Ego always wants what it doesn't want, and doesn't want what it wants, because it is a contradictory though system that makes no sense. It may say it does not want death, and does not want people to be dead, but it does.

So while it says it does not want death, does not want people (bodies) to die, does not want sickness etc, it simultaneously is believing in and wanting those things. It is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by everything, which is part of the uncertainty of fear as well. Insanity is two-faced like this, it can't commit to any one thing fully.

So in our egos, in our false perceptions, our insane split minds, our belief in separation, we literally believe both that a) we do not want death to happen and b) we totally want it to happen. This has to be looked at and recognized. It does mean that if we "don't want death", we DO want it.

Adopting any attitude based on "it really happens" is wanting it, having already given it reality and truth and value. If you value it you make it real. If you value it you want it to happen and try to make it happen. To believe in death, which is not love, is murderous.

Making death unreal is the only way to not play the game and get out of the flip-flopping confusion of wanting it and not wanting it. It's like being addicted to something that hurts you. You hate it and love it at the same time, in a twisted sort of way.

While you might try to take a side, and side with the angle that you do NOT want a person to have died (a body identified person), the mere belief that they are a body and HAVE died IS a decision to join in false empathy and to therefore value death and WANT it to be real. This is why for example in ACIM Jesus says that we try to keep people in their bodies, held there by guilt.

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT." UrT15H12

Our world-driven body-based perspective that bodies are real people, and we do not want them leaving "this world" because that seems like an end from our point of view, is totally blind to the fact that we belong in another world, and coming HERE is death. Birth is death. And even coming into this world took place BECAUSE we wanted to believe in death and keep it.

Prisoners have gone into a prison and are so insane that they believe the prison in their home and they don't want to leave, and are kicking and screaming to stay in the prison, because they think that outside the prison walls is a prison, and that they are free right now in their cell. They have no idea how backwards their thinking is and do not even recognize a prison when they see one.v

So yes if you are "upset by" some body person dying, it does mean that you believe it is real, want it, are choosing it, are reinforcing it, are being murderous, and are participating in trying to keep the person in a state of death. You'd rather they be suffering and dying than alive in God. Whether your ego likes to hear this or not is another matter, but we have to be honest and willing to look at it if we want salvation.

Being in grief, the grief simultaneously is a reaction that seems to say "I care greatly about this person and now they've been destroyed and I feel bad about that because I don't want it" .... at the same time as ..... "I totally want to believe they're dead and I'll happily bargain that they come back into their body and stay in a body forever in my little prison world and die along with me."

So then you discover that the grief is not just "pure grief" or purely justified or purely innocent or purely anything. It's not a whole story. It's a tainted mix of ego reaction and a sort of fake remorse masquerading as caring and feeling a loss, much like what we do in guilt. The loss is a lie because if the mind believes there is a loss it is choosing it and wants it. All emotions are caused by the mind choosing to feel what it wants.

"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." UrW152L1

We do have secret ulterior and selfish motives. We want them back because WE feel deprived. Our egos want to keep people in bodies forever and keep destroying them forever. A living death, followed by the death of non-life. Just recycling around over and over again, but never waking up from it. We can even say that yes it is selfish to grieve, it's always about a sense of what we want, what we have lost, how we feel hurt by what someone has done, anger at someone's leaving, as if their death attacked us. It's not easy to admit to how unforgiving this viewpoint is.

Remember that nothing real can be threatened. If something seems to have been threatened it cannot have been real. We believe it was real, which is a mistake. Believing a person is a body and that the body and world are real is a mistake. When the body, like a chunk of reality, goes away, we are forced into an experience of having lost a part of reality itself, as if part of God is dead. That MUST cause a sense of loss. It's not based on a real truth, but it's based on a perceived truth, and can produce horrendously deep despair.

But the despair is a lie. It's fake. It seems justified and understandable and common ("normal") and so on, but it is not really natural under God's laws. If nothing real can ever die, which is true, then there can BE no reason for despair. And the despair must be a smokescreen to hide a wish for death to be real, and for God's truth to not be true.

Grief isn't just grief, it's a mask used to cover up attack. Just as the "face of innocence", which sees itself as unfairly treated and unwillingly caused to lose something it values, secretly hides a vicious special hatred and a desire to attack and destroy. The victimy little "poor me" of the suffering grieving self is essentially an attempt to enter into the perceived death and join with it and be one with it, such as to become dead also.

This is why in grieving we are not really living, and people have a really hard time returning to life. I might feel grief still but at the same time that means I am believing in death and not life. It means I'm trying to join with the death and die along with it. That's not living. Eventually the sympathetic "part of me has died" game has to be given up and we have to RESURRECT back to a firm commitment to immortality and eternal life. God does not will that we suffer.

Yes it is very very very hard and deep and horrible to go through grief, but grief is not grief. Nor is the only way out to "go through it". It is deception. And no matter how long it takes or how quickly, we are asked to rise up out of it (the battlefield) into the light where loss is impossible and we can be only happy. We do not escape death by dying, we escape it through the light of truth.

The end of grief is the end of death. How much suffering is enough before we will choose again for a better way?

"Loss is not loss when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream. Such is the truth, at first to be but said, and then repeated many times, and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations, then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. And I would go beyond the words today, go past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them." W248

"For what would be the use of pain to me; what purpose would my suffering fulfill; and how would grief and loss avail me, if insanity departs from me today, and I accept my holiness instead?" W285 "Who could despair when perfect joy is yours, available to all as remedy for grief and misery, all sense of loss, and for complete escape from sin and guilt?" UrW165L5

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed." UrW187:6

"The way is not hard, but it IS very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. THAT way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you, and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God's Son. " UrT10D4

"Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course." UrW195L5

"Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does He know one thing must still be true; God still is Love, and this is not His Will." UrW95L5 "If you have the gift of everything can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? UrW155L2

"Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy light-heartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him he finds a gift bestowed on him." UrM5B5

"The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe. Joy goes with gentleness as surely as grief attends attack. God's teachers trust in Him. And they are sure His Teacher goes before them, making sure no harm can come to them. UrM5F1

Before the separation, you were simply in heaven having a great time. Immortal, invulnerable, happy, loving, full of life.

Then the separation happened and we produced a state exactly opposite to heaven - heaven's logical opposite. A physical world in which bodies gave us constant "false perception", deceived by everything, seemingly at the effect of everything and prone to attack.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

These are really the only two states. These are the two worlds, heaven and hell.

The question then becomes, how do you get out of the second world and go back to the first?

As the course says, you might find a sudden leap into heaven as frightening, if you retained your ego and interpreted it through it. In fact the ego interprets heaven as hell, beings its unwanted opposite.

So instead, we gradually transition towards heaven. But let's be clear that heaven IS your only alternative to the physical world. There is no other place to go. It's one or the other.

It's also a fact that the world you made is false, and heaven is true. In the denial of God and the rejection of heaven, you came to believe that a world of lies and illusions is true and real.

That puts you in a position where, to return to a full awareness and acceptance of heaven's truth, you're going to have to both invest belief and acceptance in heaven's truth, while shifting your whole focus away from the physical.

As the course describes, beginning to do this begins the process of "opening the spiritual eye" and "weakening the investment in physical sight".

"Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute."

Now, we need to keep in mind that you are either in a realm of perception or a realm of knowledge. We really only made false perception, built into the functioning of the body senses. And leapt straight from heaven to false perception, placing us in bodies.

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

Your goal, really, is to return to heaven. The goal of God. Any goal less than this is not enough. You are to return to your original state of reality and immortality. To identifying as Christ. To being as God created you and co-creating with Him in reality.

But trying to leap into heaven from a perspective of false perception, which is total confusion about what is true, would be too jarring. The contrast is too great, and we have gone deeply into the ego thought system.

Instead, there is a seeming path, the atonement plan, the personal curriculum, which lays out a more gradual transition. This is partly because the use of your free will choice is required in order for you to make any changes in your beliefs at all.

So it seems that, in time, we gradually then progress from abject hell, which is a heavy identification with a body, special relationships, attack thoughts, fear of death, sickness and suffering seeming real, etc, towards a more God-given inheritance of perfection and immortality.

This doesn't just mean you're going to run up against the "ceiling" or external walls of the perceptual realm, before experiencing ANY heaven. It means that you need to transition so that you are experiencing ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY heaven, just before you leave this world.

But how do you do that? How do you move "towards heaven", towards reality and truth and immortality, while still being within the realm of perceptual dreams? How do you become heaven-like or as close to your original nature as possible, while still being in a state which is fundamentally separate?

"Perception is a separated state. Those who perceive still need healing."

It's going to entail some kind of re-purposing of perception, some way to use it against itself. To use what we made, to undo what we made, from the inside out. We need a reinterpretation of the meaning of the world. Or a different vantage point or way of looking, that makes it seem like hell has been turned into something similar to heaven.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it."

What we find out now is that there are kind of two components to what we're experiencing. There's whatever "the world is" that we made, and then there's our interpretation of it. We seem to be able to change its meaning or how it looks to us.

What we're then told is that there is a "forgiven world" or a version of hell which, seen with some kind of light, or seen with loving eyes, doesn't look like hell anymore. It's still a dream world, still an illusion, still unreal, and still false, but seems to reflect heaven's innocence.

So where does this light come from, or this loving perspective? Well, a clue is that "Perception is a result, not a cause". And "projection makes perception". We look within first, at our idea of what truth is, and then we broadcast that out, and the end result is a kind of hallucinated image, which we call perception.

So the main deal is, the question of whether when you look within you see a belief in the reality of the world, that false things are true, that you yourself are something false and evil, or whether when you look within you see sinlessness, a lack of guilt and fear, innocence and holiness. Those spiritual attributes are not attributes of a dream figure, they are attributes of YOUR SOUL, which needs to come into your awareness while you're still dreaming.

How do you go about changing your inner landscape, so that it contains only attributes which seem to reflect the state of heaven, so that when you look out you see then projected?

Well if you remember, perception is always essentially false, and the realm of knowledge is always true. The illusory world is always illusory, and heaven is reality. So in order to transition your inner world so that it "matches" heaven or is heaven-like, you're going to have to reach out beyond the illusory world and start identifying with God's creation.

"The world you see must be denied" "Beyond this world is a world I want." "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

So now you're in a position where, you're inside a dream, and trying to shift your attention to not only see but identify with, to recognize as true, and to accept, a reality which is entirely OUTSIDE of the dream.

"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."

You're trying to learn what you ARE in the Kingdom, while still being inside of the classroom of hell. Your real identity is your soul which God created which has inherited its truth from Him.

In order for you to transition your inner identity to christ, you're going to have to start identifying with something that isn't even in the world.

The best analogy I've come up with is the comparison of two rooms. We made a room with no windows, inside heaven, kind of like a prison cell. It's a dark room which shuts out the light. The walls seem solid and impassable. There is no awareness of what is outside the walls. Your whole identity seems bound to a lump of matter, the same thing that the prison seems to be made of.

Then as you begin to reach out beyond the dream, beyond the prison, beyond believing the walls are true - the granite block of sin, the veil which hangs before the face of christ, the walls of the prison begin to become transparent. They lose their heaviness and solidity. Even your own body seems to start to disappear.

This happens only by extending your mind past the separating limits of the walls, reaching out (or in) to heaven's truth, and latching onto (identifying with) the ever-growing awareness of who you are outside the prison. Your real self, which God created, and which stands beyond the world of form.

As your mind starts to associate with being a christ-soul, and starts to believe in God's truth, and starts to accept that only heaven is real, and shifts all of its attention away from the tempting deceptions and lies of physical matter, it puts its faith and belief in reality and love and light. Things which are not even INSIDE the dream world.

"Love was never in the world of dreams."

While still inside the prison, which is fast becoming a glass room with a door, enabling you to see through the walls and beyond them to the light with "christ vision", you become able to see again.

You can see a light beyond the body and beyond the world, beyond the room, and your sense of "who and what I am" or "what is true of me" is shifting away from the body and onto spirit - a spirit which is well outside of the room entirely.

Eventually this room, which acts like a veil covering up the greater environment of heaven, becomes so transparent that it disappears, and finally you are able to see christ clearly. To recognize what you are. And to see the contents of heaven. You then move through or past the walls of the room, the room disappears, and you find yourself squarely and fully in the shoes God created for you to fill.

We may talk about true perception, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, sanity, the spiritual eye, and various other aspects of the awakening mind. But ultimately true perception is an act of OVERLOOKING the realm of perception, overlooking hell, overlooking the opposition to God, and fixating on the Kingdom.

Essentially, true perception is a re-purposing of perception, such that it actually UNDOES ITSELF. Similarly to how forgiveness is way of using illusions to point AWAY from illusions. True perception is a cancellation of perception. Just as false perception was an attempt to fixate perception on itself and make perceptions real. True perception points AWAY from the realm of perception entirely, and towards the light of God, beyond the dream.

"Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest."

"Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others."

"Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking."

"Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death."

To dream of awakening, which is the happy dream, is to dream of what it is like to BE AWAKE. To be awake is to be IN HEAVEN. Therefore, forgiveness is a dream in which you imagine yourself to be NOT ASLEEP. To be similar to the way you actually are in reality, outside of dreaming. It is a dream based on the knowledge of heaven, in which, while still technically being in a dream-perception realm, you dream a dream so close to heaven that it's almost like being in heaven itself.

Just prior to leaving the prison, with sight firmly fixed on christ, who is in heaven and not in the world, you see the face of christ through the perceptual system (based on judgement/evaluation), and this "vision" is "the real world". It's you being able to see. "God is the light in which I see."

The real world is really heaven. It is the only reality and the only world truly deserving of being described as real. From within perception we see it through a perceptual filter, then we leave perception behind and KNOW its reality. "First you dream of peace, then awaken to it."

To see the real world, is to look out from within spacetime, within the perceptual realm, using perception, but using it in a special way which enalbles you to look OUTSIDE the perceptual realm. To peer into heaven beyond the separate bubble of spacetime. You don't actually become able to BE IN heaven at this point, outside the dream, but you stand within the dream, looking through its transparent walls like an window onto God.

As you do this, as you open up to reality while still dreaming, as you disbelieve in the solidity of the prison walls, as you form a bridge to the Kingdom, as you reunite gradually with God and with love, light seems to stream into your mind.

In fact an awareness of God gradually seems to return to your mind, and starts to be "seen in" the things you see. "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Eventually God is ALL that you see, which causes the "things you were seeing him in" to disappear.

So what we're really doing is, shifting our attention, away from hell, towards heaven. Shifting it away from God's absence, towards God. Away from body identification to spirit identification. Away from darkenss to light.

Away from fear to love. God, christ, soul, spirit, light, love, truth and everything real, is squarely NOT a part of the illusory prison world. It is "outside" of it, psychologically. So our job is to "position" oursleves in heaven, while still in the separated realm, and shine our light from heaven, into this world, erasing it.

This is why the closer your mind comes to aligning with God's will, with heaven's light, the more that light and love are able to stream into the dream through you.

The miraculousness of heaven begins to seep into the dream. The laws of spacetime begin to be overruled as you learn "I am under no laws but God's." You start becoming able to do things which "are not of this world." Your body returns to health as a symbol of eternal life. And you become empowered to overrule death.

To be the light of the world, is to extend heaven's light into the dream. To shine into the darkness, to illuminate it and shine away death. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The stars will disappear in light."

As your perception becomes "truer", it simply means that you are not mis-perceiving, so become able to "accurately" perceive what God created. This isn't the same as knowing what's there, but we can use perception to interpret what's there. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." - but you CAN perceive the truth, which is heaven.

As the walls of spacetime melt, as the granite block of sin turns to whisps of smoke easily dispelled, as the light of God shines into the world through forgiveness, and as the hell we made no longer has internal sin projected onto it, the world is seen as beautiful and forgiven. A beautiful illusion. Yet "A world forgiven cannot last" because it's still an illusion of a world. And it will disappear.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody."

"Heaven is all that remains."

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever."

This is pretty much the "model" of the course's levels and metaphysics that I've converged towards over time. Simply that there are only two states, realms or worlds. They are logical opposites. And while we're in the world opposite to heaven, we gradually transition our truth, reality and identity over to the other world, such that toward the end we are almost entirely heaven-identified and vigilant only for the Kingdom.

Our task is simply to ANCHOR ourselves into our soul, remember who we really are outside of the perceptual dream environment, tune into God, leave all perception of form behind, forget the world and embrace our true nature, inherited from God.

You are the spirit that God created. You are the reality that God established. You are the power that God extended. You are the will that God has expressed. You are the light which God radiated. You are the truth which God gave you. You are nothing and have nothing that does not come from God. And nothing in the world of illusions has ever changed that.

"So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear."

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

I've come up with a new model of ACIM which promises to resolve numerous contradictions and potentially unite the two major camps: those who believe they can experience heaven while in the dream, and those who believe heaven is elsewhere.

In this model, think of "the world you made" as a room with no windows, like a prison cell. You are currently in the room, perceiving the inside walls of the room. This is "false perception". Everything inside that room is false. "The world is false perception." You are blinded by perception of form and cannot see past the walls.

As you develop true perception, the walls start to become TRANSPARENT, and you start to see BEYOND them. You are IN the world, SEEING THROUGH IT, to something OUTSIDE it. This is what it means to OVERLOOK ie forgive the world. By forgiving the FALSE world, you become able to SEE the TRUE world. The true world is Heaven. Heaven is outside of the room. But you can SEE IT, from inside the room, using perception. True perception/christ vision is CAPABLE OF SEEING REALITY.

This is backed up by statements such as "God is in everything I see", that you can "see the son of God", having a "vision of God", "see the face of Christ", etc. To be able to SEE these things, you MUST be seeing reality directly with perception. Which means you are inside the dream, peering OUTSIDE OF IT from the inside out.

This also entails a major adjustment to older models. "The real world" is a synonym for HEAVEN. It is correctly labelled as REAL because it is real. When you PERCEIVE "the real world" you are literally perceiving heaven. This is also backed up by statements saying it is only possible to SEE what REALLY EXISTS, which MUST mean it is reality you are seeing.

Perception CAN SEE REALITY. But you have to also remember that "perception is a separated state". Therefore perception is happening FROM INSIDE the dream of separation, LOOKING AT WHAT'S OUTSIDE OF IT. When you are NOT blinded by the WALLS of the dream world, you have true perception. When you cannot see PAST the illusions of form, you have false perception.

We also have to remember a couple of key facts.

1. Perception of the truth is not the same as knowledge. That means you can perceive heaven, but this perception is kind of an "image" of heaven. A vision. This perception is not the same thing as being IN heaven. It is not cognition or knowledge or certainty or communion. But, it's kind of like window shopping. You are on the street (in the false physical world of false perception), looking through the window of the Kingdom of God (overlooking the world, forgiving the world, seeing beyond the veil), and are looking INTO or AT the contents of the Kingdom (seeing the face of Christ).

2. It is necessary to still accept that the FALSE world IS AN ILLUSION. The physical world. "The world of bodies is the world of sin" "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came" "There is no world" etc are all STILL TRUE of this world of forms, bodies, planets. "The world is false perception" means that if you LOOK AT THIS WORLD, you are having false perception. And that means you have to LOOK AWAY FROM this world, and look AT HEAVEN.

This is also totally backed up by statements about not being able to see two worlds. There ARE two worlds. Heaven/reality, and the illusory world. Sight of one costs you sight of the other because they deny each other. This does not mean TWO VIEWS OF THIS WORLD. It means if you see this world in ANY way you are having false perception, and sight of THIS world is costing you sight OF HEAVEN. Heaven is ANOTHER WORLD. And in order for this world to disappear from your sight, heaven must BECOME VISIBLE.

This is also totally backed up by the fact that The Holy Spirit loves to LOOK UPON CHRIST. He is using PERCEPTION, to look AT CHRIST. Christ in IN HEAVEN! The Holy Spirit is having true perception OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN. That proves that true perception MUST be capable of breaking out of the physical world, looking beyond the veil of forms (wall of sin), and must be cable of looking direct AT REALITY. At Christ. Who is in heaven.

There are a number of statements in the course which previously alluded to being able to perceive holiness, reality, christ, god etc from INSIDE the dream. And some people latched on this since it correlated to their experience and much of what happens in the workbook, and it SEEMED to imply that God must somehow be able to be SEEN from within this world. There is validity in those statements (e.g. God is in everything I see etc), BUT the conclusion drawn from that is a polarized ego conclusion based on thinking of THE ROOM (the world you made) as being REAL. AS if to say, perception ABOUT the inside of the room can change from false to true, in order to try to make sense of the seeming references to SEEING real stuff. But that was a false conclusion based on exclusive boxes.

Also in the old models people often thought of "the real world" as a reference to some kind of in-between state, still illusory (thus inappropriately named) and NOT the same thing as reality itself. I suggest that is wrong, and that HEAVEN is a the actual "real world". When we have perceptions OF "the real world", we are seeing HEAVEN ITSELF. We are looking OUTSIDE OF the dream, from the inside. This is also backed up by the fact there is a quote about the real world which speaks of there being no bodies, no streets and stores, no day and night (no sun) etc... which is accurate of HEAVEN. The IMAGE of the real world that perception SEES, is SEEING heaven, and the IMAGE is an illusion, but the world it is looking AT is reality!

This is also then helps us to see that not only can you LOOK OUTSIDE OF THE DREAM from the inside, but also the LIGHT OF HEAVEN can shine INTO or upon the dream from the outside in. And that TOO is backed up by various quotes. Heaven is spread across the world but you do not see it etc. The world seems to become holy. You shine your light upon the world by "reflecting it here" within yourself, etc. Because the CEILING on top of the room, is only SOLID when you have false perception. The ceiling becomes TRANSPARENT when you have true perception, allowing you to SEE OUT (like a window onto reality), AND allowing the light to PENETRATE the world. This is part of how "eternity will shine away the world." When we think of the separation between heaven and earth as SOLID we arrive at a false conclusion that you cannot experience God AT ALL in the world, which is incorrect.

A forgiven world, similarly, must be correctly understood. "To forgive is to overlook" Overlooking THE FALSE WORLD, "the world is false perception", means overlooking the PHYSICAL WORLD, overlooking bodies ("you're brother's reality is beyond his body"), "forgiveness does not look upon bodies" etc... and therefore to FORGIVE the world, does not mean keep LOOKING AT IT in a more loving way. It means to OVERLOOK it, see PAST it, and LOOK AT HEAVEN. The reality of heaven is what true perception (spiritual sight) sees. It is a perception of SPIRIT. And this means the physical veil of illusions, wall of sin, wall of flesh etc all has to VANISH from your sight. This happens when you SEE CHRIST (face of christ). The world is FORGOTTEN.

That's what it means to forgive the world. It means to RECOGNIZE the WORLD IS FALSE. And to put ALL of your attention ON REALITY. To look AT reality, bypassing this world and seeing the truth which is BEYOND IT. And that means what you are "falling in love with" as you wake up, isn't the FALSE world, it's HEAVEN! You are starting to become able to SEE REALITY, and it is WHERE the beauty, light, and love are. Your ability to SEE IT, "in" the world, overlaid on the world, is what makes the world seem lovely. But it is HEAVEN that you are in love with, not an illusory world of forms. Proven here:

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while (the false world/physical world)...The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?...Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are ***not deceived by what they see*** (not tempted, not believing in the world)....Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream***, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Unity, is reality. Unity, is heaven. Unity is the ACTUALLY REAL WORLD of Heaven. The Kingdom of God. Which is BEHIND the dream world. The dream world is FALSE, as in there is no world. EVERYTHING in the physical world is false. It is all illusion. You are not supposed to try to make it real and keep it and dress it up and turn it into heaven. It is a veil of illusions. It is NOTHING. You are meant to learn to STOP BEING DISTRACTED BY IT, and LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE. Look at ANOTHER WORLD entirely. You are in THIS world, and have to learn to SEE ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND IT.

So the model is quite simple. You're in a seemingly solid room with no windows. You gradually learn to LOOK THROUGH THE WALLS, and start to see ANOTHER WORLD outside of the room. When the walls become totally transparent you will SEE CHRIST and will SEE GOD "in" everything you see (beyond it, not hidden by it), and then ..... when you are ready, you will GET OUT OF THE ROOM. Leaving the room is what takes you BEYOND THE WALLS, and immerses you directly in the REAL WORLD OF HEAVEN that you were SEEING WITH PERCEPTION prior to awakening. You first window shop and SEE reality, then you go BE IN IT. "Gone is perception". And of course there is no real "going" because you simply realize YOU ARE EVERYWHERE and have always BEEN in heaven, and THE ROOM DOES NOT EXIST. The world is gone, reality is your home.

I believe this far more accurately encapsulates what ACIM is saying. I believe there is not one single quote which speaks against this from any perspective. Especially, this BRINGS HEAVEN CLOSER to those who are IN the dream (room), because it means even while you are dreaming, you can to some degree EXPERIENCE heaven through perception. You can SEE HEAVEN while in a body. BUT.... if you want to be totally immersed in it, you have to leave the body, leave the false world, leave the room, and become expanded everywhere. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the son of God." "There is no world."

It still accounts for the two levels which are Reality and Unreality, true and false, light and dark, heaven and hell, God's world and the world you made. These ARE the two levels, not "two ways to perceive a false world." It still incorporates all aspects of perceiving in recognizing that false perception is an inability to see past walls, while true perception overlooks walls and sees what is beyond them. It supports everything said about the ability to SEE REAL STUFF. "Perception can reach everywhere under the guidance of the holy spirit" (even to reality).

It also supports the EXPERIENCES people have had (me included) IN this world such as having visions of God, seeing Christ in others, SEEING love everywhere, etc. AND it still supports the larger model that we are to WAKE UP FROM some kind of dream world to a reality that were were becoming gradually aware of prior to awakening. You can essentially PERCEIVE or "perceptually experience" reality while in a body in this world. BUT if you want the TOTAL communion with God, knowledge, absolute wakening, total reality, WITHOUT perception (because "those who perceive still need healing"), you have to TRANSCEND THE ROOM, and wake up in infinite reality. "Nothing seen, only know." Because then, you no longer have perception, nor do you need it.

Have a think about it. Open your mind. Put aside "traditional" ACIM models. Consider this. I think it unites the two camps quite a lot and it also is wholly inclusive of ALL ACIM STATEMENTS, something which could not be said for the older models. It has to be possible to SEE reality (God/Christ). It HAS to be possible to see what is ACTUALLY the REAL world (heaven). And it HAS to be possible that the world of false perception disappear when ANOTHER world becomes visible. And it has to be possible that there IS another world entirely BEYOND the one that false perception sees. And that means the world you see with true perception is BEYOND this world. It is heaven. It is the Kingdom of God. And "you cannot remain in this world (false world), with this knowledge."

I know this shakes up a LOT of what people have become accustomed to thinking. And I've had to let go of many of my own conclusions in order to get to this. I had made adjustments, justifications, and false conclusions in order to try to make things "fit" before and I see now where that was flawed because it omitted too many quotes and ways of perceiving love and reality while still in a body. I encourage everyone to think about this and see if you feel that it fits and works for you. If not, that's fine. But for me I feel this is the most accurate model of the course I've ever seen. It is so clear-cut and makes so much sense and supports everything.