The "physical world", exists only IN false perception. This is why the body's eyes can see it. The body's eyes are rooted in false perception permanently.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Eyes perceive falsely"

The world is like a veil that hangs in front of the face of Christ to block your vision. It must be seen THROUGH and past, which is what it means to OVERLOOK it, which IS forgiveness.

When you overlook the world, and look to the light beyond all forms and bodies, the light of the real world, you will become UNABLE to see the world. At its peak, christ vision makes the veil become totally invisible, the world is utterly forgotten, and it disappears.

You only become able to see the physical world by LOWERING your "frequency" to one less loving, causing you to enter into illusions and start to allow them into your mind, making them real, causing you to "see them". Without false perception, you CANNOT SEE the false world. And you cannot see BOTH the false world and the true world in their simultaneous entirety.

"The world you see (the false world) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

In order TO see the real world, the TRUE world, you have to make the false world - Earth, FALSE, and not believe it's TRUE, otherwise you are making NO distinction between what is true and false and are CONFUSED (ego). Only by being clear about what is true and what is false, or what is good and what is evil, can you DISCERN with accurate (true) perception what is REAL and what is UNREAL.

The world that exists ONLY in false perception, DOES NOT exist in true perception. In true perception you see the real world, in which there ARE no streets, buildings, houses, shopping malls, street lights, not even night and day, and not even the sun and the earth.

If you want to see the face of christ, you have to LET GO OF this world. You have to access the spiritual eye and use christ vision. And you have to see PAST physical matter, IGNORING IT. Making it unreal to yourself. Recognizing it as false. Realizing it IS just an illusory world, not a real world. It is by recognizing that illusions ARE NOT REAL, that you transition from false to true perception. True perception recognizes what is real and what is illusion.

You cannot forgive the world and keep the world. "A world forgiven cannot last." You can ONLY forgive that which is an ILLUSION, and see through its illusory nature to the truth beyond it. Doing this makes the illusion DISAPPEAR. Forgiving the world UNDOES it, and makes it disappear. You cannot SEE IT when you see the face of Christ. Because then, the world is forgotten entirely.

In the following quotes, Jesus outlines clearly why you CANNOT see BOTH worlds at once, in full. And sight of one REQUIRES that you NOT SEE the other. You cannot therefore keep both heaven and Earth, you have to choose one or the other. And ONLY one of the two is real.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, ****where all the world must disappear**** and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"***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.***"

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and ***everything YOU see is perishable***. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive ***nothing ELSE***. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; ***the world forgotten***, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream"

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

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." ***This world you see MUST BE DENIED***, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ***YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.*** For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. ***The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER.***

***Both are not true***, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"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.'

I used to be of the mindset, like most humans, that certain physical things were bad things, and others were good. I would use whatever form the thing took, to tell me what it meant.

Someone falling over and breaking a leg might be considered a bad thing, and someone laughing perhaps a good thing. Tigers are dangerous, butterflies are harmless. You can eat the good bread but don't eat the mouldy bread.

The sense of whether it's right or wrong was always based on what did the thing look like physically, what shape, what color, what behaviours, what forms. As though some physical things are evil, and other physical things are good.

And of course this elevated some physical things to being somehow more spiritual, acceptable, less guilt-laden than others. And other things to being more evil and bad, forms of sin and deserving of guilt. Crimes versus blessings.

But the truth is that looking at and dividing up the world this way, is based on an egoic false perception. The world is in fact not comprised of positives and negatives. It's a neutral world. It's chaotic yes, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciless, sometimes seems to take on an appearance of loveliness etc. But overall it's basically all the same.

Internally, in our minds, our degree of ego - mental illness - determines what we make of the world. Whether we judge some things are hellish, or some things as heavenly. Whether we think that certain acts are crimes while others are not. How much guilt we think something deserves versus how much special attention.

There is a whole internal landscape of meanings and interpretations, judgements and labels, categorisations and evaluations, which become projected onto the world. But they really have nothing to do with the world.

For example we could say that when bodies seem to die, that's very bad, especially if we are projecting the belief that people are entirely physical bodies. The bodies go and then there is loss and horror and crying and misery. But this is because the ego mind is deciding that such events mean this, based on the form that it takes. As though physical deaths are worse than mild headaches or a slight tiredness.

We're got all this meaning that we've put onto everything, binding it to it, and then believing that it is part of it. But the world doesn't inherently have any of this meaning. Physical deaths are not really that important, or any more significant, than someone going to the toilet or eating some cake. It's just another form of the same illusion.

Eventually we end up with an entire hierarchy of illusions in our minds, with things ranked and evaluated as being better and worse in varying degrees, more or less serious, more or less important, more or less harmful, more or less evil etc. But this is entirely all made up.

For sure, our internal egoic experience of the world is an entire layer of suffering induced by ourselves, which really has no actual connection to what goes on physically. We could be watching the very same scene, and either practically kill ourselves over the seeming horror of the form it takes, or laugh at it as another example of nothingness.

It's in this way that the course says "Earth can reflect heaven or hell." Earth itself is neutral, meaningless, and nothing. Just a dream of a world, a pretend world, a world of forms and changes. It has what seem to be some changes we might classify as positive in some way, and others that are not so great. And overall it's a pretty harsh and occasionally pleasant-seeming place.

But whether or not we choose to experience it in a hell-like manner, or a heaven-like manner, is entirely an internal thing. Whether we are coming from ego and mental illness, or coming from Holy Spirit and sanity, makes the entire contribution to whether or not we "read into" the world meaning one thing or another.

All physical forms are illusions, and the differences they take on is itself the illusion that ... being different makes something inherently not the same as something else. A different shape, color, size, style, movement, whatever, all seeming to suggest this is not part of that, there is a separation. Dogs are not cats and houses are not cars and boats are not airplanes and birds are not fish. That's the illusion, that there are many separate things, when in truth it's all one illusion morphing and changing in irrelevant ways.

A dead body, a living body, a broken body, a sick body, a healthy body, it's all still the same illusion. None of those states are better or worse than the others. Symbolically maybe, we'd prefer to see symbols of life and heath and harmlessness. And we'd prefer to not see symbols of death and destruction and murder. But ultimately it's all just spacetime dream-stuff moulded into different shapes.

So really there's no sort of inherent physical sin, or physical evil, or physical good. It's neutral and meaningless in and of itself. It's just stuff. Stuff designed to obscure the wholeness and shared nature of God, to make it seem like God is not fully anywhere and doesn't exist. What you make to it, use it for, see in it, or project onto it, is an entirely mental exercise.

Use it for ego and the ego will happily tell you you're suffering in hell and life is shit and everyone hates you and you might as well be dead. Use it for Holy Spirit and he'll happily tell you you're not of this world, you're safe in God, nothing in the world can affect you, and none of it really matters.

So is a dead body worse than a living one? Does it actually matter is there are crimes or well behaved individuals? Is it worse to murder than to support? Technically no. That doesn't mean it's justified or the kind of behaviour that would emerge from a loving mind. But in the grand scheme of things, life and death, seeming positives and negatives, truths and untruths, it's all the same stuff just in a different shape. And none of it is real.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

The world of physical form is a projection of the ego thought system. It is based on a belief in separation, which has produced 3D images of physical objects, all of which appear to be different and unique. And every form screams "we are not one" or "I am not the same."

Miracle mindedness, on the other hand, is an opposite state, in which there is no regard for differences, forms or appearances. All differences are completely ignored. All forms are recognized as a deception. All illusions are the same. All seeming levels and degrees and variations and intensities and difficulties and measures are completely irrelevant.

The world of bodies is the world of form. And form takes on many forms, being the forms of the same one error. The single belief in separation has produced a fragmented world, with an entire hierarchy of differences. Big and small and heavy and light and round and square and near and far and every other conceivable difference is represented here. But they are all forms of separation.

Separateness produces form, and form pictures the ways in which the separate parts are separate. One object sticks out more, another is smaller, another a different color. One has extra parts, which the others lack. One moves in a different way, while the others seem more or less alive. And this results in an entire world filled with contrast and conflict, competition and inequality. A world of a trillion truths.

"Illusions are always illusions of differences."

"Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside."

"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation."

"He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth, or any attribute they seem to have"

"You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest."

"the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal."

But miracle mindedness is not deceived by any of this. It is a state of mind of wholeness, not fragmentation. It completely ignores all forms of difference, all measures of value, all sense of degrees and proportions and ratios. It has absolutely no regard for the infinite ways in which separation shows up. It does not buy into the temptation to believe that one thing is NOT another thing, seeing ALL illusions as the same and equal.

To live in a world of form is to live as though surrounded by many different things. Countless objects, each with many parts and sub-parts. Even to the extent of all things being formed from tiny little microscopic parts. All of them different, all of them unique. No two objects are even alike.

And so you believe this is normal and natural. You think this is reality. You accept it as if the form of an object defines its meaning, its true inherent nature. As if apples are apples and oranges are oranges, and they have no thing in common. As if cars are not houses and dogs are not cats and Earth is not Mars and one body is not another body.

But moving toward miracle mindedness must entail the questioning of appearances. The questioning of ALL forms. Every disguise. Every temptation to believe that the form of an object is truth. To recognize that all objects are disguises. They are all projected images from an egoic belief in separation. Not one of them is anything else other than just another form of the same one error, the same one problem, the same one illusion.

This must entail moving away from a dependency on different forms. Believing that life is normal when you use a car key to open the car door, and a house key to open your home. Or that one food is different to another. Or that some kinds of weather are better. Or that some relationships are more special. Or that one piece of clothing is different to another and changes your whole appearance.

This whole "lifestyle" of living in a world of differences, has to go. We can't continue believing that there are in fact many things here. That is the deception. We can't keep believing that we're surrounded with an utter buffet of choices. As if there are even any different choices at all. As if things are really any different.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."

We have to stop being dependent on unique special forms, and particular options, and conditions and styles and themes and preferences. We have to let go all prejudices and all ways that we make some parts of the world special.

We should not believe that one form of sickness is different to another, just based on how it looks or its severity or its size or appearance or how it seemed to arrive. We should not be deceived that a dead body is more dead than a living one. Or that a small wound is more difficult to heal than a gaping hole. Or that there is any such thing as "orders of difficulty."

The illusion of separation has not only taken on many forms, it has resulted in a vast hierarchy. A tremendous amount of different values, different amounts, severities, intensities, difficulties, degrees of problem, sizes of activity, degree of value or credit, amount of importance, etc. We've built our whole lives on the basis of fictional differences, buying into illusion after illusion of how "this is not the same as that".

We have to put all of this aside and recognize that ALL FORMS ARE LIES. Every way that one form says "this is how I am not the same", is a lie. They are ALL doing this. Every object is doing this, claiming to be different somehow. And we buy into it. And now we believe in the differences, and set up a whole egoic thought structure of rules and laws and limits of freedom, about how one thing is more or less something than something else.

Miracle mindedness is the state you reach when all of this is undone. When you are not convinced by ANY forms. When you see clearly and recognize the truth that ALL forms are a temptation to believe something that isn't true. You are not deceived by size or weight or severity or strength or proportions or values or importance or colors or shapes or types or classifications. You just put them ALL into one category - they are all equally unreal, equally the same, ONE ILLUSION, ONE PROBLEM, ONE SOLUTION.

This is why in miracle mindedness there are NO ORDERS. There is no hierarchy, no levels, no separations, no divisions. There is no sense of one thing being different to another. No belief in the deception that a slightly broken body is different to a severely damaged one. Why raising the dead is really on different than curing a headache. Why converting water into wine is effortless. Why walking on water is no more special or different than walking on land.

Once all things are equalized, once all differences no longer deceive, once all problems are recognized as one problem, once all forms are seen to be untrue, and once you stop living in a world of many reactions and many relationships and many separate conditions, your mind becomes WHOLE. It becomes unified and singular and "one with itself." It is not divided or twisted or mis-shapen by differences of any kind.

"You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible."

Such a mind is miraculous because it utterly ignores differences. It can have power over them all because it is not deceived by them. It sees that to change one small illusion is in fact NOT different to changing a "big one".

That to raise the dead is NOT really a bigger feat than curing a headache. And it is precicely this equality and singularity which gives the mind its POWER. A power which is derived from being undivided and singular. You are a singular whole unified one being, presently confronted with a world of many differences and separations, learning to disregard all of these alien separations so that you can be restored to ONE SINGULAR STATE. One mind. One voice. One will. One power. One wholeness. One capability. And this capability has the power to move mountains, just as much as to reconfigure objects, or materialize different body images, or to do anything at all. Because a mind free from differences is a mind free from limits, and there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

The course is moving us away from fragmentation, towards INTEGRATION. Away from a split mind, towards WHOLENESS. Away from many, towards ONE. Away from separation, towards ATONEMENT. Away from hierarchies, towards UNIFORMITY. Away from exclusion, towards INCLUSION. And away from isolation, towards UNION. Away from rejection towards JOINING. Away from selfishness towards SHARING. Away from the eseparation, towards GOD.

"In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"When you maintain that there MUST be order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would WITHHOLD from truth."

"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY"

"there is no order of difficulty in healing."

"Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless."

"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient."

"This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same."

"To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES."

"Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other."

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?"

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same."

"WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness."

"He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them."

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

"As you survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any thought of hierarchy among them. "

"The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. The body's eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, so only the mind is responsible for seeing."

"Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."

"It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

I used to strongly believe that when a body dies, that is "death". And this is a bad thing. It's something to avoid at all costs. Because the body has to be kept in its "alive" state for as long as possible. And that's based on the belief that a valuable real person IS a body and the body's end IS the end of them, and a great loss to be avoided.

But for all the fighting against death and wishing it wouldn't happen, it happened. And I was so done with fighting against it that I pretty much surrendered and let it happen. This was a good thing actually. Actually as I look back and see all the efforts I made to fight against it, I see now that the whole situation was designed to exhaust my attempt to use "fear of death" as a way to reinforce sickness and separation.

What this giving-up did was it uprooted my belief that death is bad, especially given that when the person died they were liberated from a lot of limitations and suffering. For them it was actually quite a helpful thing.

In fact it was so good for them to be out of the body and back in a state of freedom and happiness, that it made the whole idea of keeping the body going seem nonsense. And with that, the whole idea of defending the body against death seemed nonsense.

Before I knew it, my whole attitude about death being the opposite of life was being broken down. Especially when my wife came visiting from the other side several times, in ways that were unavoidable proof that she still existed.

This in turn demonstrated strongly that physical death is not really death, because even if the person's body was dead the person was not. Eternal life carries on. So the death of the body is meaningless. As Jesus says:

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

So there I was faced with the pretty strong fact of the illusion of physical death, which was in fact a total lie, contrasted strongly against the ongoing presence and life of my partner. And this couldn't help but uproot and bring into serious question the idea that physical death and physical life mean anything different at all.

In fact, the way I see it now, I'm recognizing more and more that the whole world is an illusion. None of it has any meaning. It is not right or wrong, good or bad. It is not life, and it is not death. As Jesus states:

"There is no life outside of heaven" ... " Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

The body, the world, it is neutral. It is not alive, and it is not dead. It does not have any inherent meaning at all. We've given it all the meaning it has. We've placed labels on it to pick out parts and separate things off and say ... this thing is good, this thing is bad, keep more of this, avoid more of that.

Death is relegated to being seen as the label we give to things that symbolise death, like dead bodies, dead leaves, decay and rot etc. Life is a label reserved for the things that move around, that seem to grow and be born and new. But THAT is precisely what the illusion of the world is, and why the world is an illusion.

The world is an illusion that certain states of matter are different to other states, that certain bodies are more alive than others, that certain forms are more dead than others, that there is hierarchy in the illusions and separate categories for things. That is all illusion. It is all one thing. One big illusion.

It's like a giant smokescreen which sometimes takes on the form of what looks like life, and sometimes it takes on the form of what looks like death, but it is never really either of those things. It is nothing. As Jesus states:

"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."

Living moving bodies are not life. Stationary decaying bodies are not death. We made up these labels for aspects of one thing that seems like two things. The illusion that it is two things is the problem here. We believe that the form that things takes tells us what it means. That is the bullshit lie. Nothing here means anything. "Nothing I see means anything."

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

Our task then is to learn to stop separating off some parts of the world and giving it special labels, which are in opposition to the labels we give to other parts. Pitting these labelled parts against each other and making them more SEPARATE, is the problem. All this does is keep the ego and the separation from God going.

War and peace in the world, at the world level, are not different. They are two sides of the same coin. One is not better than the other. They are both meaningless. Activity or lack of activity is the same thing.

This means that it actually does not matter if bodies are living or dying because they are not really living or dying. A body in one form is no different than in another. Being deceived or horrified by the appearance of a body in a disabled or broken or damaged form is entirely a temptation of the ego to regard some parts of this world as worse than others. Death is not worse than life, and life is not better than death. They are equally nothing here. One dream of illusions pretending to show up as many separate things.

Our entire shift is a transition away from believing that the world - or our mind - is split up into many compartments in which some compartments are different and better or worse than others .... to a state of wholeness in which there is only one truth that applies to all of them. It is a shift away from a separate victim and victimiser, to a total ownership of all power and causation. A shift away from being a mere character in a dream, to being the one who dreams the entire dream environment and all things that happen to all parts of it at once.

The great illusion and deception of the world is that the form of life is preferable to the form of death. Or that one is better, or one is more alive, or one is more dead, or one is more to be avoided. If you play that game you will be lost and you will fear death and think that you live, while not really living. Living in a belief that death is a specific separate thing is a belief in not living at all. To really live you must claim eternal life, in which there are no such shiftings and changes and transitions between appearances.

All beliefs in how different parts of the world are different, how they are not alike, how they are conflicted and at war, how some are better than others, how some are more holy or more evil, more wanted or more unwanted, all of these inequalities have to be completely ironed out. The whole world has to be regarded as equally one thing, with no separate truths or multiple levels or categories or labels. All of it is nothing. And none of it is of God.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

Here is the main problem we all face day after day. The body makes an ILLUSORY WORLD seem real. The world is an illusion of a world, a picture of crucifixion, a vision of hell, a depiction of total lies, holding not one single shred of truth and is designed to tempt you believe that illusions of death are reality.

The BODY, was INTENTIONALLY MADE, in order to sense this world and to try to make the world SEEM real - to seem to really EXIST. It does this through what we call senses, sensory inputs, detection, perception, ways of discerning that not only is something REALLY THERE, but it's DOING STUFF, it's changing, it's shifting, there are sensations being produced, you can touch it and smell it and see it, and all this turns into EVIDENCE trying to testify that THE WORLD EXISTS.

EVERYTHING THE BODY SENSES IS A LIE!

The body is designed to DECEIVE you. Its senses are designed NOT to be aware of reality. It's eyes are designed to be BLOCKED by forms of sin/error/matter so that you do NOT see. It's ears pick up on fake sound vibrations. You touch the surface of nothing with your fingers and believe it's a real object. It's a massive deception.

This is a pretty major issue for us because we're strapped into these bodies. We're being presented with this holographic virtual world all around us, showing us pictures of death, suffering, sickness and hell, a world where everything is fundamentally imperfect and impermanent. And then we're forced through the body's sensory inputs to PICK UP ON "what's there" and to relay that as messages to our mind. Our mind sees these messages and now has a choice, either you BELIEVE THEM, or to recognize them as UNREAL.

When your mind believes what the body senses, which includes ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE, any notion that "something is happening", any sound or smell or taste, any appearance of any body doing anything anywhere in any way, you are FALLING FOR TEMPTATION. You are being deceived by illusions and have entered into the ego. And that means your spiritual eye is not open, you're not having christ vision, and are unconscious.

The problem is, you're going to remain strapped into the body UNTIL you can COMPLETELY 100% transcend the world, and transcend and NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING the body detects. And yet the body is going to keep bombarding your mind with all of its sensory inputs. Pictures of crucifixion, bodies writhing in pain, wars waging, fights breaking out, people crying etc.

The body is going to just keep picking up and sensing this stuff and broadcasting it to your mind. So what is your mind going to do about this? How do you get out of hell? How do you transition from being DECEIVED by everything the body picks up on, to being NOT deceived?

This is where changing our beliefs comes in. And this is where forgiveness comes in. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". Which means to forgive the entire world you must overlook it, not see it, must learn to RECOGNIZE that it IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT BELIEVE IT. Believing the body's sensory impressions of the world are real is FALSE perception. Believing illusions are reality is FALSE perception. To reach true perception you must come to RECOGNIZE and believe, that everything the body picks up on as "out there" or "happening" IS NOT TRUE AND NOT REAL. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AND DOES NOT EXIST!

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED." It has not even happened. The events were ILLUSIONS! What your body showed you WAS A LIE! This is profound because it means literally we have to learn to open the spiritual eye which looks with TRUTH (holy spirit) and clearly recognizes what this world IS (a lie), rather than believing in it. A forgiven world is a NOT BELIEVED world. A forgiven world is a FALSE world. And this means weakening investment in physical senses.

"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."

So this is our issue. We are using a body which is picking up on a world of sin and hell which is not real, and which tries to tell us "ITS REALLY THERE". "It exists". Add this is what the body was DESIGNED TO DO. And it was designed to never do anything else. Which means it CAN ONLY LIE to you. So you have to learn how to STOP BELIEVING IT. You must learn to recognize ALL body signals are UNREAL and UNTRUE. Add that means the entire world you're in, everything you see, is NOT REAL.

It's by learning to recognize illusions as illusions, sensory inputs as FALSE, and trusting only the spiritual eye of truth and light, that you escape from the dream of hell and wake up to reality.

"Nothing you see means anything."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"To sense is not to know."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"Theirs (body's eyes) is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing."

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"God's teachers choose to look **on dreams** a while (the world). It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. **The dream says otherwise**, but who would put his faith in dreams once ****they are recognized for what they are****?

Awareness of dreaming (recognition that it IS a dream not a reality) is the real function of God's teachers. ****They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. (body visions) Yet they are not deceived by what they see.**** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity (reality, truth) alone is not a thing of dreams (not of or in this world). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream*** (behind the illusory world), beyond all **seeming** (appearances, illusions) and yet surely theirs."

"The ***body’s eyes will continue to see differences.*** (for a teacher of God who is still in a body using it temporarily alongside christ vision) 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed ****will no longer acknowledge them.**** 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, ****and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before.**** 4 ******But the *healed mind* will put them all in one category; they are unreal.******

5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world*** (all body sensors inputs including everything you see - you SORT OUT these messages in your mind). 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth. (mind recognizes the world is an illusion, because it sees WITH truth, which reveals what is true and what is not - the world is not)"

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

The world in which we think we live, is nothing but a dream. But we're so used to being in it, that we refer to it as real. We think it has real buildings, real people, real cars and real trees. We think we are eating real food, having real sickness, working at real jobs, and that bodies really die.

To align ourselves with the truth, however, we need to properly identify what this world is. This world is UNREAL. It's a hallucinated dream happening in the mind of someone who doesn't want to accept reality. Reality is the Kingdom of God, beyond space and time. The contents of this world are false.

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"And what you seem to WAKE to, is but another FORM of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

Jesus is pretty blatant here, saying that even when you wake up from sleeping at night, you are STILL dreaming. This world which you think is real and is your real life, is STILL a dream. It has the same content because it's made of the same illusions, it just differs in its forms. It's so elaborate, so detailed, so seemingly separate, and so seemingly huge, that you don't suspect it's not even real.

We should properly identify then that this world IS a dream, it is UNREAL, and it is FALSE. It has no truth, because its contents are invalid. It is a false world because it opposes heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." It is not created by God, so it can't really exist. It's more like a strange realm of illusions and dreams, images and fantasies, whisps of deceptive smoke and mirrors, in which figures come and go as if by magic.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

Mind went into a sleep state, it dreamed of time (and space), it made up events which don't really exist anywhere, with consequences that have no real effect, with changes that are completely substanceless, and which will merely disappear into nothingness when we wake up to reality.

This means that, everything in this world is NOT a "real" anything. So all the things we think are real, need to be re-labelled as not real. For example, sickness is not REAL sickness. I don't mean that a person is pretending to be sick, in the context that there IS a real sickness that they're mimicking. But that ALL "actual" sickness is NOT real.

Cancer is not real cancer, it's fake cancer. Brain damage is not real brain damage, because "the body is a dream." Broken limbs are not real breaks, because the limbs are fictional. The graveyards are all fake and all the funerals are meaningless. Nothing is ever really dying because it can't, it just changes from one illusion to another, and it's just a neutral nothingness. Every kind of sickness or suffering is an illusion and NOT A REAL ONE. And there is no counterpart as a REAL sickness or suffering of any kind.

None of these things can exist in reality. In heaven there is no sickness or suffering, no attack or death, nothing goes wrong, there are no problems, there's no job to work at or house to maintain, there's no stores to buy crap at or streets for cars that break down. There isn't even a real sun.

"The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss."

So in this world, when you look at anything, you should really be recognizing that it is a DREAM OF something. A sick broken body is not a REAL sick broken body, it's a fake body pretending to be sick. A dead body is not a REALLY dead body, it's a DREAM IMAGE of a dead body pretending to look like it's dead. It's no different than a living one because they're both totally fake. Their forms different but they don't really mean anything different.

This also why there is really no death, because all of these things which we think "die" are just dreams. Reality cannot die because it cannot be threatened. They're figments of the mind. They're just images and holograms floating around in a fictional environment. This is why ACIM also teaches that the body cannot really die, OR live, because it is nothing. It is meaningless.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"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. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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 we need to learn as teachers of God, is to recognize and be aware that we're literally hanging out inside a giant DREAM right now. This world ISN'T real. Spacetime isn't real. Physical matter isn't real. Objects and bodies aren't real. Your body isn't a REAL body. There are no such things as real bodies. Your sickness isn't a REAL sickness. There is no such thing as a real sickness. Your sins aren't real either, because there is no such thing as REAL sin.

It's a complete reframing of this whole "reality", this whole experiential realm of mind or system of thought. To realize that since it is opposite to reality, it is UNreality, and is just a dream. We try to GIVE it reality to MAKE it real, but we only do this BECAUSE it's not real. We want to believe in it and value it, only because it HAS no value of its own. It's a meaningless world, made of nothing, an illusion of nothing appearing to be something. A tiny mad idea.

To recognize the world for what it IS, you have to categorize its ENTIRE CONTENTS as unreal. Everything the body can see with its physical sight has to be recognized as NOT REAL, and NOT TRUE, and NOT ACTUAL.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. ****But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal.**** This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

So we should get our mind into the habit of regard the things of this world as DREAMS. As fiction. Properly labelling them as artificial fake things. If your partner has a physical sickness in their body, they DO NOT have a REAL sickness in a REAL body. It's an illusion of sickness in an illusory body.

You wake up in the morning and brush your dream teeth and eat your dream breakfast and drive to your dream job, you do your dream work and drive your dream car home and eat your dream supper. Then you go to dream sleep in your dream bed and pretend to dream within a dream.

It's precisely BY recognizing that a sick body does not have a REAL sickness, that all power is stripped from the sickness and it is recognized as nothing. This is part of the healing approach of a miracle worker. When sickness is realized to be FICTION, it holds no weight and has no power and is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear" and what is recognized as nothing must vanish. You weaken and withdraw power from the sickness by regarding it as NOT REAL SICKNESS. Real sickness does not exist anywhere, just the illusion of sickness pretending to be sickness. It is empty.

"Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone. YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No OTHER cause it has, nor ever will."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life."

I should be focusing on how we are all the same, deep down, all one, all perfect. But at the moment I'm finding it quite useful to look at our differences in a more accepting way.

Mainly because we actually have a lot of faulty beliefs surrounding differences - different bodies and personalities - which need to be "cleaned up".

In particular, in our denial of God we have attempted to endow the physical world with all kinds of properties of God. Such as that physical things are perfect, or equal, or eternal, or permanent, or reality, or the truth, or one etc.

For example, in this world, we've given everything all the meaning it has, because it's really a meaningless world. So we have looked at objects and have decided that some objects are sort of similar in some ways - vague ways, and have categorised them.

We've given the categories labels, such as based on materials, or genders, or hair colors, or whatever. All kinds of boxes which are made up. But in truth, on the physical level, NOTHING is exactly alike, nothing is purely equal, nothing is entirely identical.

Even atoms of the same material like gold or silver are not the same. Their subatomic particles are all over the place, their quantum states are fluctuating in different positions, the energy fields and forces are bouncing all over the place. When you get down to it, not a single speck of this world is TRULY identical to any other. Because it is a world of separation, differences and fundamental inequality.

So then that tells us that all these categories and labels we've made up are artificial, and often they serve to hurt people. We keep trying to squeeze everyone into a cookie-cutter box. So now we have all kinds of things like peer pressures and social pressures to fit into boxes. You have to label yourself to 'fit in'.

You have to be a this or a that, you're not allowed or supposed to do this or that, plus there is a huge expectation that we're "all humans" and therefore there is a "standard normal human" and we're all supposed to be like that. And if you're not, there's judgement and hate and insecurities.

So at the very least, if we TRULY acknowledge that all physical things ARE DIFFERENT in every way, including personalities, we might then start to let ourselves off the hook trying to be things that we can't be, to fit into boxes that we don't quite fit into at the physical or personality level.

For example there's a huge myth that everyone is the same. Sameness is a property of God, not a property of matter. Nothing physical is the same. Personalities are not the same. Men are not the same as women. Races and genders and sexualities are not the same. Nothing is the same here.

That means that although humans might be sort of similar in some major ways, sometimes, fundamentally the human being is TOTALLY UNIQUE in every instance. We are ALL INCOMPATIBLE on the physical and personality level in at least some if not a lot of areas. We are ALL fundamentally at war and contradictory, and your best bet usually is to find people who are "the least incompatible" - your besties and special chosen ones.

When you look at that, it's really surprising that anyone can communicate at all, that anyone ever has any common ground, that anyone can stay at peace, and that anyone can have a relationship. When it's based on the body and the personality, where people are identified with and AS those things, we're constantly all stepping on each other's toes. And we must not deny this. We're like square pegs going into round holes all the time, and the world is a minefield of crazy-shaped holes.

If we want to find TRUE equality and true communion and true relationship with anyone, we have to find it above and beyond the level of the physical and of the personality. We have to be operating at the mind level, and beyond. This is what holy relationships are for, with the goal of transcending the superficiality and incompatibilities of the human being - the flesh and bones and its personality traits.

This is also FUNDAMENTAL TO FORGIVENESS, in which we want to find a way to unconditionally love IN SPITE OF differences, in spite of everyone having clunky incompatible bodies, in spite of everyone's personalities rubbing each other the wrong way day and night, in spite of disagreement and conflict and contradiction. To see each other as spiritually equal in Christ.

And perhaps instead of trying to force people to get along, at the physical or personality levels, it would be healthier to acknowledge WE ARE NOT THE SAME on these levels. Perhaps we should be allowing each other to be different on these levels, because we ARE. And expecting people to BE LIKE US AT THIS LEVEL, is unhealthy.

It's indeed fun and wonderful when two or more individuals come together and do share what appear to be superficial "common grounds", can relate, can communicate, can share, can experience something similar together, go through things together, share a common history etc, all of those senses of being on the same page, of being equals and equally important etc. Even though most of this is an illusion of sameness.

But at the physical and personality level this is pretty much never perfect or complete. Even the best marriages have pitfalls and areas where the couple annoys each other. This is not "just you", it is INHERENT to the SYSTEM of space and time. It's part of the laws of physics. All physical things are incompatible at least some of the time, and nothing is ever fully compatible on this level.

Sometimes we might develop an artificial idea that we are all supposed to "love each other" ON this level, as in... gloss over our differences, denying that we have preferences, avoiding the fact that sometimes we like different things, and trying to produce a sort of artificial sense of relationship. A relationship of control and expectation, of demands and dependencies, of special love and special hate, where we try to force our differences to be not different.

This very much happens in special relationships where the two try to force each other to be like themselves, requiring sacrifices and compromises and self repression. This isn't really healthy. People are SO different, sometimes in very dramatic ways.

We can't expect everyone to be on the same page, interested in the same things, having the same values, same beliefs and all this, ticking boxes in every department. We are all kind of mutants at the physical and personality level, sort of distorted disfigured beings, special and lacking, clashing and incomplete.

What would be healthy would be to sort of - give unto caesar what is ceasars - allowing our physical and personality differences to BE different, because they are. ... while giving unto God what is God's - allowing our SOULS and MINDS to join in oneness, transcendent of the physical and personality conflicts.

As the course says, even advanced teachers of God have much the same physical appearance and superficial personalities they had before they even started the course. They may operate their bodies with greater love and gentleness, they might smile and be more relaxed, and have clearer minds, but their physicality and personality traits largely remain the same. Teachers of God still go to the toilet as needed.

We should stop this constant straightjacketing of trying to force everyone to fucking "get along" all the time at the physical and personality levels, and make it okay to NOT WANT TO. This is a form of level confusion otherwise. NO ONE is equal or alike at this level. But we should also focus on FINDING ways to recognize our sameness, our unity, our oneness, AT the level where it is actually possible - in the mind and soul.

This requires FORGIVENESS, precisely because the physical/personality level is somewhat "locked into a war", so has to be overlooked, transcended, given a wide berth, and not used against each other. Physical and personality traits have to be not "held against" people. Forgiveness tries to look PAST the physical and personality levels to find common psychological and spiritual ground, instead of artificially forced forms of fake relationship.

Through forgiveness - rising above the LIMITS of the physical and the personality/human levels, we can move beyond the battlefield, beyond the warzone, beyond the level at which there IS conflict and where conflict CANNOT be resolved except through pretence and sacrifice and discomfort.

People do not really want to be forced to "go along with" things they do not feel compatible with. To do things that clash with their body types, their nervous systems, their brain conditions. People don't want to be forced to experience everything the same, go everywhere, do everything others want to do.

We are NOT compatible beings at this level. We Are compatible beings mentally and spiritually, beyond the fake ego persona and the body and everything that comes with it. One in mind and soul, different in personality and flesh.

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct." UrM5A1

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means." UrT3C20

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

A selection of quotes (with mostly my emphasis) talking about how this world ends and how you move beyond it to Heaven...

"Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and TIME HAS DISAPPEARED, taking PERCEPTION with it as it goes, and leaving BUTthe Truth to be Itself. That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God."

"And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and COMES TO TAKE US HOME, reminding us of our Identity Which our forgiveness has restored to us."

"You dwell NOT HERE, BUT IN ETERNITY. You TRAVEL BUT IN DREAMS, while safe at home."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. GONE IS PERCEPTION, false and true alike. GONE IS FORGIVENESS, for its task is done. And GONE ARE BODIES s in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the LAST PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT A PURPOSE AND WITHOUT A CAUSE. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, NO WALLS, NO BODIES, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the BODY is still seen, but NOT exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark CANNOT BE LONG LIMITED TO LITTLENESS. Once you have crossed the bridge, the VALUE OF THE BODY IS SO DIMINISHED in YOUR sight, that you will see no need at all to MAGNIFY it. For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER there."

"The WORLD WILL END when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. IN BLESSING IT DEPARTS, for it will not end as it began."

"The WORLD WILL END when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment.The WORLD WILL END with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, THE WORLD IS OVER. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely CEASE to seem to be."

"And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And, with this final blessing of God's Son UPON HIMSELF, the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

The STARS WILL DISAPPEAR IN LIGHT, and the SUN, which opened up the world to beauty, WILL VANISH. PERCEPTION WILL BE MEANINGLESS, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will HAVE NO FUNCTION. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The PERCEPTION OF THE REAL WORLD WILL BE SO SHORT, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

"From the FORGIVEN WORLD, the Son of God is LIFTED easily TO HIS HOME. And THERE he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

"Even SALVATION WILL BECOME A DREAM, and VANISH from his mind. For SALVATION IS THE END OF DREAMS, and, with the CLOSING OF THE DREAM, will have NO MEANING. Who, AWAKE IN HEAVEN, COULD DREAM that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"BEYOND THE BODY, BEYOND THE SUN AND STARS, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE, and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.

The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it no longer is contained at all. The light expands and covers everything (not earth), extending to infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside. For there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the VISION of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within you, and joined to all of it as surely as all is joined to you.

Accept the vision that can show you this, AND NOT THE BODY."

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, WHERE ALL THE WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and ITS EFFECTS HAVE GONE AS WELL."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his MISCREATIONS CAN DISAPPEAR in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because IT IS A VISUAL MISPERCEPTION. "

"No one remains in HELL, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. 2 You will find Heaven. 3 Everything you seek but this WILL FALL AWAY. 4 Yet not because it has been taken from you. 5 It will go because you DO NOT WANT IT. 6 You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness."

"Heaven remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to this STRANGE WORLD YOU MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did NOT MAKE two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH THE OTHER'S SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

"Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. 2 Angels light the way, so that all DARKNESS VANISHES, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. (not earth) 3 A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light (heaven) reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in DREAMS."

"He offers thanks to you as well as him for you arose with him when he began to save the world. And you will be with him when TIME IS OVER AND NO TRACE REMAINS OF DREAMS of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody. For in its place the hymn to God is heard a little while. And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but to return to the ETERNAL FORMLESSNESS of God."

"LIKE ALL THINGS IN THE WORLD, ITS MEANING IS TEMPORARY AND WILL FADE INTO THE NOTHINGNESS FROM WHICH IT CAME when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons IT IS AN ILLUSION, for in REALITY there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; ***ANOTHER ILLUSION*** that replaces the first, SO BOTH CAN FINALLY DISAPPEAR. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is NOTHING MORE THAN THAT?

It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that THE WORLD HAS NOTHING TO GIVE. What can the sacrifice of NOTHING mean?"

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

"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand. "

"When the light comes, and you have said, "God's Will is mine," you will see such beauty that you will KNOW it is not of you. Out of your joy, you will create beauty in His Name, for YOUR joy could no more be contained than His. THE BLEAK LITTLE WORLD WILL VANISH INTO NOTHINGNESS, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will LEAP INTO HEAVEN and into the presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your hearts are not ready. But I CAN tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for YOU, and what He wills for you IS yours. "

"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.

The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"THE WORLD STANDS LIKE A BLOCK before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as NOTHING MORE THAN JUST A FRAGILE VEIL, SO EASILY DISPELLED that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for ONLY WHAT IT IS. And now it CANNOT FAIL TO DISAPPEAR, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant IS THE WORLD FORGOT, with TIME FOREVER ENDED AS THE WORLD SPINS INTO THE NOTHINGNESS FROM WHICH IT CAME."

"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, OUT OF ILLUSIONS INTO HOLINESS; OUT OF THE WORLD AND INTO ETERNITY; out of all fear and given back to love."

"Real choice is no illusion. BUT THE WORLD HAS NONE TO OFFER. All its roads but lead to DISAPPOINTMENT, NOTHINGNESS AND DEATH. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. THE WORLD WAS MADE SO THAT PROBLEMS COULD NOT BE ESCAPED. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes. "

"There is nothing you CAN hold against REALITY. All that must be forgiven are the ILLUSIONS you have held against your brothers. Their reality HAS no past, and ONLY illusions can BE forgiven. God holds nothing against ANYONE, for He is INCAPABLE of ILLUSIONS of ANY kind. Release your brothers from the slavery of THEIR illusions, by forgiving them for the illusions which YOU perceive in them. Thus will you learn that YOU have been forgiven, for it is YOU who offered THEM illusions. In the holy instant, this is done for you IN TIME, to bring to you the true condition of Heaven."

(in true perception) "The BODY'S EYES WILL CONTINUE TO SEE DIFFERENCES. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will NO LONGER ACKNOWLEDGE THEM. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the BODY'S EYES WILL REPORT THEIR CHANGED APPEARANCES AS BEFORE. 4 But the healed mind will put them ALL IN ONE CATEGORY; ***THEY ARE UNREAL*** 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives FROM WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE OUTSIDE WORLD. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as REALITY IS WHOLLY REAL, APART FROM SIZE AND SHAPE AND TIME AND PLACE—FOR DIFFERENCES CANNOT EXIST WITHIN IT—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all ILLUSIONS is truth."

WORLD IS STILL HELL EVEN WITH FORGIVING PERCEPTION - YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE IT AS A FORGIVEN ILLUSION OF HELL - AND LOOK PAST IT TO HEAVEN.

In the following statements, Jesus talks of how even in a state of true perception, or christ vision, this world is still seen as containing hellish things happening. Not that they are regarded as real, and in fact they are dismissed as unreal. But this doesn’t mean things aren’t still going wrong in the world. There are still sick bodies seen, there is still suffering and death happening, bodies are still attacking each other, murders are still happening.

The point is, just because you forgive the world it doesn’t mean it turns into a place where nothing bad happens. Nor do you become blind to people’s suffering. The important thing isn’t whether or not the world has "improved" in its events and happenings and problems, the important thing is realizing NONE OF IT IS REAL. Those who are expecting to see "heaven on earth" with everyone getting along, are in for a long wait. True perception and forgiveness cannot show you that. Perception is an effect, not a cause.

We will learn to recognize this world is an illusion. We will learn to disregard what seems to be happening in the world. We won’t dress it up in wishful thinking that everyone suddenly is getting along just because you are waking up. True perception is accurate perception, not rose colored glasses. The world, Earth, always remains as it is. Shit still happens in it. People don’t suddenly all start loving each other. Earth, a world of forms of error, cannot be but hell. It is illusion, a dream of everything going wrong.

Your corrected mind must OVERLOOK this world. Forgiveness means not believing this world is really happening. The forms in the world are still going to be in conflict, competition and attack. You can’t stop that. But you CAN come to see that it is NOT TRUE. Everything the body’s eyes report is a lie. Your mind has to learn to disregard these images. To not believe them. To not see the sin and think it real. A forgiven world, however, cannot last, because forgiveness UNDOES IT.

You have to look PAST the world of sin with forgiving eyes and not see "real sin" in it. You must see it as meaning innocence instead. But this DOES NOT stop it from having totally shit things happening in it. You will still see sickness and death, but reinterpret it as JUST A DREAM. Not real. Not heaven. Nothing. At the same time, you are to look PAST IT, through it practically ignoring it, to a LIGHT which is FAR BEYOND IT.

The light is where Heaven is. The light is where love is. It is BEYOND the illusory veil of matter that coves your sight. Your task here is to SEE THE WORLD LESS, and SEE HEAVEN MORE. To tune OUT of the world, and tune INTO Heaven. The aim is to no longer see the world AT ALL, and to ONLY see Heaven. You cannot see both worlds. Sight of one denies the other. More Heaven, less world.

Eventually the world disappears into the nothingness from which it came. All that remains is Heaven, and Earth has left no trace at all in its going. It was always just a dream, always an illusion. It could never be heaven. There is no world. Only Heaven is real. The world is barely even a thin veil across your sight as you look BEYOND it to the face of Christ. It may well seem forgiven and lovely but it is not the direction of your FOCUS. Your eyes are on Heaven, not on the world, and that is why you OVERLOOK it, and that is why you give it NO REALITY, and that is why it looks devoid of attack. That "holy world" is essentially NO WORLD. Only God’s creation has reality.

In summary, corrected perception/Christ Vision shows you:

1) the physical world is a thin veil illusion regarded as UNREAL and ILLUSORY, which appears to be a "beautiful illusion", a forgiven world that is, nevertheless, FAKE. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the forgiven world IS 100% DREAM ILLUSION, and so once the healed mind recognizes it, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot keep the world AND SEE IT CORRECTLY. You cannot keep the world AND BE FORGIVING. You cannot keep the world and SEE GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

2) sight of something BEYOND the image of the world, beyond forms and bodies and worlds, a light of Christ. The face of Christ, which shines BEHIND the appearance of physical matter. Seen shining behind the transparent veil. Sight of THAT is what makes you happy. It is because you are looking PAST the illusory world TO reality - a world of light - that you are at peace. Not because the world itself becomes heaven. If you believe what the body keeps showing you, you will NOT SEE the face of Christ. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one (Earth) denies the other (Heaven). You have to choose one. Heaven is your home. It is the only sane choice. Earth is nothing, isn’t real, and doesn’t exist.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"...When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. 8 And so it is with healing. 9 The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.

M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

"It is impossible to see two worlds." (And there are two)

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. 5 Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 6 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. 7 If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen . 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. "

"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. 2 Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. 3 It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. 4 Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. 5 What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. 6 The definition of reality is God's, not yours. 7 He created it, and He knows what it is. 8 You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion."

"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer."

"Son of God, be not content with nothing! 2 What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. 3 God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. 4 You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. 5 Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. 6 Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. 7 You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. 8 Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. 9 By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. 10 But it is not there . 11 And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself."

"The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. 2 Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. 3 Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. 4 And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. 5 Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. "

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? 8 He is invisible in such a world. 9 Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. 10 Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes."

"Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. "

"The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there."

"Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality."

"Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. 6 The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. 7 Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see."

The body does not really do a whole lot. It is an instrument. It cannot really live without you as a host. It doesn't really have a mind of its own, or a will, or power, or causality. It cannot really create anything or make anything happen. It's a medium, a tool, a device, which is to be used. You can pick it up and put it down. Without you it would do nothing.

"A body cannot stay without illusions"

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK."

"the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms." "the body cannot be healed by itself."

The eyes are neutral. As you look around the room the body just reports what's there. It is like you have a video feed coming into you through your face. The eyes just pick up the light signals and pass them on. The eyes themselves are not aware of what they are looking at. They don't judge or decide anything about what they detect, and they don't even "see" what they are picking up because they have no awareness - making them blind. They just faithfully report on what's outside. They are sensors, like a detector, or a scanner.

As you look at different things, or rather, use the body's sensors to detect what is supposedly out there, there is no judgement, there is no meaning, there is no partitioning, there is no accusation, there is only a completely neutral feed of images being transferred. Your eyes are like a camera. They just bring in the data, they don't have any opinion about it at all. It isn't until the mind looks at the data that we start to enter into deciding what something means, our attitude about it and our relationship to it.

It's the mind that "looks at" what the body "looks at". There are therefore two steps in seeing the world. The body sees it first and passes on what it sees. Then the mind looks at the "printout" of what the body has seen. The mind isn't actually looking directly at the world out there. It's looking at the recorded images which have come in through the video stream, through the pipeline of the optic nerves, and which have travelled to the place in the brain where the mind is "attached". And as though on a kind of internal screen, the mind is now looking at the screen on which these images are reconstructed.

This all happens quite effortlessly so it is very easy to be deceived. The body is so non-interfering with sight, unless perhaps the eyeballs or vision apparatus is damaged, that you easily forget that the eyes are even there. This sets up a kind of deception, in which it's very easy to just think that you are looking directly and personally at the physical world. But you in fact are not. You are looking at images which are sent in to you via external sensors on the body's surface, and you are sitting there in the mind, beyond the brain, reading the transmitted images. But you think hey, I am looking at the actual world. No, you're looking at images once removed.

The same happens with sound. The ears do not discriminate as to what they hear. They just hear everything they can. They are like microphones. They pick up and sense the sound vibrations and translate it into a signal, which is sent to the brain, and then it is reconstructed into "sound". And then, the mind listens to the reconstruction, and thinks that it now hears the world. It's almost like the body is a long distance telephone, and it's picking up audio from a world far away, sending the sound along a wire, and now you're at the other end listening in. You're not really out there, in the environment where the sound is picked up, you are removed from it.

All the other body senses have the same properties. They just detect changes and differences and report them to you. You then get to interpret or give meaning to them. Upon receiving the signals your mind could have decided that all the things experienced are absolutely real. That they really exist. As though, because your body sees a car, that there really is a car there. Or because your hands touch the car, that there really is a car there. Or that because you hear the car, the car really must exist. But it's not the body that decides this, nor the brain. It's your mind, on the receiving end of transmissions. It is the mind that decided what it is FOR, or how it USES it.

It is optional, whether you believe in what the body is telling you. It is just a sensory device. In fact, Jesus says in ACIM that the body is not really there to know anything, it is only there to sense. "To sense is not to know." Which means that sensing the world or using physical perception to look at it, is not an act of knowing. It doesn't mean that you know the thing is really out there. It means that your sensors are detecting something and telling you something. And they might be lying.

The problem is, is that the body can lie. Because here you have a physical instrument for detecting things, which can report back that something exists, within the same realm that the body itself inhabits. Which means that the body can also sense itself, can look at and hear and smell and touch itself, and can report back that the body "is really there". But this cannot in any way be reliable. The body is now justifying its own existence and trying to prove itself.

The body can easily lie to you. To rely on an instrument to tell you what really exists, given that the very same instrument is reporting upon its own existence, completely invalidates everything it tells you. It is no longer impartial or neutral, if it is telling you that its own existence has been detected by its own sensors. It is completely biased, then, because it is ALWAYS telling you that physicality is true and real, even if it is not. It is ALWAYS reporting that things exist even if they don't. And if it is going to tell you to trust it when it tells you that its own existence is real, based on its own senses, this is heavily tainted information.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is."

What it comes down to is that your mind is sensing a world using an instrument, whereby the signals you receive and are aware of are once removed from the thing you are sensing. But if you buy into them and forget you are using an instrument, you will act as if it is YOU who is doing the sensing, and thus confuse yourself with the body. This is body identification. It's the failure to recognize that the body is a device for sensing, and is not your self. Since the senses themselves seem "transparent" and have no opinion, and since they report what's there all the time, it's easy to forget that you are even using sensory equipment, and instead believe that you ARE the senses. That the body is YOU who is picking up on the world, and YOU who sees it and hears it. It seems so effortless that you forget you even are using senses, which is extremely deceptive.

The mind is not required to believe anything that the body tells it. When it receives neutral images of a world, it can decide what to do with that image. It can dissect it, it can give meaning to it, it can believe in it, it can choose to react to it, it can remain detached from it, it can judge and condemn and attack it, it can love it, it can ignore it, whatever. But we have to realize that since the senses themselves are effectively neutral, it is US who is giving everything we sense all the meaning that it has. It is US who decides whether you believe what we see, whether it is real, and what truth it holds.

"You have given everything all the meaning it has for you." "The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions."

So the mind is receiving signals from the outside world, through the body sensors, and gets to decide what to make of them. What meaning they have. All such images are illusions because the world itself is an illusion, and all sensory inputs are actually false, because the world they are reporting on isn't real. The eyes are in fact unable to really see actual reality. They are strapped into a virtual reality headset and are blinded to see only the inside of a tiny box. The body is in fact an interpreter, a translator, and it is fixated on an illusory world which isn't reality in order NOT to see reality. And so everything that it faithfully and neutrally reports, is a lie. What it sees is not really there to see, what it hears makes no real sound. And the sensations it sends to your mind for evaluation are all false.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

It is up to your mind to decide what to make of the signals it is receiving through the body. It is up to your mind to recognize the body cannot really see or hear reality. It is up to your mind to discern that everything the body tells you is happening, is not really happening. It is up to your mind to withdraw all of its dark and twisted and confused meanings, which it projects onto the body's signals, and to instead categorize all body signals as FALSE. It is up to your mind to overlook and not see what the body is telling you is there. And it is up to your mind to recognize the world is nothing but an unreal dream, something to overlook through forgiveness and NOT see, and that BEYOND it is heaven.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."

"Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sounds. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and UNDERSTOOD. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not THEY that hear and see, but YOU, who PUT TOGETHER every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and MAKE a witness to the world you want."

"Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues."

"Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word. The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone are thought to hear. Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless."

"Rejoice you HAVE no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that ONLY Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them."

"How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

"He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son."

"You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?"

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is."

"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"You strain your ears to hear ITS soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you."

"This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it TELL you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the NAMES you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its reality."

"You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be."

"Here is an image that you WANT to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It GIVES the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. IT PROVES ITS OWN REALITY TO YOU. Thus is the body made a THEORY of yourself, with NO provisions made for evidence BEYOND itself, and NO escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you APART from it."

"The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear? Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness."

"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."