll tell yourself that it would not MAKE SENSE unless it were ONE OR THE OTHER. That the answer must be "not both". But "not both" is a TOTAL DENIAL of the fact that everything in heaven IS BOTH. It's a system founded on "both", on "and", on "sharing and inclusion."

The ego's way of thinking is EXCLUSION BASED. One object is excluded from another object. One boxes content is exclusive to that box and not the other box. This is how 99% of the world population thinks about EVERYTHING.

God's way of thinking is INCLUSION BASED. One object is also in another object. One object is in multiple locations. One object IS the other object. Two boxes contain one object. This is INCLUSIVE reasoning. This is how God thinks, and how his entire thought system functions. Because God is not BOUND by the LIMITATIONS of separation or a separation based system. God DEFIES separation.

So when you think "exclusively" about God's reality and creation, you are MAKING AN ERROR. Because you are using a logic system NOT designed to accommodate a system that overflows boundaries. So you are trying to FORCE boundaries onto that system, are trying to FORCE things into separate boxes that they are not restricted to, and are attempting to PROJECT SEPARATION onto heaven.

It is quite funny but almost everyone does this with regards to course topics. In other words, using an ego-based logic process to think about NON-ego topics, IN an ego way. The result is FALSE conclusions, which masquerade as "making total sense." But in truth, what makes sense to the ego, is totally nonsense, and what makes sense to God, is totally nonsense to the ego. Because the ego is insane.

That means that separation-based reasoning IS INSANITY. And trying to shove God's creations into finite boxes IS ISANITY. And trying to claim that God HAS to have only one son in one box IS INSANITY. And claiming that God can't have ONE son AND many sons AT THE SAME TIME, which is "perfectly legal" in God's system, is INSANITY.

The problem isn't so much that people are drawing false conclusions, it's more that people DO NOT realize that they are USING an ego-affirming thought process to FILTER and JUDGE a NON-egoic system. And so they SEE separations where they don't exist, AND they OVERLOOK separations where they DO exist as well. Such as here:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings who have everything individually***, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

It would seem "logical" to most to say God EITHER has to have one son OR many sons, and it can't be both. And it seems logical to say that IF God only has one son HE CANNOT have many sons. And it seems logical to say that therefore those sons must be part of "separation" because "the absence of separations" is more spiritual. BUT ALL OF THIS IS A FALSE CONCLUSION, projected onto a divine system of logic, BY a BACKWARDS system of logic based on separation and exclusion.

We just don't realize that we do this. We do this all the time. Like literally EVERY conversation in this forum about the course uses separation-based reasoning. We think that reasoning in terms of either/or is totally normal, natural, and the ONLY way to think. It is TOTALLY not how God thinks and it is actually extremely unnatural. It is what leads to false perception in fact.

If your whole mindset and thought process is always proceeding along the lines of "this or that" "either or" ..... you are literally enforcing separation. You are being EXCLUSIVE, which means you are EXCLUDING others. And this is precisely what separation means - exclusion from the whole, exclusion from relationship, exclusion from communication and sharing.

If you THINK this way, about everything, all the time, you are thinking WITH the ego, even if you think you are being spiritual or thinking about spirit. This forces you into BODY identification because the body symbolizes a SEPARATE BOX, kept apart and exclusive from the other boxes. Exclusive reasoning anchors you into space and time and bodies. It is a thought system of death and isolation. This is NOT how God thinks and it is NOT how his thought system operates.

And anyone wanting to do the course will need to learn to grasp paralogical reasoning. Otherwise you can't possibly comprehend how your brother is yourself, or how you can have a holy relationship, or how you can be one with something without losing your identity.

Oneness with others is an INCLUSIVE idea, not an idea of exclusion, and you can't USE exclusive thinking to understand it. But you CAN use inclusive logic, which is holographic as well. Because God thinks holographically not linearly. We have to INCLUDE if we want to awaken, not shove God's creation into prison cells with only room for "one".

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you. "

It is not JUST true that God has one Son. It IS true that God has one son. AND it is true that he has many sons. And his many sons are direct creations of his, while also the one son encapsulates them all, without removing them from him even slightly as a direct parent. To suggest God's SONSHIP - which is a collection of sons - is "an ego thing", is a COMPLETE LOGICAL FAILURE. To suggest that the presence of many sons is "separation", is a complete logical failure as well.

When there is BOTH AND ..... me AND you .... US as one ..... united and together as brothers forever..... THAT is reality. A system of total equality, sharing and simultaneous union. You exist, AND I exist. WE are one and many.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

1. Nothing real can be threatened because reality is PERMANENT.

2. Nothing unreal exists because unreal things are TEMPORARY.

3. If something can be threatened, it can be changed.

4. If something can be changed, and given nothing REAL can be changed, that thing ****MUST NOT BE REAL****

5. Only UNREALITY can be changed.

6. God, who is REAL, and permanent, and cannot be changed or threatened, CAN ONLY CREATE that which is permanent, and unchanging.

7. Anything that CHANGES in ANY WAY, is temporary, ***UNREAL***, and *****NOT CREATED BY GOD*****!!!!

8. God who is real, can only create THE PERMANENT. He can only create eternal life. If something grows, changes, transforms, changes form, or dies, it is NOT A CONSTANT STATE ("reality is a constant state"). Therefore it *CANNOT BE REALITY*, it MUST BE an illusion, and it DOES NOT really exist.

9. Nothing unreal exists. Anything that changes does not exist. Herein lies the peace of God.

10. God is at peace because NOTHING REAL IS CHANGING.

In summary:

1. If it changes, IT IS NOT REAL.

2. If it cannot be changed, IT IS REAL.

Use this to evaluate *EVERYTHING*. Ask yourself.

Q. "Can this be changed?"

If the answer is YES, *****IT IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT*****

Example:

Does planet Earth change? Yes. It spins, it moves, it changes shape, it has oceans which flow, forests that grow and die, bodies that suffer and become sick, tragedies and horrors which transform and affect people and threaten things.

Therefore, EARTH IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT.

If you can’t accept this.... either

a) you have some difficulty understanding simple logic

b) you are confused about whether something changes or not

c) you can’t see why "changing things" is unreal because you’ve never had a sense of anything truly permanent to compare it to

d) you are in denial

e) you do not want to give up the world and want it to be reality, so are having wishful thinking

f) you are just not ready to accept this yet, which is ok, but that doesn’t CHANGE THE TRUTH.

I've been starting to read "Life and teaching of the Masters of the far East". It's a collection of books, recounting the stories of travelers who went to the far East and encountered several very spiritually advanced people.

The only other book I've read that's similarly inspiring, or alluding to the potential we have, is Yogananda's autobiography of a Yogi.

In this book, the experiences and explanations that are given are quite eye-opening. If the stories are to be believed, and it's to be expected a lot of people have a hard time accepting it, here is some of what is claimed:

God has a power which He shares fully with us and which we are meant to use, and this power is capable of a) manifesting any object of any kind, b) healing absolutely all sickness, c) overcoming death, d) facilitating the transcendence of space and time for travel, e) being not only immune to but able to control all aspects of events and objects in the physical world, f) being able to materialize and dematerialize the body, g) the instantaneous manifestation of food and money supplied by God meaning you no longer have to rely on any limited resource or sources of objects from others, .... and various other things we'd consider 'miracles'.

Basically, what it's suggesting is, literally, that we are capable of absolutely ANYTHING if/when we join with God. It doesn't just mean that we give up everything and go to God, either, although some people eventually reach such a high position that they never want to leave there, although they can (like Jesus). It means that we can actually 'live forever' joined to an unlimited supply of provision. The people in the book, the masters, are hundreds of years of age, and yet appear to be 30-40 in age, youthful and in perfect health.

These kind of things give me more of a picture of 'whats possible' and clues as to what A Course in Miracles might be saying and meaning.

I realize now that when I read certain things in the Course, even if I THINK I am being absolutely open minded, I am still actually building upon meanings and learning that I had accumulated from before. Even if I think my learning is more open minded than others, it STILL is resting on what I already think I know and that skews the potential meaning. Also I do not know what I don't know... there are things, truths, that I simply am not aware of, and so when I think I am exactly 'getting' what the Course says, maybe I still am not... there could be a context or laws or information outside of my current awareness.

Then when I'm exposed to information like in this series of books, it makes me 'think twice' about what I thought I knew. It's eye opening.

In ACIM there is a lot of talk about imprisoning someone, and also about setting them free. Jesus actually says that you can either a) amplify the sickness of another by reinforcing beliefs they already have, or b) weaken the sickness of another by withdrawing belief in it.

It is one thing to realize that you can potentially "positively" help someone to heal and to set them free, by not projecting guilt or fear or sin onto them, but it is another to willingly look at the possibility that you may be "cursing" them with your ego.

This doesn't mean necessarily that you originate a person's sickness, or that you can curse them against their will. But Jesus does say that you can reinforce beliefs they already have, exploit their weaknesses, and essentially increase their guilt or sickness by projecting yours onto them. We do "affect" each other.

It however remains true that a person who is strong in the truth becomes invulnerable, and has set themselves free both from imprisonment and from the potential for being imprisoned. It is not possible to drag such a person into the darkness.

But if a person has volunteered to "play along with" the idea that they are guilty, or deserve to suffer, or to not be loved, this is like a kind of invitation. If we just lay down and accept that we should suffer as a result of being guilty, we make ourselves sort of "open to" forms of suffering or attack, allowing or using them to hurt ourselves. If we set up a mechanism of self-hurt, it becomes possible for another person to leverage that.

In essence, Jesus is saying that if someone buys into sin and guilt, the projected sin and guilt of others can compound it. It can make their situation worse, further weakening their mind and health. I've certainly heard stories of people falling sick and having medical issues due to being in proximity to guilty, blameful or fearful individuals. And I can say from personal experience that toxic-energy people have to sometimes be avoided.

If it's true that your mind can influence another mind, which appears to be exactly what Jesus is saying - because minds are joined - then it is possible to either abuse this fact or use it for constructive purposes. When the mind is turned to more constructive uses it can leverage the strength it sees in another to amplify that strength, increasing the light and innocence in another's mind, and therefore inducing healing on their behalf.

We need therefore to be mindful that either we are blessing or cursing, hurting or healing. We can pull up or we can pull down. We can be the light of the world or the darkness of the world. And what we choose to give to another we will experience for ourselves. We cannot escape this law because it's the law of God. What you do unto others, you to do yourself, and vice versa.

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

I find that a lot of ACIM students read the book too fast and sloppily and then approximate what they think they read and think it's saying something it's not.

For example I hear quite often cropping up people saying that the idea of "miracles are spectacles" is a bad thing and therefore, miracles cannot be things like walking on water or raising the dead because that would be a spectacle.

That's a GROSS misunderstanding of what it ACTUALLY says in the book, and it's even grosser when people USE it as a way to AVOID any reason to perform a spectacular miracle:

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver. (A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)"

Here it is clearly stating that if you think that a miracle is MERELY a spectacle, BECAUSE it is spectacular, then you have MISUNDERSTOOD IT. Largely because you're probably focusing on the changes in FORM and physicality and are taking it to be spectacular and impressive and such.

It literally actually says that if you think miracles are spectacles, or that a spectacular miracle has to be AVOIDED, you have MISUNDERSTOOD. This does NOT mean that miracles cannot BE spectacular.

Secondly...

"The use of miracles as a spectacle to INDUCE belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

Here it clearly specifically says that if you USE a miracle to try to INDUCE BELIEF. .... then you are making a mistake. It goes on to clarify that miracles are supposed to be used BY believers, FOR believers. In other words, the issue here isn't that miracles are wrong for being spectacular, it's that if you USE them as party tricks without the proper purpose of healing/teaching and they are just some empty "spectacle" for show, you're probably trying to INDUCE BELIEF in someone ie persuade and impress them to COERCE them into believing something, which is really against their will.

So all it's doing in both counts is warning you about a couple of MISINTERPRETATIONS of miracles and their use. It NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER SAYS that miracles must not be spectacular, or that all miracles that seem spectacular are wrong, or that you should never perform a spectacular miracle.

All it says is 1) if you are dwelling on how spectacular IT IS, you are missing the point. And 2) You shouldn't ABUSE miracles by trying to use them to manipulate people. Jesus is giving these warnings because he knows that miracles CAN DO SPECTACULAR THINGS, which COULD be a) misinterpreted by some people and b) abused by others. He knows that precisely because miracles CAN BE SPECTACULAR, he needs to make sure you are performing spectacular miracles for the RIGHT REASONS.

Never does it say in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER that you should not perform spectacular miracles.

This is another example of how people do not read carefully, skim over the words, get an impression and then ignore what it actually said and meant. So now you hear people pulling up this quote as a defense against miracles because they THINK that it said something like "spectacular miracles are wrong" and "miracles should not be spectacles so they shouldn't be spectacular."

It's a gross distortion of what it says, the purpose of Jesus saying it, the meaning of what he said, and what point he is making. We need to pay much more careful close attention to what ACIM ACTUALLY SAYS instead of listening to loosely interpreted second-hand impressions. Especially from people who are anti-miraculous and who want to keep pushing an agenda of never performing a miracle for anyone for any reason.