Jesus merely asks us to choose again. To keep choosing again until we make the correct choice.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself but I can choose otherwise."

He tells us that whenever we are not at peace, ie suffering in any form, it is because we have chosen to do so, and this resulted from making a wrong decision. We chose to suffer, and this was a mistake. He now invites us to try again to choose heaven, heaven being a choice I must make.

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again.""

We are exercising our free will at all times, our ability to choose freely. Anything that we experience other than peace and joy and love is because we chose it. We can only attack ourselves and are the only one able to seem to hurt ourselves through a mistaken choice. And we have just as much power to choose otherwise.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Mind is the mechanism of decision."

At all times, we are simply deciding. We are simply choosing. Do I want to accept that I am as God created me still, and therefore accept the whole Atonement principle and return to awareness of my soul, or do I want to continue choosing to suffer in various ways. It is up to me.

"God does not coerce."

"Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down, by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light, He will accept FROM you, BECAUSE YOU DO NOT WANT IT. And He will gladly EXCHANGE each one for the bright lesson He has learned FOR you."

Lessons are nothing other than choices. By choosing that you want something, you put yourself into a psychological position. You have taught yourself that something seems to be true which is not, through a mistaken choice. Now the lesson is that you must unlearn this mistaken choice and re-learn or remember what the truth really is.

All lessons have the same outcome of re-accessing God's truth, because the only universal curriculum (which is mandatory) is the same for everyone - learning the single simple truth of God and awakening to acceptance of it.

What seem to be trials are simply present conditions that have been chosen, or scenarios arranged, offering an opportunity to change your mind about what you want, to learn to forgive and overlook rather than to use these mistaken selections to hurt yourself.

Always it is simply a matter of, what do I want. Do I want the world more than I want God? What do I value? What do I accept as true? What am I willing to do and accept? Do I want heaven today or do I want hell? It's up to you, you have the freedom always to come and go as you wish. And God waits patiently for you to freely choose to return Home to Him.

If you are suffering, you chose to. If you are experiencing unlove, you chose not to love yourself. If you are sick, you wanted to be for a reason. If you are happy, you chose only happiness for yourself. If you feel attacked, you decided to feel attacked. If you are in pain, the pain is serving your wishes. Only if this is true is the secret of salvation true without exception, and only if this is true is there any kind of hope for escape from hell by your own choice.

"In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again.""

"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."

"For you WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free."

"The power of decision is my own. .... No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no-one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

Victims require victimizers.

Victims ask for victimizers.

Victims create victimizers.

Victimizers victimize victims (victims victimize themselves through third-party victimizers)

Then the victimizer gets all the blame.

Seeing yourself as a victim is actively a choice, an attitude, a viewpoint and a way of looking at and valuing yourself in relation to reality. If you see yourself this way, you will project victimization.

"Being a victim" in this sense, psychologicaly, IS an attack on you, by yourself. And therefore you will project this out and bring about events where other people victimize you, to reflect what you're basically 'asking for'. You ask by your beliefs and if your belief is that you are a victim, and you choose to play the role regardless of whether they are victimizers out there, you'll manifest some.

How will you be a victim when everyone else REFUSES to play along or acknowledge your victimhood?

Even if everyone ceases to play your victim game or to buy into it or to believe in it or support it, you will still play it. Because it was always you playing it all along anyway, with yourself.

Victims ask to be victimized .... extremely controversial yes. Upsetting, possibly, yes. But we must believe we're victims before we are victimized, not the other way around, otherwise this could not happen, and would not happen, because there would be no spiritual lesson needing to be learned.

The sooner we own up to not being a victim the sooner we will stop victimizing OURSELVES and then finding all kinds of people to blame for it.

I [insert name here] hereby testify that I am wholly innocent before God, have not sinned, have no fear and have had nothing done to me against my will. I need not be attacked because I choose not to attack myself or to see myself as attackable. Therefore all is forgiven.

or something like that.

The only reason you can feel afraid is because, being guilty, the guilt implies that you must be punished. You're afraid that the punishment is going to come.

Punishment is perceived as anything that happens to you, like someone saying something, judgements, perceived attack, physical attack, sickness, loss, whatever.

So certain is that that you will feel afraid if you first feel guilty, that you absolutely MUST experience fear if you believe that your guilt is real. Sooner or later fear is going to come from it.

If you're then in fear and struggling to try to battle the fear or do something about the fear, you're not going to get anywhere unless you can realize WHY you are really afraid.

You are not really afraid because of the potential that punishment is going to come (or has come). You are afraid because you are guilty. That's all. Period.

Guilt is the cause of fear. All the things you think fear is caused by are just the "sources of punishment" which you perceive as being the WAY by which punishment is going to happen. You are seemingly afraid that xyz will happen to you, i.e. that you'll be punished BY these things, and that therefore that's why you are afraid.

That's not WHY you are afraid, it's WHAT you are afraid of. You're only afraid because you're guilty and that therefore you deserve punishment.

What if you admit that you felt guilty first, and then undid that guilt, and then ask yourself where the basis for fear is? How can you be afraid if you don't believe you are guilty?

If you are guiltless, you have nothing to worry about. You're innocent.

The root of fear is guilt. And the root of guilt is sin. And the root of sin is separation. You have to look at the level that came before it, which has been made unconscious.

If you're predominantly experiencing fear, you have probably made your guilt unconscious, which is why you don't suspect that that's why you are afraid. You then think the cause of the fear is something else.

You must make the guilt conscious by realizing why you felt guilty. Really the reason you felt guilty ultimately is because you believed you really sinned, because you perceived a separation.

Always trace it back to its roots. Each level of experience is the EFFECT of a cause the happened on the level before it.

Fear is the EFFECT of believing in guilt. Guilt causes fear.

Guilt is the EFFECT of believing in sin. Sin causes guilt.

Sin is the EFFECT of believing in separation. Separation causes sin.

Death is the EFFECT of believing in punishment. Punishment causes death.

"I am never upset for the reason I think" - ACIM

I was a going to write about something miracle related. I was going to elaborate on this quote:

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

Then Jesus said "let me". These are his exact words verbatim:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of truth. They do not discriminate. There is nothing they cannot do. You are a miracle worker of God, able to express through you the healing that God intends.

There is nothing you cannot do. There are no limits placed upon Christ or His expression. You are worthy of receiving and giving miracles, for yourself and for those to whom you are exposed while living in an illusion.

Being afraid to perform them is evidence that you do not know what they are for. You think they merely show you the truth, yet they correct also every distorted expression of mind, by undoing the cause.

The world is an expression from within, projected outside and made flesh and rock. This same mind is powerful in its ability to change its mind and project another image in its place. It is essential you understand the power of the mind is capable of clearing away all trace of error both at the level of form and mind, otherwise you will enter into an unworthy denial which represses the miracle impulse.

Miracle working must be undertaken in a spirit of certainty and calm, knowing that that which flows through you to another is from God and from Him alone. No-one can possess the power to perform what is truly miraculous without God. Only He knows the remedy of salvation which can be brought forward into the dry and dusty world to breathe new life where darkness clouded it before.

It is through performing miracles for yourself and others that they are validating of truth, given they extend from it and show signs that truth must be there. This evidence when perceived demonstrates correction must have come from outside the world, since its rules and regulations have been overcome.

To witness a miracle is to receive a blessing of sight, which will tell you that something beyond what is apparent has come to cause a change you can see with your own eyes. Trust thereby develops given that you see proof before your eyes that miracle working in fact must come from God, and therefore He IS present.

To conceive of performing miracles alone without the Father will not only fail, it will clearly prove your disbelief in a Power greater than your ego, by failing to express symptomatic relief or transformation in form. Miracle working power easily overcomes any state or condition from the outside in, since all illusions are temporary and God is not.

For you to perform them you must be willing and therefore able to commit to the Power of God, allowing it to perform them for you, with you stepping aside to remove your artificial mind from the process. It is only through sufficient willingness to accept God's Will that it might flow through you unimpeded, able to express in the fullest way possible.

There is nothing you cannot do through me and by the Will of God, if only you will allow this to be done for you. This willingness requires you put aside your false identity, which would seek only to demonstrate its limited control and interference. Without it a steady stream of miracles will be forthcoming for all to witness.

The Power of God is in you now as it always has been. I am with you and will direct you if you will allow it. I am experienced in the profession of miracle working and can tell you exactly what to do if you will listen and let me be in charge. Only the Sons of God are capable of this expression for it is their honor and right to facilitate the healing of all that keeps us from one another.

Every sign and symptom of disease and suffering, all sickness and fear, must go, by the Will of God, for it cannot stay to impede his presence. You who are a natural conduit for God's love shall bring forth Heaven on Earth in order to facilitate awakening beyond this realm and a return to your home with God.

I remind you now, to demonstrate what you have learned by being an example of the truth here. It is your function to forgive and heal and to express miracles daily. To show the truth in a form that can be witnessed, and to demonstrate that you are willing to stand by what you have taken as true.

In all sincerity, I love you with all my heart and mind and the time will come when this world of suffering will be corrected and released from its fictional drama. It is not real. There is nothing that cannot be performed by a Son of God.

God bless you brothers and sisters of God.

Here is Jesus talking about how as you enter the real world (not heaven), the physical world is now seen as SHADOWS, which SEEMED SOLID, which now appear TRANSPARENT AND FAINT, at times FORGOT.

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds. And in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. ****Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there; transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them.**** Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see."

And he goes on elsewhere to speak of how the body is diminisihed in your sight...

"Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, ****the value of the body is so diminished in your sight**** that you will see no need at all to magnify it."

And again, the world is regarded as nothing but a thin veil, an illusion of smoke and mirrors, hanging before the face of christ, which can be easily brushed aside.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ****nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant.**** It is seen at last for only what it is. And ****now it cannot fail to disappear,**** for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ****is the world forgot****, with time forever ended as ****the world spins into nothingness from where it came.****" The body becomes a shadow, circling around the good, no longer obscuring sight of the real world.

"By focusing upon the good in him, ***the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight***, and will at length be seen as ***little more than just a shadow circling round the good.*** And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there is another world."

And the veil is brushed aside...

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted (fear of death) hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, ****peace will lightly brush the veil aside**** and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself like to a leper's, and the bright Rays of His Father's Love that light His face with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone."

nb: "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" Attracted by what is beyond the veil... YOU WILL LEAVE THE WORLD FOREVER!

"It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your eyes. ****Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.**** This is the re-establishment of your will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming death can stand against your will. For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparated from it and completely one."

Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.

Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.

When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.

However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

(Urtext T27I10)

In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.

However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.

Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.

Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.

As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.

Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and ***no one dies without his own consent***. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.

And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.

You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.

And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.

You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.

Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

(Urtext T27I10)

The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.

All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed ***from his own crucifixion***, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"***Now is the body healed*** because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

"***The body CAN be healed*** by its EFFECTS, which are as limitless as is itself."

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

"***The BODY is healed*** BECAUSE YOU CAME WITHOUT IT and joined the Mind in which all healing rests."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. ***Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed.*** The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone. "

"***A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed.*** A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. "

""Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; (I am as God created me) arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain ******and his body healed*******, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. ""

"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. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

Notice that it is very clear here, that Jesus is saying when you are SANE, your body can and must also be HEALED. That there is a direct parallel between a healed mind and a healed body. Sanity of mind produces bodily health. As you wake to happy dreams your body should not have sickness. The body's health is fully guaranteed, sickness is impossible, and your body becomes a symbol of eternal life and harmlessness. This is a radical teaching particularly for anyone who thinks that it's okay for the body to remain in states of sickness while the mind is allegedly "separately" healed. When the mind is sane, it WILL heal the body. And the body will then testify to your brother's innocence. "Brother, at your hand I LIVE".

Everything about most religions is fairly accurate in that it describes what's happening INSIDE THE DREAM. They describe what APPEARS to be true here.

It SEEMS that sin is real, it SEEMS that therefore God will judge and condemn us, it SEEMS that death can be justified, and it SEEMS that we can never be with God again.

The key point is, there is a chunk of metaphysical truth regarding what happened BEFORE the separation, before the dream, which frames the entire dream in a different light. And this chunk of truth, missing from religions, is extremely key in putting everything into its proper perspective.

Recognizing that Heaven is real, God is unconditional love, separation is impossible, and the innocent cannot sin, would have to tell you that the entire content of the dream and everything that goes along with it is not REAL. It is impossible.

But without that key fact, if you only look at what seems true within the dream, after the illusion of separation, it starts to seem quite sensible to conclude the exact opposite. You'll then say that sin is real, death is real, God has vengeance, you need to repent of real sins, etc.

The religion then becomes all about this fiction of having "actually sinned", and what you need to do to atone for it. And ultimately within that same idea, there MUST be also the idea that only death can atone for sin. And so the religion, while seeming to uphold moral values and lead towards love, also inadvertently supports death.

Descriptions of what seems real in a dream can only ever be opposite to the truth.

This is the one key area in which A Course in Miracles is different, because it explains what happened BEFORE separation or what conditions were like, such that the entire content of the dream is clearly RECOGNIZED as being false, unreal, untrue and impossible. It gives us the clarity to see that everything within the dream is an ILLUSION, not a reality.

This puts an entirely different spin on everything we perceive here. It totally reverses the illusion of the meaning of what seems to happen, or all the conclusions that have been drawn from appearances. The proper framing of everything that goes on in the dream world puts everything into its correct place and perspective, recognizing the real truth for what it is, and recognizing the illusion as an illusion. Failure to do this, or the deliberate "omission" of this key foundation at the core of truth, makes the entire content of the dream suddenly twist to a completely opposite and confused explanation of events.

Only a truth based on completely pure non-duality can explain and properly frame why and how everything within the dualistic world is false and unreal. Otherwise if you stop just short of awakening from the dream, or you stop just beneath the peak of the dream's heights, it will make the dream seem to be real and you will not wake up from it. This is why those religions ultimately keep people asleep. They are religions of the ego, based in the ego's thought system, worshipping the ego's God of death.

Death can't be true and separation can't be true and sin can't be true because God only creates eternal innocent life. If the absolute truth remains hidden, all true meaning is lost and insanity begins to seem sane.

Something like this has to be read carefully because all too often people quote bits of this as if it's saying "don't bother changing anything in the world", and it's NOT saying that.

"If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

What it says is that the world you're seeing is the result of something you are projecting out of your mind, and therefore it makes no sense to try messing with the picture out there - you are better off changing the content of the film reel in your mind so that it projects a different world.

It in no way says that you should never try to change the world. It in fact is an instruction on HOW to change the world. Or in other words, how to SWITCH TO a different world that has the changes you want built into it.

Change your mind, so that it causes a different world to be projected. That's what it's saying. If you don't realize that your mind projects the world you'll start wrangling with the world itself trying to force it to change AGAINST your mind's projections, and there's no point doing that because you'll just keep projecting the same world. If you want to see a different world you have to change your mind SO THAT you project a different world entirely.

This also means that when it says to change your mind ABOUT the world, it does not mean that you keep THE SAME WORLD and change your mind about it. It means you need to change your mind so that it is different in its state than it was in before, SO THAT it projects a DIFFERENT world. The state of mind and its thoughts "about" the world it had projected before, has changed, NOT so that you see THE SAME world in a different way, but so that your changed mind makes a NEW world. In fact, the quote might as well also say "don't bother changing your mind ABOUT this world, because that won't change THIS world - change your mind and make a different one."

The problem people have is they think there is an objective world out there that you project onto or perceive, rather than realizing that your mind MAKES the world. If you don't like what you've made, make something else! That's what it's saying. Don't change the effect of what you already chose in the past. Don't change your mind about the SAME world and try keeping it in with a different perception. Choose something different and make something new. The world you see is what you project TO see. Projection makes perception.

In effect, you CAN'T change the world anyway, and changing your mind about the world switches to ANOTHER world. The world is just an effect. Like a picture on a movie screen. If you don't like it, change what's in the projector and watch something else.