He did this by appearing to go through death of the body, and yet being not that body was able to make that body disappear, and then re-materialized another body image which looked and felt just as "real" as before, to SHOW that what He was is beyond and has mastery over the body and over death.

Can you imagine being there as Jesus "as a body", who was just crucified and supposedly killed, which you saw with your own eyes and believed, suddenly materializes out of nowhere as though nothing had happened? Imagine how much of an EDUCATION that would be, blowing your mind and totally undermining your belief system in which the body is thought to be real and all physical effects are thought to be irreversible. This is why miracles are teaching devices.

Nothing could happen to what He is, because He is Spirit, not body, and He was able to PROVE that this is true by dematerializing and rematerializing the body. Who and what He is MUST be "not a body" if the body is able to be switched on and off at will, and therefore anything the body experiences (such as death) cannot be real or have any power to do anything.

WE are also asked to DEMONSTRATE THE TRUTH through our seemingly miraculous ability to completely defy all laws of the physical world. What Jesus did was miraculous. Miracles are expressions which come from a higher state of awareness/mind/spirit, outside of spacetime, outside of the universe, manipulating what is "inside" the universe, to prove that the world is not real or true. Another word for this is SUPERNATURAL.

Jesus asks us to demonstrate, for example, that we are not sick in the body, and that our brother has not done anying to us to cause us harm. We can only do this supernaturally. We have to have the power of God working with us to defy the ego's laws of biology, physics, chemistry etc, to show that even if someone tries to harm us, we cannot be harmed. We demonstrate this USING the body as a teaching device, just as Jesus did.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles are supernatural ACTS, effects or results which are considered IMPOSSIBLE in the ego's thought system. Their "shifts into invisibility" are shifts away from the level of form (physical world) and towards the One Mind. They transcend the worldly laws and enable you to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do! NOTHING!

Miracles are not shifts in perception or mere changes of mind. Miracles are possible AFTER mind has been restored to its natural state of miracle-mindedness. And the miracle-working ability remains a PERMANENT FEATURE of the Son of God, NOT a temporary measure of restoration with no power to do anything.

If you are to truly learn A Course in Miracles and recognize and prove what miracles are, you MUST become a supernatural miracle worker, OTHERWISE you will remain confined to the body and subject to death, determined to prove and demonstrate that the world has power over you and there is nothing you can do about it. That is nothing short of a state of victimhood and unconsciousness.

We need to becoming open to, and capable of, performing miracles to demonstrate and prove that God's truth is true, by defying the laws of the world, right here in the dream. If you are not willing to ACT on your belief that God's truth is true, then it is not true for you. Your miraculous acts will demonstrate that the truth is true, and destroy the ego's illusions that the body has power over the mind.

Projection is the natural law of ALL mind at ALL levels, by which the mind lives and extends itself, creatively. It projects out or forward, that which is within it.

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"We once said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without projection there can be no love. Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

This happens in heaven just as it happens in this world. When it happens in the purity of mind in heaven, we call it "extension", because it is the pure unitnerrupted outpouring of that which is within. It is the sharing of love. The whole Kingdom depends on it.

In this world, with ego thought in the mind, the ego uses the same law of projection to project separation. This is an attempt to attack and not join, or to hold back. What is projected is not love, but fear and guilt. It is disowned and disassociated from rather than shared.

Now, in the course Jesus gives a passage where he clarifies a more appropriate wording for this. Essentially, proper use of the law of projection we can call pure projection or extension. But when the mind is going into ego, it is going into opposition. It therefore does the opposite of project.

The opposite of PRO is CON. Meaning that if you are not fully projecting (extending), then you are CONjecting. This means conjecture. TO conject is to guess, to make stuff up, to invent, to theorize, and to NOT KNOW. Conjecting is the opposite of knowing. To extend is to project knowledge. To oppose projection is to project conjecture. Ie to make up ideas opposite to knowledge and try to give them away.

This fits well because anything the ego "projects" is made-up lies and falsehoods, stuff it has invented and believes in but does not know to be true. It forms conjecture, sort of a kind of libel or slander, and then hurls it out trying to get rid of it.

This is the egos use of the mind's projective mechanism. To formulate its own ideas of what is true and real, and then project it out, to picture a made-up world which does not exist. A guess of a world. A pretend world. A world the ego asserts is real, but which is not.

"It should be noted that the opposite of pro is con. Strictly speaking, then, the opposite of projecting is conjecting, a term which referred to a state of uncertainty or guess work." He also goes on to give some other definitions of words that are along similar lines, such as dejection (which produces depression), injection (which is to do with inserting interruption), and rejection (which is another aspect of separation from God and the rejection of truth).

"Other errors arise in connection with ancillary defenses, to be considered later. For example, dejection, which is obviously associated with depression, injection, which can be misinterpreted readily enough, in terms of possession fallacies (particularly penetration), and rejection, which is clearly associated with denial. It should be noted also that rejection can be used as refusing, a term which necessarily involves a perception of what is refused as something unworthy."

The ego is extremely sneaky and insistent that things are true which are not true.

Here you are, created by God to be absolutely immortal and innocent and invulnerable forever, and yet in spite of this, there's the ego saying "oh, that's not true, you're actually mortal and you need to be concerned that something's gone wrong".

Even though this is IMPOSSIBLE. Even though it can't be true.

So to the ego it's not really that it comes up with stuff because it has a basis in reality, but that it comes up with stuff to try to deliberately defy the truth and insist on its falseness. Even in the face of truth and obvious evidence the ego will refuse to believe it's true.

The ego just wants to believe stuff is happening that isn't happening, that things have gone wrong in ways that they haven't, that there are reasons to be afraid which are completely unfounded, etc. It's basically having a nightmare and trying to prove that it's real when it isn't.

It doesn't matter how many times you tell the ego that it is mistaken, it does not want to believe it.

It could actually be possible right now that you are absolutely 100% safe and everything is absolutely fine in every way. And yet at the same time, the ego will try to insist that there are all kinds of problems and issues and reasons to be afraid.

You could even be standing right in front of a brilliant white light which is showering you with unconditional love, and the ego would be saying "what light, there is no light, I don't deserve love". Even if it's right in front of its face!

The ego HAS to insist that its lies are the truth otherwise it could not exist. And the ego NEVER will have a different story. It will always be trying to insist things have gone wrong. It will always be trying to claim you should be afraid and guilty. Regardless. It isn't based on whether it's true or not, the ego has a one-track mind with a one-track story. It isn't objective, it doesn't make rational decisions, and it isn't in any way interested in ever turning around and telling you "you know what, I was mistaken, there actually is a God of love and you actually are unconditionally loved and perfectly innocent and safe and holy forever." It will NEVER say this.

So why listen to a totally biased, one-track pony, which pretends to be objective, and which pretends to have considered all the possibilities and come up with some 'rational' truth, when in fact it NEVER comes up with truth. It cannot. It cannot see the truth. It does not want to see the truth. It is an attack on truth. And it will ONLY tell you the same answer over and over and over again. It's "yes or no" switch has gotten stuck in the "no" position and it literally is incapable of telling you that God is real or that you are loved and safe or that nothing has gone wrong.

Why listen to a broken record? How many times will you listen to the same old same old same old story of disaster and tragedy, once you know that the storyteller (the ego) has nothing new to say? It is not on your side. It is not telling you objective, rational, truth-based conclusions. It can only lie and it can only make you afraid.

Turn to the Holy Spirit for the only source of real rational truth and real sanity and real objectivity. In His light you can see that, in fact, there is another answer and another way, a better way, because the Holy Spirit is OPEN MINDED enough to be able to DISCERN what is true and what is false. The ego cannot do this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

Should you change the world?

There are many parts of ACIM which SEEM to suggest you should not. Such as:

"Seek not to change the world, but seek to change your mind about the world."

Also Jesus tells us we need to correct the real cause of suffering in our mind, in our perception, in order to truly heal it.

Some say that this might possibly lead to a "side effect" of the body being healed, or it might not. Which is wishy-washy bullshit.

Let's break it down.

If you believe this world is reality, and as a world it sucks big time, and you hate it, and its insane, and you think it's "really insane" as in, it actually IS, then YOU have a problem in your mind because you're not seeing correctly. The world is an ILLUSION!

If the world is real to you, then you've mistaken illusions for the truth. You've given reality to illusions. And now when you see an illusion of a "bad world", you're going to react to it with despair, depression and hopelessness, only because you think it is REAL and not because of its form.

If you then seek to change the world to "look better" AS a real world, which is what happens when most people try to change the world, you're actually going to KEEP the belief you have that this world is reality. You will move the furniture around, maybe to some configuration you prefer temporarily, with tradeoffs, but it's not necessarily going to give you real lasting happiness. It will give you a temporary illusion of happiness which is dependent on the world, and it will change on you.

There is a different way to change the world. Perhaps we should say, to TRANSLATE or TRANSFORM the world.

When you withdraw your belief that this illusory world is reality, and you stop taking it seriously, and stop reacting to errors, sins and sickness as though they're real, you will be much happier. You will know there is not REALLY any reason to be upset, that the world is not REALLY bad, and it's not REALLY anything. This will alleviate all possible reasons for upset.

From that vantage point you will see the "forgiven world", which you will be OVERLOOKING, to Christ's face which is beyond form.

You will also be miraculous, and with the power of God, you WILL have access to be able to "change the world" in any way that is appropriate. Albeit that perhaps it would need to be a) inspired by love, b) in alignment with Jesus's plan of atonement/awakening, and c) for the good of all.

Just as Jesus performs intercessions/interventions by way of MIRACLES, so can you, and you may well bring about "changes" in the world as a result. You may well seem to make the world a happier place, not because its FORM is better, but because there is healing taking place. People are waking up to the truth, miracles are educating about God's reality, and belief is shifting away from illusions. That's a helpful way to change the world.

Thus it's not then so much about to staying IN the world and fixing it up and making it all pretty and real, but more to do with you converting it to an illusory yet more tolerable "happy dream", which smooths the way to awakening and eases suffering and gently helps you and others to return to God. This "use of the world" for awakening is a better purpose than to try to "use the world" to produce a "real world" that is considered better than the old one.

There's nothing wrong with you changing the illusion. Jesus did it many times. Every miracle does it. Miracles rearrange space and time. Jesus tells us its a device for the manipulation of time (and space)! Why not ease the nightmare and lift some burdens lovingly so that people can see EXAMPLES and DEMONSTRATIONS of right-minded thinking, the truth of God's kingdom, the POTENTIAL of awakening, and the FREEDOM that is everyone's right!

The purpose then isn't to change the world for the world's sake, but to change the world to help people wake up from the world and return to reality.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. 2 Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. 3 This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. "

Basically the first law means that because you believe there is the absence of love/God within you, there are blocks to awareness, thus divisions, thus levels and hierarchies, and now everyone is separate and in competition. If love is not in you, you now have to find it outside of you.

"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."

Since we're all separate and no-one apparently has love in them since it's been denied, we must all be sinners and therefore we all deserve attack and death. Another way to put this is that we now see "someone else" as having denied the love in us, its their fault, so we are justified in attacking them to get it back (even though we did this to ourselves).

"This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. 6 For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son's belief in what he is, and hate him for it."

We then believe that God cannot be the source of love and therefore if God is not a source of love He must be evil and therefore is justified in hating us and wants us to be dead. So our own rejection of His love, creating the illusion of His absence, has rendered Him seemingly like an enemy, and we cannot "go there" to get love or salvation, so we have to find it elsewhere.

"The ego values only what it takes. 2 This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. 3 This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. 4 By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself."

We now perceive that we must take from others in order to "get" what we are in need of, and that be taking from them, you can have it. This is a reversal of the fact that in order to have anything real you have to give it/extend it from God. The ego says you can "gain" or increase by accumulating from others against their will, so since all love is now considered "finite and limited" there is only so much to go around, taking it from others must cause them to have less, and so now you can gain by having more.

"But what is it you want that needs his death? 2 Can you be sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what it is for? 3 And here a final principle of chaos comes to the "rescue." 4 It holds there is a substitute for love. 5 This is the magic that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness that makes it "sane."

In the fifth and final principle, basically we believe that this substitute for love - specialness - can be taken from others by force, causing in the most extreme cases for them to be drained of it thus murdered, and so their death has given you life, for which you are justified due to their sinfulness. We presume that this magical specialness will cure all of our pain and lack and needs and is what we are "lacking" and thus it will bring us salvation, make us sane, and take away all the emptiness. Except, it does not work.

The only solution to the emptiness is to return to awareness of love's presence within, by undoing all stages of separation and denial and becoming aware again that the truth is true - that we are already love, did not separate, have not lacked, and therefore need do nothing to be the love that we already are.

There is no real evil in God's reality so it does not really exist.

But evil is an illusion of something being true that isn't. It's what you get when reality is confused with illusions, and the truth is confused with what is false. Everything becomes switched around. You mistake an illusory thing for a real thing. You think stuff is happening that isn't. You think you can do things that you can't. And you become very confused.

The end result of the whole ego thought system, of its whole process of descent into hell, is total confusion.

"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is. You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING. "

When you are totally confused about everything, you have completely mis-identified what everything is. You have no clue what is really real any more. You have no idea of what to trust. There is no sense of actual truth, no sense of reality or sanity. There's a total breakdown of all sense and reason.

A person in this state is essentially highly insane, highly confused, hallucinating, completely out of their mind, and now believes that everything is what it is not. For example death is now seen as eternal life. Heaven is believed to be hell and hell is heaven. Sickness is saving your life. Murder is seen as justified forgiveness. Attack is considered deserved. Hate is now love. And you believe you will find peace by dying.

Such a state of mind is truly what we might call evil. It isn't real evil or absolute evil. But it has all the hallmarks. It's so twisted and backwards. And if a person is close to this state, they WILL likely act in what we call evil ways.

There is such confusion and insanity that the person is likely to become murderous, but at the same time as believing they are not even remotely murderous. They are likely to attack on a whim, become vicious, and vengeful. They will attempt to tempt everyone. They will be deceptive and full of lies. They will undermine and sabotage. They will happily sin against anything. They will celebrate the sacrifice of innocence and life. And they will become lost in the body.

They will think they are the body and develop very twisted special relationships, which ultimately become sick and muderous. They will use people, control people, imprison people and kill people, but not because they think this is what they are doing, they will think they are saving them, helping them, or are justified because of what the person is doing to them. They see themselves as justified victims who are not even remotely victimizing, but yet are victimizers. They may even think they are saving everyone by destroying others.

This is what we call evil or "satanic". It's simply the backwards and totally confused failure to recognize reality and truth. It's the opposite of being close to God. And it signifies such mental illness that love is blotted out. It is a dark and twisted state of mind, resulting in literal states of what we would commonly call mental illness and insanity. And in this state of mind a person seeks to destroy in order to save.

There is so much separation from others that the person is cut off and special, lacking all empathy and sense of connection, lacking all joining, alone and isolated. There is no sharing. There is internal competition between all those who are in a similar boat, because they all want to be special and to be God and have power over everything else. It's everyone for themselves, in a free-for-all of selfishness and conflict. It's a state of war and a state of self attack.

We would consider this "evil" because a person in this state would indeed come across as corrupt, deceptive, untrustworthy, dangerous, sinful, indulgent, selfish, vengeful, and all the qualities that you might associate with some kind of "devil". This so-called "devil" is simply a state of being very confused about what is true.

And the person in this state is VERY mistaken. And remember that mistakes are not sins, they are errors, which call for forgiveness, not punishment. Which means that evil must be forgiven. It must be recognized as a call for love. It must be recognized as a state that needs healing and is just a state of denial, confusion, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, desperation, loss and unconsciousness. The evil person needs love as much as anyone does, and is perhaps even more in need than most.

People who are confused, who thus believe in separation from God, and in sin and death and guilt and fear, are "evil". But they are not REALLY evil, because this evil is nothing more than being very mistaken. These people have mental illness and need correction. They are calling out for love. Which is why God has provided Love in response to heal them and guide them back to sanity. They believe they are really evil, but they aren't. They believe they are sinful monsters, but they aren't.

Everyone deserves forgiveness no matter how evil they may appear to be, because everyone is still a child of God whose REALITY is still perfect innocence and truth. "The ego" is just another word for the idea of "the devil". It's not a real entity, or anything other than a label for insanity. When someone is possessed of the devil they are merely confused and are in the ego.

These mental illnesses were misunderstood and labeled as "devils". The ego in people CAN become very "evil" and vicious, totally backwards and deranged. It can be very twisted. Look at the murderous infectious shit it's done in the world. But it isn't real and it can be undone.

Those who are mentally ill therefore are trying to be evil, in an evil dream. They also want to possess and take from everyone else what they think they lack, being in a state of emptiness and desperation. They see scarcity and danger and fear everywhere, and try to destroy others to take from them what they think is theirs.

They would try to "possess your soul", or have you trade in your soul in some kind of bargain. And ultimately they would call for sacrifice in an offering to a false God that wants even its followers to die. They worship false idols and participate in meaningless magical rituals which attempt to curse and destroy and control. They hide in the darkness and remain in denial, unwilling to look at their belief in their own sinfulness.

They see themselves as innocent and just, yet they are bitter and corrupt. And they cannot remember what love is or who the really are. To them, God and love have become enemies to be destroyed, mistreated, unwanted and undeserved. The Holy Spirit becomes a threat, Jesus is seen as evil, and God Himself is considered blasphemous.

This is nothing but a dream of insanity, in a world made by those driven mad by guilt. There is no real guilt and no world and no evil. Only the good exists. Only God's Kingdom is true.

Here is what Jesus says:

"The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creations. The devil deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return for gifts of no real worth. This makes absolutely no sense."

"The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil." It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Look at your life and see what the devil has made. But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie. Your creation by God is the only Foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it. Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death."

So often I believe I know. I think that I have the facts or the information. Or that I have experiene. Or that my assumptions are true. Or that I know better than someone else. Or that they are wrong so I must be right.

But I am reminded to ask myself, do I really, REALLY know? I mean, do I actually have direct knowlege that this thing is true, or even an ability to do so, or am I just making shit up as I go along?

The other day I was worrying about an outcome in a situation which I felt "sure" was going to go only one possible way. Holy Spirit said, "you don’t know".

At first I could not accept that I did not know. I thought I DID know. I thought I had a very good story or reason to explain what was obviously going to occur. But... I allowed myself to question that. Did I REALLY know, or was this just my best educated guess? Did I REALLY know, or was I just relying on my ego intellect or my past or my judgements to assume I know?

And gradually over the course of a few minutes, as I allowed myself to question this... to consider,... maybe I do not actually KNOW.... maybe I am just making a strong guess and passing it off as knowledge, gradually what at first seemed like a fact "orbiting" off in the distance poking fun at my convictions, became much more centrally accepted within.

I had to admit. I actually do not know. I do not know what is going to happen. There was, along with that, a kind of peace, because now the whole drama story of doom and gloom of what was "sure to happen" no longer had a basis. Without the assumed outcome I was trying to control and avoid to prevent its awfulness, maybe I didn’t need to do anything at all. Maybe I simply was mistaken and maybe there is in fact a possibility and a hope that I had not considered.

While I am busy focusing on depending on my own self and my own knowing and my own figuring out, I am not being open to the facts or reality. I am being closed off and not listening. Nor am I leaving room open for a miracle, for healing, or for completely unexpected outcomes. Possibilities that I had not even thought were possible.

While it’s important to recognize that I do not know "anything", the key here is identifying that I do not know anything *independently* from God. So if I am trusting my own know-how and pride, then I am not knowing the truth. If I put that aside and admit that the stuff I thought I knew, was not real knowledge, I actually become open TO real knowledge.

We are to give up fake knowing. We are to surrender trying to think we know things which are not really truth. We are to let go of false beliefs which masquerade as very certain convictions and definite consequences. But as we give these up, this fake knowledge, this fake certainty, this fear which pretends not to be fear, this prediction which is simply imagined and unreal, it makes way for revealing TRUE knowledge.

True knowledge is the ability to know God, to trust God, to not need to control things, to allow and accept reality, rather than trying to interpret it change it or form false beliefs about it. Be willing to admit you know nothing, and it will open the doorway to knowing everything there really is to know.

There is some small part in the course where Jesus talks about how, at a very high level, in the transition between ego and spirit, more or less upon entering heaven, that it becomes possible to literally directly know everything, experientially, rather than having to rely on your own "accumulated" scraps and memories and learning. We have taught ourselves a lot of bullshit which we have to become willing to give up, recognizing that it is just "made up". Stuff that we make up is not truth. We do not really *know*, when we are trusting these beliefs.

Beliefs are not truth. Beliefs are not knowledge. I do not know what anything is for. I do not know what anything including this means.

I went to God and opened myself up on the topic of unconditional love. I wanted to find out how to be unconditionally loving, and I started to inquire whether God loved me unconditionally.

Then I started to regurgitate all of the things I did during the day which could've been considered guilty or judgmental or fearful. I seemed to be confessing these things, thinking perhaps that God would only love me unconditionally IF I hadn't done these things or IF I was willing to admit them.

For some reason it seemed difficult to simply accept that God loves me unconditionally. In my mind I kept thinking there had to be 'reasons' why God would love me, like, certain conditions that I had to be meeting, certain ways I had to be behaving. So I seemed to keep offering up these things that I'd 'done', believing that at least exposing them to His light was some kind of 'offering' or that He needs to forgive me for them, or something.

But what happened was, I think Holy Spirit chimed in that none of these things were important. I felt the presence of God, which was just 'there', while off to one side it seemed Holy Spirit spoke for Him. I still struggled to understand how God could be loving me unconditionally if I'd done certain things or made certain mistakes or whatever... there was just this ... expectation, of 'only being loved IF', a love that's based on conditions and requirements, that I found hard to push past mentally.

What I couldn't 'get', but what was being very simply offered, was that... all God wants to do is love me. Not me in exclusion, but, ... He had no other agenda. No other interests. He wasn't asking me to do certain mental somersaults. He wasn't even remotely interested in all the things I'd 'done'. He didn't seem at all concerned about any of the stuff I felt guilty about. It was really like He was oblivious to all this. And all that He WAS doing... was loving.

Holy Spirit chimed in... that all God wants to do is love. The impression I got was of like a 'being' that just loves, only loves, doesn't do anything else, has no other interests or motives, isn't even remotely excited or upset about other stuff I've done, isn't even remotely concerned with punishment or judgement, and JUST WANTS TO LOVE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME.

And nothing else.

Just love. Just loving. Just being in love and wanting to share that love with me. Just embracing me with love and surrounding me with love, like love was its ONLY function, love was its only capability, and it couldn't DO anything else but love. It was almost like a handicapped child with severe limitations, as an analogy, which just runs up to you and hugs you spontaneously for no reason, and doesn't really do much else. It just loves. God just loves.

It blew me away that this was all God was interested in. Just to love me. Nothing else was important to Him in that moment. There were no distractions. Just this totally single-minded perfectly pure absolutely overwhelmingly unbridled passionate, embracing love, for me, for no reason whatsoever other than its own self-evident love.

I felt that, some. But parts of me still couldn't understand how this was possible. My ego mind kept reaching to "but what about ...."... and none of that was important.

God just loves us, 100%, all the time. We are in that love with Him, 100%, all the time. Just love everywhere. That's all there is.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

When we believed in separation from God, we entered into a very confused and backwards way of thinking. We shut out reality. We denied truth. We split and narrowed our minds and drove ourselves insane.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

We swapped the meaning of everything. What was true became false. What was false became true. Innocence was considered a sin. Sin was considered innocence. God was regarded as an evil dictator. Ego was regarded as your saviour. Death was believed to be life, and sickness was believed to save you from God. Darkness was light and punishment was atonement.

You no longer recognize what anything actually is. When you look upon things you do not see what they are, you see what you made of them. You see the twisted meanings and deceptions that you made of them. You don't believe that God is love. And you think death is your friend. You do not even recognize your own self.

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself."

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

So now we have a world filled with crazy people. People who do not know which way is up. People whose priorities are all over the place purely because they think they've made a really great decision, when in fact they have poor judgement.

If your whole belief about what something is, is wrong, it changes how it looks to you and what it means to you. If it's something which in truth would hurt you, and you see it as helpful, you might choose it on purpose believing it will help you.

This is the case with sickness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" tells you that you mis-perceive God. You think God or Truth is a threat to you, an enemy. You see attack and vengeance and danger in him. Having hallucinated these lies, you then react to them. And you reason, if God is trying to destroy me, I need to get away from God.

Then you will try to create a distance between you and God. And this is a problem because God is, in the big picture truth, life and wholeness and health and happiness. So you resist God, thinking God is your enemy, and by doing so choose to go away from these things. So you head towards sickness and death and limitation and weakness, all under the belief that you are saving your life from a real threat.

Then you end up suffering and you hate it and you think you didn't choose it. You don't want it because who could want it really, but you did want it because you chose it. And you chose it because you made a wrong decision.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace."

The decision was based on you thinking that you knew what everything is, when you didn't, and were misinformed and deceived. So you deceived yourself and lied to yourself and then followed that lie as guidance and ended up hurting yourself. But you didn't think it was going to hurt, you thought it was helpful.

So literally the people in the world believe that suffering is salvation. Punishment is seen as justified and right and a form of healing and education. More suffering for the guilty is seen as atonement. And people literally choose to die, in an attempt to claim their innocence. If someone else is to blame, you get to be exonerated, and you think this will save your life, but you die instead.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

It's all to do with having a faulty guidance system. A screwed up navigation. The map is all wrong. The signposts are all backwards. You think you're going towards stuff which is truly good by choosing things which are definitely not. And all because you do not know what the fuck you are doing.

You do not know who you are, what you are, where you came from, how you got here, why you are here, what you are doing, why you are doing it. You even doubt whether you were even ever really created and suspect that you are an illusion that doesn't even exist.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So this is the problem we all have. We do not correctly recognize what anything actually is. And so we keep being in a state of self-deception. And then we make choices based on this deception, which turn out to move us towards "what we want", just as all choices do, except the stuff we've chosen is not in our best interests. But we thought it was.

So we keep hurting ourselves. We know not what we do. We are lost. We are insane. We need to be straightened out. We need help from outside the insanity (Holy Spirit etc). We need to be corrected. We need to be willing to be mistaken. We need to examine the beliefs and meanings we've given to everything and look for a better way.

"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

Every strategy. Every form of problem solving. Every way of relating. Everything you think you'll gain or lose. Every scenario. It all has to be brought into question and re-evaluated by the One who knows. Your mind needs to be corrected and trained to line up with what is ACTUALLY TRUE, and what you can actually have, and want, and what is fully in accord with God's will.

"ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self."

Recognition is the key. Properly discerning what something is or isn't. Being not deceived by anything. Correct clear accurate perception. Proper categorization of things. Is something true on God's terms, or is it false? Can it be real in God, or is it unreal? It is really what it appears to be, or is it something else? Are you mistaken? If you are not enlightened, you are mistaken.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

If you could fully recognize what everything actually is, to see it clearly, without distortions of reality, without hallucinations, without fake meanings and artificial values, without wishful thinking or delusion, without denial and without attack or resistance, you would be enlightened.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

When everything false is finally seen for what it is, recognized to be unreal and nothing, with no value and no further purpose, it will disappear.

"Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers when you choose to see all suffering as what it is."

"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are."

"Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you."

"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body."

"In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas."

"The ego will NEVER let you perceive this, for this recognition WILL make it homeless. For, when this recognition dawns clearly, you will NOT be deceived by ANY form the ego takes, to protect itself FROM your sight."

"Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality."

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed."

"Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings."

"The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world's."

"That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity."

"The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself."

"For recognition comes of vision and SUSPENDED judgment."

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED."

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."

"Your function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you want, in recognition that YOU DO NOT KNOW. How, then, CAN you decide what you should do? Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it."

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is ONLY WHAT IS TRUE."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point."

"The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true."

"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is." "Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them."

"Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you."