"I am not weak, but strong.
I am not helpless, but all powerful.
I am not limited, but unlimited.
I am not doubtful, but certain.
I am not an illusion, but a reality.
I cannot see in darkness, but in light."
More...
I am not mortal but immortal.
I am not sick but healthy.
I am not dying but eternal.
I am not afraid but confident.
I am not a victim but empowered.
I am not guilty but innocent.
I am not sinful but holy.
I am not lost but united.
I am not alone but one.
I am not forgotten but remembered.
I am not upset but peaceful.
I am not unhappy but joyful.
I am not attacked but safe.
I am not hopeless but grateful.
I am not deprived but abundant.
I am not lacking but receiving.
I am not hurt but invulnerable.
I am not suffering but relieved.
I am not affected but causal.
I am not stuck but miraculous.
I am not imprisoned but free.
I am not angry but calm.
I am not condemned but forgiven.
I am not dark but light.
I am not separate but whole.
I am not an ego but as God created me.
I am not confused but clear.
I am not diseased but healed.
I am not broken but complete.
I am not isolated but expansive.
I am not asleep but awake.
I am not unconscious but aware.
I am not deadly but harmless.
I am not murderous but welcoming.
I am not a victimizer but truly helpful.
I am not misguided but directed.
I am not ugly but beautiful.
I am not depressed but happy.
I am not unwilling but willing.
I am not resistant but open.
I am not ill but well.
I am not damned but saved.
I am not in exile but in heaven.
I am not a body but spirit.
I am not a dream but God's creation.
I am not fictional but authentic.
I am not divided but undivided.
I am not adrift but purposeful.
I am not threatened but permanent.
I am not rejected but loved.
I am not abandoned but embraced.
I am not in hell but in God.
I am not offended but humored.
I am not suspicious but trusting.
I am not vicious but gentle.
I am not ashamed but appreciative.
I am not envious but fulfilled.
I am not idolizing but within.
I am not heroic but saved.
I am not horrified but passer-by.
I am not judging but forgiving.
I am not hateful but generous.
I am not resentful but thankful.
I am not in danger but protected.
I am not disgusting but acceptable.
I am not beyond help but supported.
I am not embarrassed but understood.
I am not grieving but reunited.
I am not controlled but powerful.
I am not terrified but strong.
I am not worried but filled with faith.
I am not dead but eternal life.
I am not lonely but home with God.
I am not sad but overjoyed.
I am not insane but sane.
I am not delusional but honest.
I am not empty but inspired.
I am not insecure but secure.
I am not anxious but reassured.
I am not cold but warm.
I am not tense but relaxed.
I am not disturbed but quiet.
I am not stressed but at ease.
I am not serious but playful.
I am not harsh but kind.
I am not weak but supernatural.
I am not in time but in eternity.
I am not separate but with God.
You might be trying to deny that God exists because you believe that you can ACTUALLY pull it off. You think you can actually get rid of God.
God is permanent and will always exist. But you attempt to prove that God is impermanent.
This can absolutely never work. God is permanent. God will never be impermanent.
This is what your entire life in the world is about. Your every effort to be separate. Your whole campaign against God. Your attempt to deny Him and everything He created (which includes you). This is all because you think one day, somehow, you will prove once and for all, that death of permanence CAN be accomplished, and that you actually HAVE sinned.
Sorry to tell you this, but, .... what is permanent cannot, by definition, ever be impermanent, and can never, ever, ever, ever die. And what is innocent CANNOT SIN.
The ego might've forgotten to tell you that one little technicality.
So go ahead and keep trying to die, all you like. You won't achieve it.
At best you might experience what looks like death, which will be just a temporary transition.
Since it's not possible to die, the ego HAS to have you whisked away to some other dimension when you die to create the illusion that 'you're gone', which is all smoke and mirrors, because it's not actually capable of killing you. Ever. Because you're permanent.
The game is up.
It is futile.
You cannot win.
You cannot make God be dead.
You cannot destroy yourself.
Maybe it's time to surrender and give up this fight? And... why not just stop denying that God loves you and actually LET HIM love you? Why not RECEIVE what is being offered? You'll be far happier.
Maybe it's time to drop the whole charade of trying to prove you can't be loved. It will never work. Nothing can act against the will of God and it's Gods will that you be lovable forever.
You CAN'T make death real.
You CAN'T be separate from God.
You CAN'T succeed in what you are trying to do, ever.
So maybe its time to give up and let go of all of this effort to destroy yourself, which will never work, and just let God love the heck out of you. I know I know... that would be like, something you have to suffer through and do begrudgingly right? Like being kissed by your grandma? lol
You can be loved. There is NO POINT denying it.
But will you admit it and let it happen or just keep stubbornly refusing - insanely refusing - trying to keep asserting that it's actually possible to be dead?
You are permanent.
Here is a perfect ACIM quote: "Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?"
We do not recognize an illusion when we see one. Since birth we've been looking at this world believing it's real. It seems real enough. But "there is nothing so blinding as perception of form."
The problem is, we don't have something MORE real to compare it to. There is no frame of reference to evaluate it or contrast it. If you could see something truly real, it would frame this world AS an illusion, it's illusory nature would become obvious, and you would be able to tell that this world is clearly false and unreal. But you have to have a sense of what true and real things are like in order to be able to compare and contrast, that this illusion is opposite to that.
Think for a moment then about reality, about God, about Heaven, about the nature and quality of infinite immortal being. Contemplate what God is like. The eternal nature, the endlessness, the freedom from sickness and death, the inability to create anything less than perfection. Then ask yourself, is this thing you are looking at, THAT? Does it match up? Does it correlate? Does it seem like something God would create, something immortal, unlimited, perfect, beautiful and pure?
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
With something to compare it to, it becomes more obvious that the things of this world, the stuff you've been looking at since birth, MUST BE an illusion. It must be something manufactured, artificial, pretend, fake, unreal, deceptive. It cannot really exist. There is no cancer in God. There is no insanity in God. There is no dog shit in God. There is no crying in God. There is no attack in God. There is no fear or threat or danger in God. Can this appearance of sin and attack exist WITHIN God's perfect being? Not even slightly. So what is it you're looking at?
It has to be something that is not really there. It has to be a lie, an illusion, a deception and a temptation to believe in something unreal. It's some kind of hallucination. It's make believe fairytale dreaming. It can't exist. It can't really be there at all. It seems to be but it's not. It is really nothing, pretending to be something. The impossible, pretending to be possible. It can't exist in God. It has no real cause. It hasn't been created. Remind yourself of this, and it will become clearer and more RECOGNIZED, that what you're seeing is an ILLUSION, some kind of invented puff of smoke masquerading as something else. It can't be real. It can't exist. It's not there. It's gone.
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
There is only God and His Kingdom. "Only the creations of light are real."
The body is very much the opposite of your reality as an immortal being. Your real self can never be changed, attacked, hurt or destroyed. But the body is defenseless, exposed and vulnerable, capable of destruction and utterly unsafe in a dangerous world.
"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."
Having lived your life in a body, you've had to deal with all kinds of vulnerabilities. And this has taught you that you are a target for destruction. Weak, susceptible, fragile, attackable and unsafe. That you can be destroyed and should take great care to avoid all possible threats. Wary of every passing car, frightened of every stranger, upset by the mere presence of something moving.
The body has endured suffering, pain, breakage, malfunction and damage. It has been influenced by the weather and the environment. It has been attacked and hurt, bullied and hit, poked and prodded, maybe even assaulted surgically. Maybe the body has been mutilated, perhaps parts of it are missing, perhaps it is ugly and deformed and lacking, and maybe it was never whole to begin with.
Because of this, and because you believe you are your body, you must have thought this about yourself. You believed you'd lost parts of yourself, that you were under attack, that you have to be constantly vigilant when crossing roads and stepping on cracks and turning corners just in case it is your day to die - hoping to alert you early that you might avoid more suffering. You've put considerable effort into securing your body, making a home for it, protecting it with walls upon walls and layers upon layers, trying to shield it from your enemies.
All of this has told you that you are weak and fragile, vulnerable and attackable, defenseless and exposed. It has caused you to feel frightened and threatened all the time. It has given you constant anxiety and nervousness, constant stress and concern. You never feel fully safe anywhere, you are always on alert and wary of the next biting teeth or hammering nails or sharp pointy objects, trying constantly to avoid the body's death.
"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful."
This can have done nothing but undermine your peace of mind, your sense of safety, your confidence and your happiness. Having to be constantly on the lookout for danger like some kind of animal in dangerous territory. You avoid the places you don't like to go, you avoid the people who bother you, you steer clear of the brand names you don't trust, and you only expose yourself with select few. And you reason that better the devil you know than the ones you don't.
This all comes about by confusing your identity with the body, believing you are a body, that you are body-like or of a physical nature. It comes with the territory. You cannot believe you are a physical body without being afraid of death, because you know the body can die. You cannot believe the body is your self, without being traumatized when you clip your nails or cut your hair. If you are a body, you are literally as susceptible and vulnerable as the body is, even if you take measures to defend yourself or ward off attackers.
It is not possible to believe you are a body and to feel confident. It is not possible to believe you are a body and be sane. It is not possible to believe you are a body and have real relationships with anyone, because the body literally cuts you off from them. It is not possible to believe you are a body and feel a sense of true safety and peace, or happiness and love. "the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"
The body is separate in a separated world. It stands apart and alone. By the mere fact that it does not share with others, separate by space and time, it is lonely and isolated. Believing you are a body brings with it a fundamental loneliness and sense of exclusion, of conflict and disagreement, and even constant war. Bodies can never be equal because they rely on inequality and difference to make them distinct. And so there is no peace available when bodies are your truth.
Believing you are a body deceives you and sets you up for failure. It guarantees death and sickness and ensures a breakdown in communication. Being a body means putting a death sentence on your head and limiting yourself to a small span of time, riddled with obstacles and difficulties and suffering. If you are a body you cannot be a mind, or an idea, or a thought of God. You are parentless and orphaned and alone.
The body is essentially a blasphemy against God, because it suggests things about you which cannot be true in reality. You are actually an immortal, permanent, absolute, unchangeable, endless being, given eternal life and incapable of ever being hurt in any way. If you believe you are a body, you do not believe in yourself. If you believe you are a body, you are shutting yourself off from who you are in reality, and are guaranteeing suffering.
Your real self is immortal, it cannot be hurt or attacked, it cannot be affected or altered, it is utterly invulnerable, it is impervious and unassailable. It cannot be attacked or threatened, it cannot be hurt or made to be sick, it cannot be poisoned or traumatized, and it cannot die. Your real self is permanently happy, constantly joyful, and utterly at peace. Its peace can never be disturbed because nothing can ever threaten it, just as it is always free from all fear and anxiety because it knows that it is perfectly safe from all harm.
To identify with who you really are as God created you is to escape from the torment of being a body. It is to free you from all potential for suffering, attack, sickness and death. Identifying with your spirit/soul lifts you out of hell and into heaven. It lifts you away from danger and out of harm's way. It gives you real protection and permanent peace. It guarantees you are sinless and guiltless, incapable of being evil, unable to attack or be attacked, harmless and unharmed forever.
Only by not being a body can you be as God created you, because God did not create bodies. Only by not being a body can you laugh in the face of death and overcome the world. It is the body that becomes a target for attack and destruction, and not your real self. Your real self is beyond the world and beyond space and time and beyond the laws of physics. It is not of this world because you were created in another world, in the Kingdom of God, where everything is eternal.
"You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go."
Your eternal self can never suffer pain, can never be hurt by another, can never be upset or offended, can have no reason to ever be afraid, can never have its peace disturbed, can never become sick or suffer, can never experience pain, can never malfunction or break down or degrade, can never become old or tired, can never lose anything, and can never die. Surely you would rather identify with your real self and be free from hell forever, than to regard yourself as a lump of flesh and bones stalking the earth like a zombie waiting to finish dying.
Only by associating yourself with the properties of immortality can you be set free from the mortal body and all its limitations. Only by identifying as permanent and unchangeable can you have no grounds for upset. Only by recognizing you can never be changed can you free yourself from the blame and tyranny of other people's actions. Only by knowing yourself as the eternal life God gave you can you utterly disregard anything the world seems to do or cause.
"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."
"This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body."
"But I am not a body. What am I?"
"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."
"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body."
"But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick."
"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."
"T-18.IX.3. From the WORLD OF BODIES, MADE BY INSANITY, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. 2 And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. 3 For YOU sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. 4 Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. 5 There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could speak of this. 6 Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages."
"The world *IS* the DELUSIONAL THOUGHT SYSTEM of those DRIVEN MAD by guilt."
T-14.I.2."THIS IS AN INSANE WORLD, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. 7 There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and YOUR DREAM is sacred to you. 8 That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream."
"W-pI.139.7. Nothing the world believes is true. 2 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. 3 And they will come again UNTIL the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are."
W-pI.53.1. "WHAT IS PRODUCING THIS WORLD IS INSANE, and so is what it produces. 4 Reality is not insane"
W-pI.135.2. "A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. 3 THE WORLD IS BASED ON THIS INSANE BELIEF. 4 And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. 5 For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart."
"W-pII.3.2. The world was MADE AS AN ATTACK on God. 2 It symbolizes fear. 3 And what is fear except love's absence? 4 Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. 5 Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. 6 But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. 7 Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."
"W-pI.49.4. Listen in deep silence. 2 Be very still and open your mind. 3 Go past all the raucous shrieks and SICK IMAGININGS that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. 4 Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF THIS INSANE WORLD. 5 ***You do not live here***. 6 We are trying to reach YOUR REAL HOME. 7 We are trying to reach the **PLACE** where you are truly welcome. 8 We are trying to reach God."
"T-18.I.8. Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. 2 And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. 3 The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your MAD JOURNEY outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. 4 He brings all your INSANE PROJECTIONS and the WILD SUBSTITUTIONS that you have placed OUTSIDE YOU to the truth. 5 Thus He reverses the course of INSANITY and restores you to reason."
Gradually over time I am becoming more and more aware that, in truth, nothing has ever gone wrong. And in fact, it is absolutely impossible for anything to really go wrong.
Everything about God's reality is permanent and unchanging. This seems like a tiny little fact, but is everything.
It means that the Kingdom of God cannot be changed, all forms of suffering and death are fictional, you literally are incapable of sin, everything real is still exactly as God created it, nothing can attack reality, and nothing has ever happened to you. It also means you are permanently in a state of enlightenment and resurrection and eternal life.
"Believe in the Resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and IT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time and no exceptions."
The problem we have is that we *currently* are so immersed in an experience that seems totally contrary to this, so surrounded by it all day long, that we think of this truth as distant and difficult to stay in touch with. Like it's some far off possibility that we can't access. And so the ego and all its stories of things going wrong, suffering, murder and death seem all too "real" and true.
But gradually we shift towards allegiance to the truth and discover something. It is not a matter of there being a war between the light and the dark. Instead, the darkness is at war with ITSELF and the light is UNTOUCHED. Everything real is as immaculate and perfect and innocent as it has always been, because that is God's will and NOTHING can change God's will in any real way.
We've bought into the lies of dreaming all too strongly and have become convinced of them. We seem to believe that what we are is not something real or permanent, and that we can be changed. That somehow we did sin and changed from being innocent to being a sinner. And then we think that we really are having sickness, suffering, problems and death, as though these things can really happen or DO something to us.
Underneath all of these LIES we are still perfectly innocent, holy, immortal, invulnerable, unaffected, unchanged, perfect, eternal, happy, loved and loving, in divine health forever, free form fear and death, and incapable of separation.
So the question arises, simply, which of these two "realities" are you going to believe in and be allegiant to? Are you going to recognize that it is ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE for anything to be affected or die, or are you going to keep believing that death CAN affect God's creation? That's the choice that you have. The illusion that there is an opposite to life, or whether there is ONLY life.
Slowly but surely I find more and more evidence and reason telling me of the IMMORTALITY and invulnerability of all things God created. The utter IMPOSSIBILITY of anything the ego claims. It is impossible to sin. It is impossible to oppose God's will. It is impossible to die. It is impossible for God's Son to suffer. It is impossible that you have "real reasons" to be afraid. All of it is a dream. A fiction. A huge massive lie, like a cover-up.
It is VERY reassuring to realize then that THE TRUTH IS that everything real is still exactly the way God created it. What you are is real and cannot be changed or hurt or affected in any way. What your brother is cannot sin against you or be sinned against. It is literally absolutely impossible for you to sin AT ALL. Sin is NOT real. It is fake sin. Just as guilt is fake guilt, fear is fake fear, sickness is fake sickness, and death is fake death.
What a relief it is to realize the sheer PROTECTION of God's Kingdom. Nothing real can or has been threatened whatsoever. Anything else MUST be unreal and not truly happening. Even the worst war and most horrific death MUST be a total bullshit lie with NO TRUTH in it whatsoever.
No illusion can assail the creations of God. Darkness cannot blot out the light. The ego cannot replace the Sons of God with death. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for you to sin against or leave God or oppose His will. We must remember that anything that says otherwise MUST be a fictional illusion, just some kind of lie or tall tale or deception, a form of denial, because in truth it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO DIE.
What you ARE, in reality, is deathless, ageless, timeless, spaceless, immortal, invincible, invulnerable, eternal, impenetrable, unchangeable, permanent, fixed forever, and totally beyond any threat or danger.
So the challenge we are faced with is the contrasting and clarifying of these two positions. One says you are forever immortal and nothing else can ever be true. The other says you are mortal and weak and afraid and must suffer and can actually die. Only one of these two can be true. And if God's version is the truth, the other must be TOTALLY false.
Coming to realize that God's creation is always PERMANENT and utterly beyond all damage or conflict has tremendous peace to it. The sheer impossibility of it being hurt in any way. It is so powerful. Like an immovable object, it asserts itself and simply IS, forever, and nothing else can ever change it. In the face of it, the ego has absolutely no room to even EXIST.
Do you think Heaven is concerned? Is heaven trembling in fear at what the ego or the darkness might do? Is there really upset over what has happened? Has even one of God's children ever been really threatened? Are we not ETERNALLY SAFE FOREVER IN GOD? Can lies and illusions and little shadows of despair ever truly DO ANYTHING to anything real? Is heaven at war with the ego? Is the Holy Spirit fighting with the ego? He simply RECOGNIZES that THERE IS NO REAL EGO. So what's there to worry about?
We're busy freaking out that everything has gone to shit, and in reality, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED! We keep fearing that we're becoming sick and old and dead and this is impossible. We keep worrying about what's becoming of the world and yet it doesn't even exist. We are so concerned that we've gone off the rails and will never get home, but we're already still there! How bizarre this grand illusion that so many things have gone wrong, when in fact NOT ONE SINGLE THING HAS GONE WRONG AND NEVER WILL.
How much PEACE there is in realizing this freedom from FICTIONS of suffering. God, His Kingdom and His Holy Sons are not merely hiding away from the world hoping not to be attacked by it. Rather, they know that the world is TOTALLY FICTIONAL and does not really exist at all. There IS NO THREAT, there IS NO DANGER, there IS NO ATTACK, there IS NO DEATH. All of this worldly stuff, it's just totally bullshit. All of it. None of it is true! The secret to salvation is that THERE IS NOTHING TO BE SAVED FROM!!!!
ONLY THE TRUTH IS TRUE. ONLY THE CREATIONS OF LIGHT ARE REAL. ONLY THE KINGDOM OF GOD EXISTS. THERE IS NO WORLD. NOTHING REAL CAN BE THREATENED. NOTHING UNREAL EXISTS.
We don't want to ask for help. Because in our ego we think we don't need help. Because we think we're so amazing and masterful all on our own, that we can do everything on our own, and don't even need any help. This means we believe there's not even anything wrong with us, and that we're amazing super advanced beings already. But the fact is that we need to admit that we are LESS THAN PERFECT, having attacked ourselves and limited ourselves. And we are IN DENIAL about this. We don't want to admit that we suck.
Admitting it is frightening because it means realising that we're "not in a good spot". That we might even be believing we're in danger or are living in fear or are full of guilt or are sick or whatever. But ADMITTING this also means, your mind is going to accept that you DO NEED HELP. And only by recognizing that you are in NEED, will you be willing to ASK FOR HELP. Only by recognising that you are NOT DOING WELL, will you reach out, or acknowledge the fact that you cannot get out of this all by yourself.
Only by having that honesty to admit to failure and lack and not knowing how to get yourself out of it, resigning as your own teacher, will you ASK the Holy Spirit to help you. And then you will be WILLING with a little willingness to LET HIM help you, to let him heal you and guide you. If you can't admit that you are crap all on your own and you don't know what to do about it, you're never going to get to the point where you realize you need God to save you, in which you will turn to him.
People sometimes only reach this when they hit rock bottom and crash agains the rocks and realize they can't help themselves, which is an excellent thing to recognize because it finally means you surrender your egoic efforts to save yourself and become open to something from outside the ego. This is when we are wiling to admit ego defeat, ie failure, which is a GOOD THING, and can then crack open and let some light in from beyond the ego. This is when we want a better way, because our tolerance for pain and suffering has reached its limit.
Those who have suffered and have been tested and have failed and have realised the meagre limitation and powerlessness of their ego self, have been blessed with an opportunity to find God, to turn to him and to trust him. If we're not willing to "admit defeat", we'll just keep fighting ourselves all on our own and continue the suffering, trying to tolerate the pain and misery for as long as we can stand it.
"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. 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. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
Immortality stems from being absolute. Everything about God is absolute. Absolutely existing, absolutely forever. There is no sense of endings, interruptions, or even changes. Something that lasts forever. Always there, always the same, always permanent.
That‘s what your real self is like. It just keeps on being the same. Forever without end. Always you. Always completely endless, ongoing, eternal. You have eternal life. You were created by God who has eternal life to be like God. You will live forever and will always be perfect.
Because of your changeless nature, there are no kinds of changes that can happen to you. You can’t even begin to have anything change you, not through external causes or even by yourself. You have no power to change what you are, because God absolutely defines what you are. You are solely what he wills you to be forever.
Your permanence gives you immortality, which is the absolute inability to become something other than what you absolutely always are. This means there can never be even the slightest hint of a change in you.
There can be no suggestion that you might end someday, or stop existing, or somehow be affected in some way. There is no point at which you might have something happen which changes you, such that you might no longer be absolute, or that your permanence might turn into something temporary.
In this absolute state you are absolutely totally at peace, because you know that absolutely nothing can happen to you. You are so fixed, so certain, so completely created, so whole and defined, so sustained by God forever, that not a single thing on any level in any way can alter you even slightly. And because you know this, you have permanent peace.
There is no attack in you. There is no malfunction, no distortion, no fluctuation. There is no contradiction or split mindedness. There is no uncertainty, no fear, no sense of being wrong somehow. There is no sin, no guilt, no reason to be punished, and nothing to do the punishing.
Your absoluteness makes it impossible for you to ever end. You can’t even be slightly changed. Nothing can happen to affect you in any way whatsoever. There are no forces or powers that can do anything to even mildly hint at influencing you, distracting you, making you be one way or another, diverting you, causing you, or doing anything at all to you. You are absolutely invulnerable.
Because of this permanence, and the total inability to change at all - the opposite of a shapeshifter - you can never become anything. You can’t lose anything, you can’t gain anything. You can’t degrade or transform or shift or adjust.
You can’t become sick or fall ill, or develop a disease, or become corrupted or broken. You can’t even have the slightest dent or bruise or sense of harm or hurt in any way. Pain is utterly non-existent for you. And because of this you can never die. You will exist forever and ever and ever endlessly extending life. You are life itself, pure life, pure immortal livingness.
You are so bullet-proof that absolutely nothing can even remotely begin to modify what you are. The infinite unlimited power of God sustains you in his mind permanently forever as an absolutely perfect thought and idea. You are so devoid of malfunction and breakage and deformity and disruption that you are utterly beautiful and spotless and immaculate in every way. You are cleaner than the cleanest clean, forever.
The things of the physical world, are formed from ideas of separation and difference, ideas of attack and competition, of opposition and defenses, of a sense that somehow something can be changed. The world is made of ideas of vulnerability and susceptibility, of danger and threat, of things happening to you against your will to change you and define you. A world of change and transformation, of instability and uncertainty, of hurt and suffering and death.
But the world cannot even reach you or touch you or have any influence on what you are whatsoever. You are not physical, and no physical thing, no force, no energy, no atom, nothing of this entire universe can even begin to approach you. You are transcendental and everlasting and never-ending. Utterly safe, utterly beyond threat, utterly incapable of being attacked, utterly transcendent of all danger and powers and causations.
The separation from God is merely an attempt by you, as an utterly immortal being, an eternal being with eternal life, to formulate a massive lie and to pretend that you are something which is NOT immortal. Something mortal, something that can be changed, something that can be affected by the world and the people in it, something that can suffer and be weakened, something breakable and destructible. Something that can be sick and die and cease to exist.
All this world is, is a mad idea in the mind of trying to die. It’s a realm of suicide in which immortal beings are in denial, pretending that they are something they are not, identifying with forms and objects and bodies and worldly things and thoughts and emotions, to try to label themselves as something other than an immortal spirit. Because these things can be attacked and hurt, they can suffer and can be destroyed, and so you pretend to be them so that you can pretend to be destructible as well. You are trying to stop existing.
But you are immortal and eternal, and you will never stop existing. You will last forever, longer than the world, longer than time and space, endlessly continuing to always be what God created you to be, with no escape and no way to change the fact of what you are.
You are an immortal soul. You will never ever ever ever ever end. You can’t even begin to die or be really sick. You can’t even have real suffering, or real death. All you can do is pretend and make-believe and fake it and lie In a state of denial - a state of dreaming and wishing. You can’t in any way be a victim of anything, at the effect of anything, hurt or attacked or damaged by anything. It is absolutely impossible for you to be threatened or hurt or changed in any way.
There is nothing in the world that can oppress you, hurt you, attack you, threaten you, change you, define you, make you feel anything, or cause you to be something other than perfect. There is no power in all this universe that can have power over you, to cause you in any way at all. You are beyond this world. You are not even a part of space time. You are not a body.
You are free. Free from suffering, free from attack, free from threats and dangers, free from death. You have eternal life already. Nothing in the world is doing anything to you. No-one has ever hurt you. You are not hurtable. You are not vulnerable. You are not weak but strong. You are not doubtful but certain. You are not afraid but all powerful. You remain exactly as God created you.
You are immortal. You are eternal. You are always and forever.
“But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless.” UrT11J13
“The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One.” UrT29G1
“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.” UrW84L2
“Your will is His Life, which He has GIVEN to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM.” UrT10B11
“You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do.” UrT9K8
“Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal.” Ur Special messages 19 “You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now.” UrT11J12
“What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect.” UrT24H5
You are an immortal permanent being, changeless and the same forever. The goal of awakening is to KNOW THYSELF as this fixed, unchangeable, eternal spirit. A being that is utterly unaffected by anything no matter where it goes or what it does, certain of who and what it is forever.
The question then is, why do you have fear if you are such an unchangeable being? Nothing can attack you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can stop you from existing, nothing can make you dead. So why are you afraid all the time?
The main cause of fear is the idea of death, that you might stop existing and not live forever. It's something that has to undermine your sense of permanence and immortality, to make you mortal, in order for you to be threatenable. If you might not live forever, you might die, and now you are afraid.
But the real issue here isn't that you might die - because you can't. You are an immortal being that is always the same forever. The issue is that you BELIEVE you are something else. You don't recognize yourself as permanent. You think you've become something that can be attacked or threatened or in danger.
So really most of our fears stem from body-identification, false ideas about who and what you are, a failure to recognize your permanence, forgetting your invulnerability, having artificial values and specialness, separating yourself off from the whole of eternity and trying to be limited.
If you are in states of confusion about what you are, you are mistaken. And that mistakenness inspires fear in you. You make false conclusions and then you suffer, and you're doing it to yourself. If you could know yourself as you really are you could never have any reason to be afraid, knowing that you are eternal and live forever.
When your body is having problems, when the world is threatening, when stuff is going wrong, when the fires are raging, when you've lost things, when you're angry at someone etc, you're believing that you are not an immortal being. And that makes you start believing that these other things have power over you, causing you to be suffering and sick and unhappy. But this is a mistake. Every source of fear is a mistaken belief in a power outside of you that isn't really doing anything.
It wouldn't even matter to you if you were being in a body or not, or coming or going, seeming to exit the world or not, because you'd know it has no bearing whatsoever on who and what you are. It doesn't change you or affect you or make you dead. You just carry on being you, forever, guaranteed and protected by God.
So really all our suffering stems from the belief in death, which is a belief in mortality, which is a denial of being immortal. We need to remember our immortal nature in order to assert that we cannot be hurt, have never been hurt, and therefore all is forgiven.
"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost." UrT8D6
"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead." UrW139L3
"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU." UrT16D4
"It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick." URT9K3
"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." UrW84L2
"Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be." W166L11
"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8
"I want the peace of God." W185
There's over 100 references in ACIM to "the peace of God". Years ago I wouldn't have thought that peace is something I want. It wasn't a priority. I just wanted all the stupid people to go away, lol.
But the more I've done the course the more it's becoming apparent that peace is very central to the experience I SHOULD be having.
I had a dream a few years ago which showed me an example of extraordinary peace.
In the dream there was a small outdoor scene with some trees and a wild grassy area, and a sort of sky with clouds, although the clouds seemed to be very nearby.
The clouds parted and as they did, they took on an extraordinary emerald green color, rich and vibrant and beautiful. An opening appeared and there floated in, from beyond the clouds, were a pair of beautiful orbs of light, which seemed to be radiating life and light and coloring the landscape as they went.
These orbs were spheres, and glowed gently from within. It wasn't like a dazzling light, just a soft glow. They seemed mostly transparent, and about the size of a bowling ball.
The two orbs floated very slowly and quietly past where I stood, and continued to float on forward, under their own will. But the thing that really struck me was the quality of the atmosphere and how it felt.
The orbs were alive, and were aware, and were extremely peaceful. They seemed to have no ounce of a sense of attack or irritation or disturbance. They were so incredibly calm and quiet, so perfectly innocent, holy even.
They could not not have been more pure, more simple, or more beautiful. They just glided along softly together, as though accompanying each other, and were perfectly unhurried and peaceful.
That's about where the dream ends. But I still think back on it and, when I do, I feel that same peace, and it becomes an inspiration. As I think about what that felt like, I can draw a number of ideas from it.
A total lack of all conflict, a total absence of war, a total lack of any sense of fighting or disturbance or angry aggression. A total innocence, so pure and gentle and simple, like it was just born from God.
No sense of irritation, or annoyance, or frustration or any kind of bitterness or resentment. No sense of guilt or sin or shame or unworthiness. Not the slightest speck of inflammation or agitation or interruption of any kind.
Perfectly calm and tranquil, with no force or pressure, no sense of threat or danger, no concern or worry or doubt or fear. Nothing complicated or distorted, no denial or rejection, no defences, and absolutely no sense of urgency.
Just total calm and total peace and total simple being. Total freedom, total beautiful innocent simplicity, and total calm gentle joy.
This I feel is what I really want, and what we all want. And it highlights how all these things that were absent - are all things that we are so accustomed to living with and tolerating. All the ego emotions and hurts, all the fighting and war and conflict, all the fear and guilt. All of it has to go.
I used to think somehow that the pinnacle of human experience might be some kind of heroic role in which we have superpowers and can do whatever we want, flying around the room with a cloak on. But this ego fantasy of being the savior to wretched peasants is being replaced with a simpler goal of humbleness and quiet.
And when all of that stuff goes, stuff that we think is normal and commonplace, all the sense of separation and tension and conflict goes with it. And what is left is just this lovely extremely calm peacefulness, lacking all sense of something being wrong in any way.
Perhaps that's what we are really. Just simple orbs of light floating around calmly and happily, in total surrender and total contentment, with no enemies and no reasons for concern. Just being at peace with God. Free and alive, floating along with not a care in the world.