I want to tell you about a way in which I used my persona to destroy myself, and how I am learning to overcome it. This was actually a very very painful long-term lesson, so it is hard to write about.

I grew up as a highly sensitive person, who experienced everything in an intense, overwhelming, overpowering way. In order to try to cope with this, I developed the use of my persona. The persona is the side of the ego split-mind that focuses on specialness, goodness, success, social acceptability, favoritism, pleasantness, etc. So I went very strongly into 'people pleasing'.

What I'd do, quite automatically/unconsciously, was I'd put on this facade, literally a 'false face', where I'd smile a lot, become very quiet, try to appear pleasant, try not to upset anyone, look unthreatening and harmless, as though 'showing this' to people would deflect them and therefore protect me. It was my attempt to be invisible. This included a really intense repression of myself. Basically I was using this to hide my Self.

In any public situation I would put on this persona mask and make it appear that nothing was wrong, that everything was good and normal, nothing to see here, being nice to everyone and don't say a single word, and not get hurt. But there were many times this blew up in my face.

Once I was on a bus heading into town and it stopped at the hospital. A man got on the bus and sat nearby. He said that he had just gotten out of the hospital from his 3rd heart attack. This alone was enough to trigger me to hide myself even more than I already was. So I smiled a lot. He, having just gone through life-changing events, started up a conversation with me, which was horrifying. He saw I was smiling and thought that it meant I was happy, and therefore wanted to know what my 'secret to a happy life' was. This put tremendous extra pressure on me (as I saw it) and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. To do this, I intensified even more this persona of hiding myself, which was an attempt to reject him, smiling even more, being very tight-lipped, and just wanting the ordeal to end. I just became more and more quiet. For some reason I seemed to just do this as an automatic defense that I'd learned.

Once I got off the bus, I was just about ready to hurl. I put so much effort into psychologically rejecting the man, and hiding myself, that I felt literally sick. I reached/retched uncontrollably for several minutes before I could calm down. This put a huge damper on my day and was somewhat traumatic. But this wasn't the only effect of this.

See, when I used my persona to hide my real Self, this wouldn't just mean rejecting the other person, it would mean rejecting me. The more I tried to shut them out, the more I shut myself out. I had no idea I was doing this. But what I did know was how it felt. Absolutely horrible. I would come away from bad experiences like this, which occurred many many times in all kinds of public scenarios, with a feeling of tremendous tension in my head from intense embarrassment/shame/humiliation. I'd get a horrible headache, but even worse, I would feel deeply, deeply, deeply hurt. This hurt was more intense and horrible than ANY other emotion I have ever felt for any reason. Psychologically it was like I had experienced every single form of rejection, abandonment, hurt and pain all at once. The absolute only way to move past this was to have a huge cry.

So, as a result of putting on a persona and pretending to be someone I was not, regardless of whether that fake self seemed to be 'nice' or 'kind' or anything anyone values, the only way I could appear to be literally 'someone else' was to horrendously suppress, deny, reject and abandon myself. I thought I was using separation 'against' other people to separate myself from them in order to protect myself, but this separation did nothing but hurt me.

I also had a huge fear of other people judging me, and a fear of rejection. What I didn't realize was that each time that I tried to put on a persona mask of nice, likable, happy-smiley, quiet or whatever, I was buying into an ego thought system. And by doing that, I was taking a gamble. Either I would 'get' the result I wanted which was that people would be deflected and ignore me and I would pass by 'safely', OR other people would attack me or pressure me in some way and I'd end up suffering. By believing in the potential of being seen to be accepted or liked or pleasing to others, I was also simultaneously believing in the 'potential' that others would judge me. I wanted them to judge me favorably, which would feed my 'goodie goodie' persona, which meant I had to believe in judgement. And because I believed in judgement, I lived in fear of it.

So I thought I had an issue of being afraid of judgement from others. A fear of rejection. And this fear of rejection cycled around in a vicious cycle, compelling me to want to NOT be rejected, and therefore to put on a smiley persona face in order to get other people to not reject or hurt me. But of course that merely put me closer in touch with rejection and judgement, if not by others then much moreso by myself. The amount of rejection I experienced from myself TO myself as a result of self-suppression, was far worse than anything anyone else did. So this strategy really didn't actually work, even though I kept trying to use it, and each time it got worse. Over time I just became more and more uptight and quiet and withdrawn from society, eventually jobless and depressed and deeply unhappy and unable to see a way to be different.

Over time, through various avenues of healing, not least of which was the support by my wife who showed up right when I was at my worst, I gradually have learned about the dynamics of what I do to myself versus what I thought other people were going to do to me. I learned painfully and slowly to see that I only saw other people as 'attacking judging strangers' because *I* had already attacked them first. Through the years of working with A Course in Miracles and various other things I've come to very gradually realize exactly why my use of the persona is completely self-defeating and does not help at all. All the persona does is section off everything I think is wrong with me into a tidy little box and shove it away into the dark recesses of my mind, later to surface as pain and suffering.

Yet, over time I've still held onto a belief that I am mainly afraid of rejection or judgement, rather than realizing that my attempt to use the persona is what actually causes the problem. Every time I try to do what other people would want, or make myself like able, or appease others, or focus on what other people like or would buy, or whether I'd get approval, or showing only the parts of myself that I think are acceptable to others, this AUTOMATICALLY creates a fear of rejection and judgement. Because really, by using the persona (i.e. wanting to feed it by creating a self-image/persona of being pleasing) I am actually already rejecting myself and judging myself. Why would I want to put a facade on myself to cover up my True Self? Why would I want to soften the blow of someone else's attitude by abandoning myself first, so that I then need a defense?

The truth that is starting to reveal itself to me now, is that if I actually just be true to myself, and completely drop all need to use the persona to be 'likable' or 'acceptable to others' or 'what they want' etc, I actually stay in a STRENGTH and a authenticity that empowers me and completely overrides the apparent need, either for a fake persona self, or for a defense against rejection. And so this reveals what really is underneath all this.

If I reject myself FIRST, I will then believe I have to use a false self-image-persona to show other people a version of me that they will like, so that they won't point out how shitty I am. Once i'm in persona mode, I cannot escape the fear of rejection because I've already rejected myself and more will be forthcoming through the projection of it.

So the task in front of me now is, to learn to accept myself fully, to be true to the truth in me, to open up to reveal and expose who I really am, to 'let loose' without any shame or censorship, to stop trying to hide myself for any reason, and to basically 'be myself'. But it also HAS to mean, a willingness to stop putting on a show, to stop presenting myself in a fake way, to stop trying to 'appear' likable, to stop people-pleasing, to stop trying to feed my persona image, to stop trying to get everyone to approve of me, and to just drop that whole pile of horseshit. I only enter into a perception that I need 'protection' when I have already judged myself and have seen myself as vulnerable. I am not vulnerable if I am truth-filled. And I don't need to please anyone.

So the key to FREEDOM in all this, is awakening into Holy Spirit's view of me, in acceptance of the truth of me, and in completely surrendering BOTH the fear of rejection AND the attempt to 'win approval' through the persona. By stopping using a persona this solves every problem that ever arose out of its use. What I thought was helping me was hurting me deeply. And stopping the use of the persona stops the creation of the shadow (pain) as well.

Standing firmly in who I AM, brings all of the certainty, strength, assertiveness, disregard for other's opinions, invulnerability, and empowerment, that seemed to be MISSING when I chose to use the ego. And which could never be fulfilled by using the ego. Because once again, it's a case of seek and do not find. "I don't have to worry about what to say or what to do knowing He goes there with me" - ACIM, i.e. I am in my true self and my true self is completely uninterested in pretense or rejection.

Who knew - trying to please people makes you rejected!!!

Learning to love myself more. Learning to drop the ego more. Learning to be what I am, instead of trying to be something I'm not. And in that, there is no fear.

When there is a lack of awareness, ie awareness if blocked in some way, there is an inability to see the whole picture.

This "blindness" leaves a person with only a limited scope of ability to access information.

It does not matter how much information a person has. Everyone believes that they are fully aware of everything even if they are not. And as a result, will use whatever information they can access to decide what things mean or to discern why they are happening.

Not having all the facts leads to false conclusions. That is inevitable.

If you do not see the way that you are choosing, and what you have chosen, and what you have put in place, and why, you will be convinced instead that it must have been some external circumstance outside your power or control that has determined what you are experiencing.

This will automatically lead to the perception that decisions are being made against your will and against your interests. And it will appear that someone or something else is to blame for putting it in place.

This state of perceived powerlessness will render you a victim, in your own eyes, and this will appear to be a completely rational explanation, given the belief that you are aware of everything, even if you are not.

This will then make it seem completely justified to be angry at the apparent fact that someone or something else is limiting you, imprisoning you, choosing for you, or making things happen that you seem not to want consciously.

This anger will come across as frustration and a seemingly sincere, perhaps even innocent desire to not have these bad things happening to you. It will seem as if you have no say in the matter, did not choose them, do not want them, and cannot do anything about them.

All of this behavior is completely understandable given that you simply are not aware of all the information. Anyone who cannot see the whole truth is guaranteed to come to false conclusions, and those conclusions will appear completely justified and make sense to the person.

Anything which challenges those conclusions will appear to be insane or an attack, simply because the person is convinced that they know everything there is to know and have all the information necessary to decide for themselves why things are happening.

And yet, because the mind is unaware of vital information, especially the fact that the person is choosing absolutely everything that happens, the person does not see or accept or recognize that they have done this to themselves. Nor do they see that they have any choice in the matter, that they are contributing to the situation, that there is a freedom of choice, or that there is a possible way out of the suffering.

Instead, they will find blame to pin on some other plausible cause outside of themselves, maintaining their state of victimhood and perpetuating the suffering, yet seemingly with a simultaneous sense of unwillingness that this be happening. They will be in a state of contradiction because they themselves are choosing the suffering while simultaneously claiming not to want it. And while the state of unawareness is maintained, they will remain paralyzed and powerless to do anything to free themselves.

The only way to regain a sense of freedom, hope, power, and ability to cease the suffering and solve the situation, is to increase the level of awareness. The mind must become more aware that it is choosing everything it is experiencing.

It must become aware that it did choose to suffer in every way that suffering came, and that it itself put in place all of the situations and circumstances and relationships and dynamics which seemed to occur. Ultimately the mind must recognize that it did all of this to itself, that there is no external cause of any of its problems, that no-one else is to blame, and that simply because it chose this it can choose again.

The only hope there is lies in the recognition that you do have the power to choose and to be free, simply because it was you who created your own suffering. You can change your mind, and it will change your experience. Hope lies in increasing the awareness, honesty and willingness to accept responsibility, for having created whatever is occurring. Because if you created it, you can create something else. If you did not create it, you are permanently stuck, constantly a victim, and unwilling to accept that you play any part in why you are unhappy.

Those who are "asleep" at the wheel, continue to choose suffering unconsciously, outside of awareness, and are then not aware that they are doing so. They can therefore be forgiven for seeming to act the way they do, or to believe the way they do about external powers, because they simply are not aware of the whole story. Anyone who is asleep is guaranteed to experience the same sense of unwanted suffering, because they do not see that their own will is actually choosing experiences. And so the experiences seem to come out of nowhere, from beyond awareness, and act upon the seemingly conscious self which perceives them as coming from outside of the scope of itself.

Identity is always tied to the scope of awareness. If you are unaware of your whole mind, your sense of self is limited to what you are conscious of. As you lift away the blocks to awareness, your sense of identity will expand automatically. It will become more inclusive of the rest of your mind. Your awareness will increase and eventually you will discover that you are immortal spirit, whole and complete and still as God created you, having never really suffered or separated from God at all.

The only reason a person thinks that the world is out to get them is because they are out to get themselves. The only reason life seems unfair is because they are choosing unconsciously and outside of conscious awareness, therefore seemingly outside of the person's sense of who they are. From beyond the borders of conscious awareness, seemingly disconnected will power seems to force things to happen which the disconnected conscious self does not see itself as choosing. And so victimhood is inevitable.

This is why Jesus teaches to forgive others because they do not know what they are doing. They literally are in a state of mistakenness because they simply do not see or are not aware of the fact that they are causing everything to happen. When they do become aware that they are at cause not at effect, they will simply cease to make those mistakes. This mistakes arise automatically from blocked awareness. And so unblocking awareness is the solution which will end all suffering.

When awareness has no blocks, the mind can be consciously aware of the whole of self, plus the whole of God, plus all causes, and now sees everything in its correct perspective. Everything then makes proper sense, and lines up with truth and reality and the correct order of the levels. In this mind there is no suffering and no choosing against oneself because it then becomes clearly obvious that to do so would directly attack oneself, which is obviously insane. No-one in their right mind would choose against themselves. Those who are choosing against themselves are not in their right mind.

No-one is a victim without being unaware of what they are doing to themselves. All attack is self attack. All suffering is self inflicted. Once we stop attacking ourselves we will realize we were incapable of ever being attacked by any other cause, there is no other cause, and therefore we are free from attack and suffering forever.

In terms of how you as an individual being "relate" or are related to other beings, there is more than one aspect to it.

1) You have a relationship directly with God who is your creator above you. God created you and established everything which is true of you. You are his holy and divine, immortal and innocent child. The causation that establishes these facts of you is his alone and there is nothing and no-one that can undermine it not even yourself.

2) You have a relationship sideways with your equal brothers/siblings in the sonship. This is also the same as the sonship, the christ and the one son, when you also include our creations. Your brother has no causality toward you whatsoever. They share with you equally and stand at your side but they cannot cause you to be what you are, or cause you not to be.

3) You have a relationship directly with your creations and the creations of your brothers. These are below you. You entirely cause your creations to be what they are, similar to how God causes you. They are your effects, created with your brothers. Similarly you also co-create your brother's children with them.

4) You have a relationship with yourself.

There are therefore established certain dynamics and roles which cannot be intruded upon or changed. For example, you cannot have awe of your brothers. They are your equals at the same level. They cannot induce awe in you and you cannot awe each other. No matter how one you are with your brother it isn't "enough" to establish awe.

The only way you can experience awe is by including God in the relationship. Once you are relating to God, vertically, to your own source, you can experience awe of him. And your brother can kneel at your side facing the same direction and experience awe of God as well. But neither of you can cause the awe in each other, or remove it.

What you are, how you are established, what you have, what is innate to you, your inheritance from God, everything you share with Him, is given to you by him. It is not given you by your brothers or even by yourself. You can be with God at any time simply by virtue of the fact that he has bound you to him forever. All you have to do is accept this individually and it is yours. You are free to come and go as you wish. Union with him is your birthright and is completely free. You can think of this as a vertical axis with you below God.

There is also a horizontal axis with your brothers in relationship to them as equals. They are next to you, not above you. They have no power over you. They cannot cause you to be what you are, or to have what you have, or determine whether or not you can go home. All they can do is be like you and remind you that you are like them and of a nature given by God.They can point you towards God, for example, but they cannot do what only God can do. They cannot establish your holiness or cause you to be loving against your will. The freedom of your will is vertically aligned with God and comes from/is shared with Him.

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it."Their role in relation to you is the role God assigned to them. Their function is really co-creation with you, extending forward to your mutual creations. You are supposed to be "spiritual parents" together, sharing children with each other as a family. All the sons of God are co-parents of all the children, along with God. You align with each other and create together but you do not create each other.

This means that on the vertical axis, whether you are in heaven or not is a matter between you and God. It's your God-given right to go home at any time you choose. You do this by accepting atonement individually for yourself. Then you move on to sharing it and bringing it to others in the great crusade. Whether you go up or down is up to you.

You moving up or down the vertical axis can be aided by your horizontal relationships. The vertical relationship is primary and the horizontal relationships are secondary, in the divine order. Your brothers can form horizontal relationships with you, special relationships which turn into holy relationships. But they cannot exceed their function or position in creation. They have no say in where you are positioned in relation to God or whether you can access God.

A holy relationship can be used to remind you of what you are, to reflect to you what it's like to be true to yourself, to recognize you for your true nature, to point you in the direction of what God established about you, and to help you to heal/recover from the separation. It can be used to heal together, which is a reflection of your function of creating together in heaven.

Two beings can join to any degree of intimacy in horizontal sharing, which assists both of them to find themselves and God. But the relationship between each of them and God is their own personal experience, as reflected in revelations.

Revelation symbolizes the original form of communication or relationship between God and a given son. It isn't shared with the horizontal brothers. This is because the revelation is coming down the vertical axis along the channel between God and YOUR soul and includes only you and God and doesn't go past this point. It reflects and is similar to how God specifically created you, and is "prior to" secondary relationships with any brothers.

This is why your brothers are not a part of it. Nor can your brother cause you to have this relationship or force you to experience a revelation.It's also written in the course that miracles unite you with your brother, while revelation unites you with God. These are essentially the two relationship axis. Your brother can assist you in producing miracles which are a MEANS to end, but they cannot cause you to experience revelation which symbolizes "the end" itself. Therefore the "most" your brother can do is help you to unite with THEM, but they cannot induce or cause you to unite with God. That's God's business and is deeply personal at the inner altar of the soul.

Whether a person moves vertically toward God or not is up to them, and it may be prompted, guided, helped, and supported, by any number of other individual brothers. Or maybe even none of them at all. It doesn't matter because this fundamental freedom to come and go from heaven is a key that YOU hold, as per the secret of salvation, being fully empowered, and doesn't require any external conditions. It is you who left God and you who have the key to open heaven's gate.

It is however possible that in addition (because there are 2 axis) to moving vertically, you can also move horizontally. When you do this your brother becomes more included in your shared experience. You can join minds with none, one, two, or more individuals. Even with all of them. It perhaps depends on where you are vertically, as to how "far out" you can spread your unconditionality to your brothers. Unconditional love moves you toward God, while simultaneously moving you outward to include everyone equally. At least potentially.

We can say that, you can become unconditional vertically without necessarily having to include anyone horizontally, because your relationship to God is primary. But more likely, you'll have various holy relationships horizontally which are purer and more full as you go higher. Whether you go higher or not doesn't depend on these horizontal relationships, because they are a means, but these relationships are raised up and improved as you go higher. They can help you TO go higher as well, but they cannot give you what you already have, or deny it to you.

Eventually everyone individually goes vertical far enough either with or without horizontal support, to the point where they become inclusive of all horizontal components of the sonship as well. The brotherhood does not cause this all inclusiveness, because that would be like saying you are beneath your brother. But the higher you go the more you must expand to include everyone in your love.

If you return home to the Kingdom, then you reunite with God and with the sonship as a whole, as an individual soul. This is what Jesus did. He united with God's will in full and therefore also became fully inclusive of the whole sonship. This was his mission and is something he was able to do alone, not because he was in any way different to you but because it was equally God-given right. No son of God is treated differently and none of anything the others cannot have.

"My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself."

Jesus essentially entered into 'holy relationship' with every son of God, regardless of whether they were aware of it or not, because he became so vertical. He gave more than he was being given. And he became the savior of all those who were not joining with him. He thus became the first and as yet only true witness/link to God. He went higher than anyone else, even higher than his holy relationship partner Mary who was left behind.

"I am the only true witness for God."

As we each awaken and move up the ladder to atonement, we join ourselves with him in holy relationship. Just as we may (or not) join with other individuals on the road towards the atonement. We might enter into it two by two, if that is in the atonement plan, or we might go there solo. But even those going there solo are entering into horizontal holy relationship with Jesus. But it's worth mentioning that being holy is something established by God and can only EXTEND into your relationships with your brother. By you BEING holy, you can relate in a holy way with others.

You can go all the way vertically on your own, but it helps to have helpers support you along the way. And you can't go all the way vertically without acknowledging all your brothers in the sonship as one with you. They may not be aware of this, but you're uniting at the level of the soul, not the mind. So a blockage in their minds doesn't impact whether you can unite with their souls or not.

Either way, we all go home eventually, because we never really left.

All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.

The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.

In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.

The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.

It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.

"They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.

Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.

To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"

Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?

But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.

At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.

So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.

You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.

People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.

So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.

It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.

It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.

Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.

You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.

At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.

The only real feelings are those whose nature is in alignment with God's, and which apply to and are shared with everyone equally, openly and freely. These include love, joy, happiness, peace. There are other feelings, which arise in and of the ego, such as guilt, fear, grief, loss, unhappiness, sadness, gratification, loneliness, abandonment, unworthiness, etc.

In every case, all of the ego emotions are two-faced, because they are all happening in a split mind. On the surface they all appear to be something we are familiar with, but there is always an aspect to them which is doing exactly the opposite from what it appears. This is because they are all illusions, and illusions are deceptive.

In fear, we may on the surface experience a sense of "I don't want this", "I wish this would go away", "leave me alone", "I'm not safe and want to be" etc. But if you look more honestly you'll notice these are all attack thoughts. "I want you to go away" is a murderous idea. "I wish this would stop" is an attempt to destroy. "I hope this doesn't happen" is an attempt to withdraw freedom and to imprison through control.

Fear can be particularly slippery and deceptive because it is quite far down the chain of ego delusions, not far short of punishment and death. It can feel like a total powerlessness, a desire not to cause any harm, a kind of innocence and vulnerability. But at the same time, it is all of these things because it's a state of intense attack, picturing others as sinful and powerful, believing in threat and danger, and making attack very real. Fear is an attempt to choose to be hurt, while claiming not to want it or to cause it.

In grief, we will feel heavy emotions of loss and separation. These feel terrible and say things on the surface such as "I wish they weren't gone", "I want them back", "why did they leave", "there has been a real loss". But if you then look more honestly you'll notice, these are all attempts to make a person body identified, to anchor them in the illusory world, to drag them back into hell.

The grief asserts that the person as a body was real, and this real thing was valued, and now this real thing is really lost through separation (death). And how awful that is. Except that its real assertion is to attempt to commit the person to death, body imprisonment, isolation, special relationships and keeping the illusion of real bodies going. Nothing real is ever lost. But grief quite often includes anger at the person for leaving, which is a belief in real separation and an attack idea.

Unworthiness is another lie we may experience. It seems to suggest a sense of not deserving God's love. Of having sinned or committed some crime, proving that you should not be loved or forgiven. But God is always loving unconditionally. So it is not God who is claiming you are unworthy.

Which means you are claiming it, for a reason. And the ego's reason is to keep God's love at arms length. So while on the surface it seems to say "I wish God would love me" "I don't deserve God to love me", it really says "I want God not to love me and will stay in my pity and not accept my worthiness." It's an attempt to push love away, which is vengeance. The victim mentality always feels sorry for itself while secretly being vicious.

Guilt is yet more bullshit. The guilty feel like they are remorseful and regret committing a sin. The guilt feels like a wish that you hadn't done something, that you really did do it, and should be guilty for doing it. But the guilt does not ever question whether or not what you did was a real sin, or that is really happened. It just assumes sin occurred, locks it in, makes sure the belief in sin will never be undone, and that you "should" automatically be guilty.

It's a desire to be unforgivable, which is a self attack. Guilt actually protects the sin and keeps the belief in it going. So those who are guilty claim "I wish I didn't feel guilty" "I'm sorry for doing it", the honest fact is that the guilt asserts "I believe it did happen" "It was real" "I'm glad I sinned and I want to keep its consequences." And so the guilt is really fake guilt, a dishonest state of feeling.

We could go on and list more ego emotions but they are really all the same in their dynamics. All of them are various stages of denial and two-faced victimhood. All of them are deceptive and dishonest. All of them present a surface appearance which seems, consciously, to be "all there is to it", but have a deeper deception which lies beneath.

When you look at them in the bigger picture perspective, it becomes clearer that they are all literally forms of lying to oneself. None of them are genuine because none of them are whole states of mind. All of them are unfounded and unjustified. They represent a divided will, attempting to achieve two outcomes and pretending only to want one thing. They are all forms of attack and deliberately chosen for a purpose. And they all serve to further the descent into hell.

It can be difficult to recognize this and acknowledge it, but we must. We need to become clear about what these illusions are so that we can no longer be deceived by them, or attempt to use them or go into them in efforts to respond to problems. If we tried to kill God through sin and now are feeling guilty, we don't REALLY feel guilty. We wanted to do it and believe in it. We have to own the power of decision and responsibility for choosing otherwise the secret of salvation has exceptions, and that cannot be or we'd be stuck in hell.

We are free willed beings, which means that nothing happens against our will. Even our dreams of hell are chosen. All our suffering is a mistaken choice. All our sickness is a defense with a purpose. Nothing happens without our consent, not even death. No-one else is to blame. We are free to will whatever we want to happen, and nothing else happens without our will.

""My Self is ruler of the universe." - "It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

God cannot be held accountable for why we feel guilty or shameful or unworthy. All attempts at dismay, grief, horror, upset and disturbance are not the unwanted victim roles that they seem to be. No-one else is causing any of our feelings, and the belief that they are is an ego state of false perception. There is ALWAYS more going on than meets the eye and there is always a use of free will to elect to suffer.

All of these fake feelings, indeed all forms of suffering and sickness and death, are simply expressions of an attempt to keep God away. They are excuses made up out of nowhere. They are asserts of denial.

They attempt to weave stories about "why" we cannot be with God or why we cannot accept atonement and forgiveness. They are attempts to portray our immortal selves as mortal and suffering. Everything about them is a lie. They are totally unfounded.

The fact is that there is no reason to be away from God and nothing keeping you from doing so. There is nothing to be afraid of. There is no sin to be guilty for. There is no real way for an immortal being to suffer because nothing real can be threatened. And therefore there is no REAL reason to feel anything other than the REAL feelings that you share with God.

All forms of ego feeling and thinking are attempts to invent completely made-up validations or justifications or rationalizations for why we aren't with God. And these are all self fulfilling. Our egotism says we are afraid of God, but we're not. There is no reason to be afraid of God. It has to be fake fear, and it's only being held onto to try to pretend we have a valid reason to stay in this state. This entire world is a lie we're telling not to accept the Kingdom.

If we were to admit that there is no sin, guilt, fear, unworthiness, suffering, sickness, death, misery, unhappiness, etc, what would happen? Without these defenses, where would we be and what would we be experiencing?

The attractiveness, loving nature, beauty and gentleness of God would lift us into his light and return us home to reality. The whole purpose of the ego is to try to claim we are not with God and to hold him at arms length, and to do that we need various devices that "prove why" we are not with him.

None of these ego emotions are true. None of them are what they seem to be. And all of them are simply made-up lies attempting to create reasons why we don't want to wake up. And none of these reasons have any real foundation whatsoever. If God does not feel this way, nor should we. If we feel this way, we seem not to be with God. But we want to feel otherwise and so are willing to accept correction.

"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the fear of awakening."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"No one dies without their own consent."

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in anyway. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

There are many ACIM myths circulating and one of them is an improper idea of what the Holy Spirit is. Some people will say "he is just your right mind". This isn't accurate enough and can be misleading, greatly diminishing the Holy Spirit's function and power.

When you were created by God, you were created complete and lacking nothing. You are a whole being, a son of God, extended from wholeness. At this point, the Holy Spirit did not exist, and was not needed.

It was only in the separation from God, which was the "fall of man" or the attempt to BELIEVE that separation was possible, which has happened. .... that God created the Holy Spirit. God ADDED the Holy Spirit to the mind in order to protect the connection between all parts of mind, and to guarantee the healing of the belief in separation. He is "God's Voice" calling you to return to sanity.

So the Holy Spirit is actually ADDITIONAL. This means that originally there wasn't a holy trinity, there was in effect a holy duality. But when the Holy Spirit was ADDED to creation, as an eternal and permanent being, with a mind and with creative power, the holy duality became a holy trinity.

The Holy Spirit is to be thought of as in addition to you. Something extra. This is why the course tells you that he is actually your "appointed friend". He is in parallel to you, another alongside you, a helper, a supporter, a healer, a teacher, a comforter, and the answer to the question of separation.

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to TAKE AWAY."

Since the dynamics of heaven are holographic, in which there is a shared oneness, you can say for example that each son of God shares everything with all the others. They are brothers to each other as individuals but they still are one with and united with each other, as though part of each other.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit was ADDED as another created being to be shared with, to be one with, and to be part of you. But when you say he is part of you, you must be careful not to be thinking in separating terms. This doesn't mean he is ONLY a part of you, or exclusive to your mind, or just another name for some pre-existing part of your mind.

The Holy Spirit is shared with all minds and is like an extra layer of mind added on top of the christ mind. Being united in oneness with you, he does share everything with you, which in the holographic sense means you share the same wholeness that he shares with God. Which makes him literally part of you - as the collective sonship/kingdom, but he is STILL a distinct created individual entity.

ACIM actually tells us that the holy spirit is a co-creator with God, is an eternal creation, will always exist even after the atonement, implies that he has his own creations, is a very firm third entity in the trinity of God-Sonship-HolySpirit, and that there ARE "three" components to that. To deny this is to deny that the TRINITY is real.

The Holy Spirit is not your higher self. He is not just some piece of your mind that remained sane while the rest of it went nuts. He is actually a third party. He is an entity, an actual spirit being. He has eternal life. He has mind and thought. He can create as well as heal. He is a living being. And he was given to creation as part of creation to keep all the seemingly separated parts of mind connected and to act as a savior and healer of the mind's insanity.

Your higher self is your soul, which is a son of God, which God created originally. Your higher self is your ONLY real self, and it's what and who you are. The Holy Spirit having been added to creation has become part of you, just as God is part of you and your brothers are part of you and your creations are part of you. That doesn't mean he's some kind of little compartment that's in your mind that was always there since the start. He is secondary and additional to your mind. Him being "part you" doesn't mean he is "just a part of you". He spans beyond you and includes others as well.

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

Here for example there is a suggestion that the Holy Spirit is "nothing more than" the christ mind, as if to say that he is a synonym for christ. But that is not an appropriate interpretation because christ is the second part of the trinity, and the Holy Spirit is actually a distinct third part. He symbolizes God and he symbolizes christ, having a somewhat symbolic function, but that doesn't mean he isn't a fully created being in his own right.

As it says, the Holy Spirit came into being along with the separation (tiny mad idea) as God's answer to that idea, his guarantee of its undoing. He should rightly be thought of as your friend and helper because he literally is an additional being that God added to creation.

When we say the Holy Spirit is some kind of "synonym" for "my right mind", we're stripping him of all his life and his eternal nature, his power and his creative ability. We're trying to then exclude him from existing as a standalone third party, and are trying to REDUCE him to being "just" some little part of our mind that remembers God. He isn't "your memory of God", but he does remember/know God FOR you until you can remember and know God for yourself.

The attempt to think of him as "only my right mind" or "my true self" is really an attempt to limit what he is and pretend he doesn't exist. This was part of the teaching of certain individuals who did not like the idea of the Holy Spirit actually existing. It's something you should be wary of because the Holy Spirit is there for you, is there to help you and heal you and guide you, to teach you and decide for you, to give you the eyes of christ, and to resurrect you from death. To say he is just some part of your own mind is self-centered as if you can "save yourself". Which is a usurping of his function.

He must be acknowledged as something that God did in fact deliberately create and ADD as a response, as a purposeful act of creation, and one which is eternal. You tried to take something away from God and God ADDED even more than you took away by creating the Holy Spirit. He is MORE THAN just you. He is also partly God. He also has functions that you do not have. He is due proper acknowledgement and recognition as a truly fully created being in his own right.

It is once again "separatist thinking", based on exclusive either/or logic, that leads people to conclude the Holy Spirit is EITHER part of me own self or EXCLUDED from me. And since the course says he is part of you, people then think that he is EXCLUSIVELY part of you and does not exist beyond you. That is the fallacy of this kind of thinking. In truth the Holy Spirit is you AND is others AND is God. He is more than just you and more than just a part of you. He is the third entity in the trinity of God's creation and always will be.

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD's."

"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with both."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

Some people like to claim oneness with God, unity with God, the lack of boundaries with God, BEING God, being equal to God, etc.... but your relationship and function with God are NOT 100% the same in all cases. There are some important differences. And not understanding these differences will lead to various egoic conclusions such as that you are God and your oneness with Him makes you HIM. This is a mistake.

1) God created you, you did not create God. This is a cause-effect relationship. "I am forever an effect of God". This means God causes you and establishes you and shares his being/mind/will with you, but you do not DO THAT TO HIM. You do not turn around and cause God. Believing that you do is the authority problem and is what got you into this mess in the first place - you trying to be God.

2) God is greater than you. It is appropriate to have AWE for God, because He is the source of you. It is not appropriate to awe a brother, who is a true EQUAL. Because God is GREATER, "I and my Father are One" acknowledges not that you ARE God, but that you SHARE with God and RECEIVE from Him various qualities and attributes per His Will. God is ABOVE you and BEFORE you.

3) God is a FATHER, you are HIS SON. You are not His Father. Trying to be His father or to separate "father and son" is to separate cause and effect which leads to hell. You cannot father your father.

4) God is complete in and of Himself. The extending outward of His being is creation. "Nothing real can be increased except by sharing". God's inner "self" is complete, in and of itself. It is only the "going out" of His extending that is "blocked" in his communication channels when you put up resistance to receiving Him. His channels of extension become blocked "through you", and yet His own BEING is not blocked in any way, because He is complete in and of Himself. He does not lack completeness in his own right, and that means you are ADDITIONAL to Him. He, who is real, could only be increased, by SHARING HIMSELF WITH YOU, he created you by KNOWING you, and you are a real creation. He has ADDED YOU to existence. "God did not will to be alone". Nor did he will that YOU be alone, so he gave you brothers.

5) God created souls. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it". What this means is that God gave himself SO fully, so unconditionally, so lovingly, so letting go, so freeing, giving ALL of Himself, the WHOLE of Himself, that He literally has established ADDITIONAL WHOLE BEINGS. He gave His mind, his will, his being, to be shared by and extended by, the beings/souls that He created. His Sonship. This essentially establishes you, a soul, as an AUTONOMOUS BEING who has his own FREE WILL, his own mind, his own soul, his own being. This establishes you as a free-willed CO-CREATOR WITH GOD, who freely, willingly, creates and extends God's being in His likeness. "God does not coerce". You are not some helpless "effect only" that has no will of its own. You can EXTEND, you can CREATE. You are causal as well but you are not the cause of Him.

6) Because God gave you free will, as a co-creator, who WILLINGLY wills with God, this freedom essentially "sets you free from God" in a sense. Almost similar to the idea of being separate from Him, this TOTAL FREEDOM, allows you to be your own being with your own free will. Naturally, in your right mind, you only want to will WITH and LIKE and in accord with God's will, it being an expression of your nature which is like His. But when you are NOT in your right mind, you will against His will. It is because your will is FREE, that it can do this, WITHOUT AFFECTING God's Will, and WITHOUT dragging God INTO your fantasies of insanity. If it weren't for this FREEDOM, that God is "separate from" your dreaming, and does not lose sight of Himself when you block communication with Him. It is FREEDOM that has ensured HE remain FREE OF your "willing unlike God's will". God does not support or condone or believe in your dreams of death. If he was totally equal with you, he would dream them WITH you and you'd both never wake up.

7) God created the Sonship. The Sonship is the total of all the beings God created, all his many thoughts, all of his creations, all his children. He established the Sonship, YOU DID NOT. You do not have the ability or function to establish the sonship. Which is why when you TRY TO, you go into DENIAL, instead of accomplishing it. While God's function is to CREATE the Sonship, it is your function to EXTEND it ie add to it. YOUR creations are co-created extensions. "Children of your will", which are created by willing WITH God in accord with His will as CO CREATORS. Two creators.

8) God created the angels. You did not. "God's angels". He created them for protection.

9) God created the Holy Spirit. You did not. The Holy Spirit is recognized sometimes as being "in your mind" or "as your own right mind" etc... but he is also shared by ALL THE SONS OF GOD and so is transcendent of any one person's mind. He is an eternal creation OF GOD, that God created. You did not create the Holy Spirit and He was ADDED to your mind BY GOD. If you were to be equal with God in every way, YOU would be the Holy Spirit's father.

10) "God, who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS created separate beings, who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy." These separate beings are DISTINCT AUTONOMOUS FREE-WILLED BEINGS WITH THEIR OWN MINDS, who also SHARE or are plugged into the Christ Mind of the "one son", sharing with God. God, who encompasses all being, is not the same as you, who do NOT encompass the being of God. You are INSIDE God's being. And YOUR creations are inside YOUR being. It is like a hierarchy. And you are not at the top of that heirarchy. Believing you are is playing God, which is the authority problem.

So you see, these (and other reasons) explain WHY you are NOT CORRECT when you try to totally equate yourself with God. The idea of "oneness" can be very nebulous and you can attempt to use it to say, well, there's nowhere that God starts and I end, so I must be him. Or, I am part of God so I am God. Or, God is all there is so dreams are part of God too. Or It's all just mind. Or whatever. These all DENY the many dynamics and functional reasons why YOU ARE NOT GOD. You are PART OF HIM, you are not Him. You are not his creator or his cause or his father. There is a MAJOR DIFFERENCE in the POSITION you have in Heaven and the position He has.

So when you think, ok, we're all just one thing, or its all oneness, or my oneness with God means I am totally blurred into Him and we are one thing... NO YOU ARE NOT. Oneness does NOT MEAN what EGOS think it means, ie "one big nebulous blob". IT is not that. Oneness does NOT mean that. It actually means being OF LIKE KIND or the SAME NATURE.

Your oneness with God, your joined nature with God, your sharing with God, and your sharing with your brothers, does NOT establishes you AS GOD, nor does it establish you as your brother's creator. GOD IS HIS CREATOR, and your brother is a BROTHER. In Heaven. Per God's will. As another CHILD He created, independent of you.

And it is because of this independence that REVELATION is a communication from God TO ONE CHILD ONLY, symbolizing the original creative act of God creating you, in which "others" do not seem to participate and it is INTENSELY PERSONAL. And yet God wants you to take the content of the revelation TO YOUR BROTHERS.

God is a whole. God gave ALL of Himself to create you. God gave the WHOLE of himself. He created ANOTHER WHOLE. There are now two wholes, in heaven, in reality. TWO WHOLES. AT LEAST. And there are in fact many many many wholes. Every of the many creations of God are WHOLES. They lack nothing. Totally complete in and of themselves. The soul has been FULLY CREATED, as a WHOLE BEING. A REAL SON.

God put HIS LIGHT into YOU, and it is NOT OF YOU. You did not put the light there. God put HIS WILL into you. You did not put it there. God put HIS POWER into you. You did not put it there. Of yourself you are nothing. You are AS GOD CREATED YOU to be. You have been FULLY CREATED. You are one of many children of God. You are A SON OF GOD. And all the other sons are your permanent brothers.

"We are Creation, WE, THE SONS OF GOD."

"The Kingdom of God includes ALL HIS CHILDREN, AND THEIR CREATIONS."

The "One Son" is nothing but a synonym for "the sonship" which is a system of a very large number of children that God directly created as "God's children". It is God's Family. And you are a PART of that. And the sonship SHARES openly and lovingly in all relationships. And the unity they share, AS MANY, is the Christ Mind, which does not come between them and God. They are DIRECT CREATIONS OF GOD. Children. You are a CHILD OF GOD. Always will be. There's nothing you can do about it.

The physical world of bodies and planet Earth, was made by projecting the idea of sin and separation and death out of the egoic mindset of being separate from God. All objects are part of a system (world) of conflict and separateness, symbolising the denial of God.

Everything that can and does transpire in this world of separateness, symbolises sin. It was made by projecting the idea of sin out of the egoic thought system in the mind. And so everything about it represents an attack on God's nature, to oppose it and deny it.

"The world you made (spacetime, physicality) is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"He (God) 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. UrW131L7

"For this world (spacetime, physicality) IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3

We went into a thought system of ego, of separation and death. And from this thought system we made what we call the universe - spacetime and all things physical. These were made as symbols of the death of God, the crucifixion of his son, and the total opposition to heaven's laws.

"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." UrW230W32

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all?" UrW250W41

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on." UrT20G11

So what we have now in front of our faces, is a backwards world, an impossible world, a world which is like a physical representation of the idea of sin and separation. Everything in it is separate. Matter itself is selfishness. Every body is cut off and cannot join with anyone or anything. All particles are isolated and alone.

In this world on the PHYSICAL level, every single thing that takes place does so in a system 100% dedicated to ego ideals of separation, attack, suffering, murder and death. Effectively it is like a physicalised version of false perception.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error" UrW240W31

There is nothing that can happen which does not in some way symbolise egotism. If you eat food you are depriving someone else. If you breathe in you are killing microbes. Your body's immune system murders viruses and bacterias. Trees compete with each other for resources. Beasts tear each other apart. Walls imprison. Disease and sickness ravage everything. The entire system destroys itself in entropy and decay and ends in death.

Just as there are no roadways in the world which lead to eternal life, physically, there are also no movements of objects, arrangements of objects, activities of objects, which can escape the idea of sin. To have a body is to testify to sin.

"And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." UrM28A3

"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. " UrT10H4

This essentially means that in PHYSICAL terms, there is NOTHING you can do that doesn't in some way, at the physical level, symbolise ego, attack, murder and death. Whether it be the way that objects collide and are incompatible, or the obvious fact of lack and scarcity, or the way one object affects another. All of the so-called "laws of physics" are laws of punishment and death.

So the essential fact becomes, you cannot PHYSICALLY escape from sin. There is sin in every game you play, every competition, every conversation, every show you watch, every thing you eat, every breath, every movement of your body. Because it's all part of the system of sin moving around, shifting and changing in an unnatural way, against the nature of God.

You could then say that everything you do here is a sin. However, that would be a judgement. And we need to now separate out what is PHYSICAL, and what is PSYCHOLOGICAL. Because the mind's attitude about, or use of, the world, is key to whether or not you see the world AS real sin, or AS forgiven. And let's remember that forgiveness is for looking AT A SIN-BASED world in a forgiving way, it is NOT directed at reality.

The world can't help but physically function on rules of separation. That's what it was made from, and initially made for. But you can change how you look at it.

If you look at the backwards world from a backward thought system of egotism, you will agree with the physical world as truth, and will regard it as "actually sinful". Everything that occurs will seem to be proof of this. Every death, every attack, every deprivation, all proving as soon as you open your eyes again that this is a world of destruction and not creation.

If you look at the same world in a forwards mindset, a thought system of the Holy Spirit, which IS TOTALLY OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY to the way that the world physically functions, then the strange twisted functioning of the world is not seen as "a real sin." Instead it is FORGIVEN.

"Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5

Forgiveness here does not mean that you are seeing something that is fundamentally true and real in a correct way. It means that you are OVERLOOKING the ways that IS NOT fundamentally true and correct. You are flying against the grain and taking a direction totally opposite to what the world suggests.

Real forgiveness recognises that the world is utterly backwards, utterly insane, physically symbolic of murder, is absolutely unlike the nature of God, and is not reality. It meets insanity with sanity, unreality with truth, and darkness with light.

"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." UrM9A6

The forgiving mind, receives messages VIA THE BODY, via the physical sight and senses, FROM the "outside world" - the physical planet of bodies, spacetime and Earth, and correctly classifies ALL of what it is being shown as UNREAL.

The healed mind can USE the body to SEE the physical realm, but recognises that nothing at the physical level is true. All of its nature is backwards. All of its objects are forms of separation. All of its dynamics and physics are rooted in separateness and attack and death. All of its laws are laws of punishment and scarcity. And the healed mind does not BELIEVE what it sees there.

We then need to adopt a quite strange position, while we're still in this world. It's a position in which the world's physical nature, the things you can physically do, no matter what it is, continue to run TOTALLY OPPOSITE to reality, to the Kingdom of God, to heaven's nature, and to sanity. Everything that can happen physically by physical laws is absolutely false, unreal, untrue and insane.

But at the same time, we're looking upon this stuff with forgiveness. Which means that we don't regard the physical stuff as ACTUALLY anything. Because it is nothing. We don't say, okay this person committed an ACTUAL REAL SIN by murdering someone - it took place in a dream that isn't real, and nothing real has been threatened. There is an appearance of a sin happening but it is just a mistake. It is an illusion of sin.

We lift away from the world the condemnation and attack, the egoic attitudes, the egoic uses of the world, and replace it with a more loving purpose. This doesn't IN ANY WAY result in the absolute reversal of all physical laws, it doesn't stop goats falling off clifftops, it doesn't prevent car crashes or undo all sickness - except perhaps in times of miracles. But it does INTERPRET the utter backwardness and strangeness of the world from a much lighter, higher, less serious mindset of laughter and disbelief.

Essentially this means you have to learn to laugh at death and destruction. You have to adopt a mindset which flies entirely against the whole nature of the world, the typical direction of society, and every value the world holds. You have to be in the world but not of it.

Whatever happens physically IS A PHYSICAL-LIE ..... an idea of sin and death PHYSICAL-LIEZED. It CAN only function one way. It cannot be redeemed without the absolute CANCELLATION of the entire system, at the physical level. But you CAN change how you look at it, relate to it, and regard it, within your mind, psychologically. You can be internally aligned with God, while being completely out of sync with the external physical uni-perverse.

What this does mean though is that on the PHYSICAL level, everything your body seems to DO, will STILL seem to symbolise sin and death, no matter what you choose. It will still be a separate body, testifying to the presence of prisons separating sons of God. You won't be able to DO anything physical that isn't still symbolically a form of the idea of sin. But on the MIND level you can be in a state of innocence and harmlessness and unity. This is also because mind/spirit and body are always total opposites.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real." UrW96L4

Life can become quite weird then. Because your physical body is still going to operate within a system of separation, limitation, conflict, war, lack, danger and so on, but at the same time your USE OF it mentally must become totally opposite. So for a time, it may seem like a "happy fiction", or "laughing at death", or "not taking bodies seriously", or "dis-identifying from form", or "not believing the unbelievable".

At the end of the day, when we have remembered to laugh at the ridiculousness of space and time, of Earth and bodies and human life, we will have no further use for it. And without a re-purposed purpose, the world will disappear without a trace.

"It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought." UrM25A4

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order" UrT1B10

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world." UrT24G5

"The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops, and becomes accomplished, it represents the REVERSAL of the unholy relationship." UrT17F2

"One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. Can you understand this? No; it is meaningless to anyone here. Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." UrM15A3 "The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." UrM29A2

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION." URT16F3

"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 which 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." UrW240W31

One of the worst and most generalizing interpretations of ACIM's teaching, is that "there is no separation". This has framed any kind of separateness as wrong. It has associated all separation with duality, and has stripped oneness of any possibility of being many things.

So now we have in our minds this idea that oneness must be the total absence of separation. This even seems to make logical sense. But it's not the truth. How do we even know that reality has to be oneness? Where did we learn that crap? We've also taken it further to mean that, separation equates with duality, and a lack of separation equates with oneness. As if, there literally is "only one thing", a count of one, as reality. And obviously that must be God, so there is only God. God being alone all by himself. But that's not the truth etiher.

For a start, just as a cursory glance, ACIM has all kinds of material talking about God having a son. A what now? How can God have a son if there is no separation? If you are being strict about this it's impossible for God to have a son at all. Surely that implies there are separations in reality? Surely it's not true that reality has separate parts to it? Surely it has to be all one thing?

Who came up with this notion that reality HAS TO be all one thing with no parts? That is a gross preconception. So many of us keep projecting this idea onto what the course is saying, insisting that reality HAS to be one thing. It HAS to be oneness. We all want that lovely shiny oneness, and it absolutely cannot have any separations in it, because separation is ego, right? Well no.

How about, it would be okay for there to be a kind of separation, where even though there is a separation, it isn't a complete severance? How about if a single environment can contain two things, which are indeed two fully distinctly and wholly created things, but those two things ALSO are unified and share everything with each other? Is it still separation or ego if they are completely open to sharing everything without any selfishness?

The kind of separation that exists in reality is not the same kind of separation that exists in the ego world. The thing that you really need to get your head around is this. One thing can also be many things while still being one thing. Does that sound too radical or difficult to understand? Is such a thing impossible, and why does it have to be "not the truth"?

Wouldn't such a scenario where something is one thing, but is also two things, and the two things are still two things, but are also one thing, be somewhat transcendental? It would have to warp and transcend every notion we have about how everything is supposed to be in a nice tidy box of its own, wouldn't it. It would be some kind of weird thing where something can be one thing and two things at the same time. It might even have to be described as miraculous.

If God cannot create, God cannot live. If God cannot share, God cannot give. If God is devoid of any kind of separation, God can never create a son. Not even one. Not a single son of God can exist in God if God is this very vague idea of "oneness". Some people seem to not be comfortable with the idea of God having TWO sons, but they seem to be okay with him having ONE son, even though that's still a logical contradiction. Why is ONE SEPARATION okay?

Just on the general jist of it, ACIM is saying a whole lot of stuff about God having a son. Now, I don't know about you but if it were to be meaning that he DOES NOT have any sons AT ALL, then I would say Jesus is a terribly misleading author. Just on the basis of how often and how much "the son of God" is referenced, either Jesus is full of shit, or Jesus is deceptive, or the ENTIRE course is metaphorical.

Now, sometimes people actually do opt to believe that the whole thing is metaphorical, because that seems to put a nice bandaid on it and COVER UP the truth. It sort of ties up some loose ends. Those nasty little loose ends that keep saying God has a son. It would be great to just say, well it's all a metaphor, there isn't really a son of God, and to then go onto say that Jesus is just placating your little pretend ego self because it can't handle the truth. Where have you heard that before?

It would be quite convenient IF Jesus actually were only talking in riddles, and the entire course was a lie, and the whole thing was just playing to your ego's need for specialness, and if only "the special advanced students" will get and accept the fact that there really is NO SON AT ALL.

This is the kind of of mad thinking that some people have adopted to try to justify and explain away the very intensely radical truths in the course, to make themselves feel better and to try to understand what the heck it's saying. But it's simply wrong.

God absolutely does have a son. You're going to have to deal with that. If you think he does not have a son, then there is only God. What are the implications of this idea? If there is only God, then you are God entirely, God is dreaming of exile from God, God is insane and believes in death, God has special relationships, God creates poop, and God kills people. Hmm... Is that going to jive with your spiritual goals? It doesn't exactly sound very loving, but it is perfectly logical.

For God NOT to have participated in this madness of a hellhole we're in, he MUST be distinct from you in SOME way. There has to be some kind of freedom that you have "from him" that allows YOUR insanity to not affect him. Otherwise any madness you go into would instantly infect him, and then we'd all be lost forever. God did NOT enter "the separation", did not buy into the mad idea, and did not dream of hell. So who did? And the obvious answer is of course that you - as the Son of God - or at least ONE OF the sons of God did.

The kind of warped bandaids that a person has to come up with to try to mangle the course's meaning to make certain untruths "fit" is quite incredible. We've got people saying that God has no son at all, people saying that one separation is acceptable but not two, and we've got people saying that God can't have many sons because that mean separation. It doesn't, but that's what they think.

And mainly it's because people just cannot seem to conceive of something that TRANSCENDS "either this or that". They just can't seem to envision what a reality is like where one thing is also two things, or even many things, while still being one thing. There is NO parallel to that in the physical world. There are NO examples in your environment that you've ever encountered where one thing is also two things, or two things are one thing, or two things entirely overlap and share the same space. It seems impossible. But THIS world is impossible, so don't you think that means "one as two" is entirely possible?

What some people then don't like is the seeming SIMILARITY between this idea of God being "one and many", and their idea of duality. Oooh... it's a little bit too much like duality isn't it, that must be an ego thing, that must be a bad thing, let's get rid of it. But duality is NOT the same thing as the transcendental multiplicities of reality.

Duality really means, things are separate, AND they do not share anything. The lack of sharing is a vital part of it. It's not just that there's a separation, it's that the two things are kept apart and do not join or connect. So then you might ask what is the opposite of that? Is it oneness? NOT NECESSARILY. How about the opposite of duality, is a reality in which there are STILL many things, BUT at the same time, they SHARE EVERYTHING? What would that be like? Because that's what reality IS like.

That's exactly what Jesus describes over and over again in ACIM. A reality in which there are many parts, and where each part is the whole, and each part shares everything with all the other parts, yet is STILL a part. You being one with God, while STILL being yourself. You having your own soul, while ALSO sharing the soul of others. You being christ, while OTHERS are also christ. You having many brothers, yet each brother BEING the other brothers. That's all over the course in hundreds of ways and that's what you have to come to realize about reality.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Reality IS NOT ONENESS. It is not the kind of "opposite of separation" that you think it is. It IS oneness, but it's not ONLY that. It is a oneness which has expressed infinite power to CREATE additional ones. It is a wholeness which has FULLY created additional WHOLE beings. It's an entire constellation of creations, where each INDIVIDUAL creation is also so joined to the others that they are ALSO one. Oh my God, did he just say that we have an INDIVIDUAL SELF IN REALITY? How can that be?!!!

"We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

Now I can hear the thoughts in your mind trying to whirl around to visualize this. And you're probably thinking well, how do these many separate things be joined, to the extent that they are one, without DISAPPEARING? Because in spacetime we only have analogies where, as two things become one thing, the separation vanishes and you can't tell them apart any more. But that's NOT the case in reality. The two things are FULLY two things, AND fully one thing, at the same time. That's what you have to come to accept. The dynamics of heaven's reality is NOT the same as the laws of physics.

God is one, and has many children, who are one, who have many creations of their own, which are one. And every one creates with every other one. And the whole sonship, which is a collection of ones, creates as one, to create many additional ones, with God, who is one with them all. Oneness extends itself, to produce more onenesses, which are each oneness, and each gives oneness, creating more onenesses, which are in turn still the same oneness. One thing, creating separate things, which are one thing still.

This cannot be understood by separating things into separate boxes. It cannot be understood by insisting that reality be a count of one. It cannot be understand by projecting ego ideas of the "lack of separations" onto it. It cannot be understood by trying to get rid of all the sons of God and all your brothers and turning the world into a solo-gameshow of you vs yourself. There ARE other people here, there are other dreamers here, there are other free willed beings here, and you DO have relationships.

The course has been smushed, crushed, distorted, twisted, mangled, bent, upheaved and shattered, by well-meaning but mistaken individuals who THINK they know that heaven has to be a singularity of God. ACIM if you read it carefully does not support this idea. Even when it says "God is". Even when it says "God has but one son". Even then it STILL ALSO SAYS that God has many sons and a family and even grandchildren. Your creations are his grandchildren. That's all in A Course in Miracles, whether a person likes it or not, or whether it makes sense or not.

Can we just let the course be what it is and say what it does and try to FIND A WAY TO ACCEPT IT, instead of keep trying to CONVERT IT INTO the models and concepts and theories and theologies that WE think it has to be? Because it is not like them. ACIM is not non-duality, it is not adviata vedanta, it is not about oneness in the traditional sense, and it doesn't teach that there is only God.

Let it be itself and let it tell you what the whole truth is. Take ALL of what Jesus says and recognize that he does NOT contradict himself, and if he says two things which SOUND contradictory, it does not mean they are. What it means is YOUR THOUGHT SYSTEM contradicts itself when it is exposed to a truth that trancends it. It isn't the course that's confused, it's you. Jesus knows what he's talking about. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself."

"God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you" "God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it.

Everything within the ego thought system, every part of separation, this universe and world, issues with bodies, all forms of sickness, every problem or upsetting situation, all appearances of external causes and even death, can be described by one SIMPLE statement:

The sequence of cause and effect has been reversed.

This BEGAN in Heaven when you attempted to will against God's will. To will something separate from God's will. This "authority problem" was an act of trying to CAUSE GOD.

God is cause. You are God's effect. God did grant you the power to cause and create, but He did NOT grant you the power to cause HIM.

The entire separation and everything that followed from it, was formed on the basis of this belief that you are willing against God's will, and therefore God's will is outside/separate/external to your will and acting against your will.

This is the idea of sin. That you could cause and therefore produce EFFECTS in God, to hurt Him, to change His mind, to make Him not love you anymore, or to destroy Him, and that you have in fact been capable of doing this with "real effects".

This was the beginning point of all dreaming.

It's all entirely because you tried to stop being the effect of God and to instead cause God.

Let's describe that in terms of levels. The higher level is causal (God). The lower level is effect (You/Son of God). You are as God created you, as God intended, as God willed. When you, who are on the lower level, attempt to CAUSE the higher level to change, this is LEVEL CONFUSION. It is the authority problem. It is the belief in magic. It is the belief in an external will. It is the source of ALL SICKNESS. Eventually to will so strongly against your own cause, against God, is to deny God and deny life, and results in DEATH.

This all comes from reversing what the Course calls the "divine order". The proper sequence of creation. Cause produces effects, not the other way around. The world that we are in now, is also a "level", and it is being caused by a higher level. It is a dream-effect or a causal mind "above" this world. Everything in this world is an effect, not a cause. But when anything in this world is given properties of "causing" or "willing" or "making effects happen", that is LEVEL CONFUSION also, another layer of it. And this is the source of all our suffering.

Everything in your life that you "need to forgive", is BASED ON this same dynamic. Every upset you have. Every perception that someone is acting against your will. Every form of victimhood. All states of sickness and death. Every argument. Every conflict or war. All special relationships. Every part of the ego thought system is based on this reversal of causality. "All sickness is the result of confusing the levels". Whenever something "below" or an "effect" is believed to have an ability to CAUSE, that is level confusion, it is mental illness, it is an illusion, it is false, it is ego, and it encapsulates the entire ego thought system.

It causes you to "perceive" that cause is outside of you, causing AGAINST you. This is because instead of God flowing into you from "behind", and you extending it outward and "forward", you have instead turned around and taken a stand "against" God's outflowing will, to try to will in the other direction, to STOP God's will. Like a rock in a river trying to stop the flow. ALL your suffering and problems come from this.

So to CORRECT IT, to "apply forgiveness" as we like to say, you ONLY need to correct this one fundamental error in the dynamic. You need to re-reversed cause and effect so that the levels are in their proper ORDER, and so that you recognize yourself as the effect of God, so that you are not against God's will, and thereby do not perceive that there is a will acting against you.

That also means you no longer perceiving or believing that there is a "separate cause" outside of you, or a cause in the world, or a cause on a lower level, or a cause in the body, or a cause in other people, or a cause in laws of physics in the environment, or any other externalized cause. Cause is IN YOU. God is IN YOUR MIND, so Cause is in your mind, and your mind is the effect of GOD and nothing else.

Every situation in your life which seems like 1000 DIFFERENT problems with different dynamics and issues and reactions and emotions and so on.... all those differences are illusions COVERING UP the simple CORE THREAD which is the SAME in all of them. That is, somehow, you have become mistaken about what is a cause and what is an effect. And so now you see causes as doing stuff to you against your will, when they are not. And you've turned yourself into an effect of the world, instead of the cause of it. This same simple concept runs through EVERY FORGIVENESS LESSON.

Now, before you can undo this problem in real life situations, or even recognize it in your upsetting situations, you need to recognize something.

The ego has invented its own idea of cause and effect. It believes that causes and effects are "horizontal". This has resulted in "horizontal perception". That means, it believes and perceives that something in the world on this same "level", has the ability to "cause" something else on this same level, and produce effects in it. So now it seems possible that an object can produce a reaction in another object, a person can come along and hurt you, someone can be to blame for doing something to you etc. Causes and effects are seen as linear on the horizontal plane, or sideways. This is totally opposite to the truth, which is that the HIGHER level is the only cause and the LOWER level (this world) is ENTIRELY EFFECT.

So part of what you have to realize is, this world does not contain any real causes AT ALL. It is all effect. It is all a dream, all the effect of you dreaming from a higher level. It doesn't matter how it APPEARS, that a cause is outside you on this same level. There are NO CAUSES IN THE WORLD. There are no causes in your body. There are no causes in other people doing stuff. There are no causes in the environment. Cause is on a higher level, and it's in your mind, "above the battlefield."

The recognition that causality is VERTICAL, results in what the course calls "vertical perception." It also says a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception is required in order to produce a miracle. Miracles are expressions of VERTICAL CAUSALITY in which the levels are in their proper order, there is no level confusion, there is no belief in something in the world causing something else, and therefore the higher level which MADE the word can CHANGE it in total defiance of any illusory laws or horizontal cause-effect relationships. This produces supernatural miracles which are ABOVE (super) the "natural" (nature) of the horizontal illusion and prove through demonstration that cause-effect on this level is ENTIRELY AT THE EFFECT OF YOUR MIND.

So what you're going to need to do in an everyday upsetting situation, something you "need to forgive", is UNDO BELIEF IN horizontal cause and effect, so that you CAN SHIFT to a vertical perception, in which God is cause, you are His effect, and YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF THIS WORLD that you're dreaming.

Recognize therefore that the ego INVENTS the idea of being caused by things outside of you on this same level. It is never true. This forms a kind of fictional "connection", mentally and energetically, between you and other people. You perceive and believe they, or the environment, or you food, or events, or the body, can "cause you". This is FALSE. So what you need to do is COLLAPSE the ego's horizontal cause-effect beliefs and relationships. Cancel them out, separate them out, and that leads to a pretty simple goal:

Recognizing that there is NO CAUSE OR EFFECT between any two things in this world. This whole world is an EFFECT of your mind ON A HIGHER LEVEL. And therefore you are NOT ON THIS LEVEL, you are ABOVE IT.

So what you want to do is effectively "SEPARATE" cause from effect on this level. It's like two boxers in a ring who are fighting, you need to separate them, get them back to their corners, and stop them from affecting each other. Break them up. Put a GAP between the horizontal causes and the horizontal effects so that you can believe and perceive that YOU ARE NOT AT THE EFFECT of anything in this world.

The only way you can believe and perceive that you are not at the effect of anything in this world, is to not believe in CAUSES in this world, of any kind, and therefore to shift into a VERTICAL perception which is miraculous, which recognizes that this ENTIRE WORLD is made up, its a dream, it was all made at once, and every ILLUSION of causality or effects were made TOGETHER simultaneously. There ARE no real causes here.

I like to do this with a simple process of "correcting ideas" something like this:

You did not cause me. I am not at the effect of you. You have not made me upset. You are not the one who attacked me. You did not do anything to me. You have no power over me. I am free of you. You are not the source of my upset. Everything I am experiencing I have chosen. These feelings are my own. This hurt is something I put there myself. I am responsible for everything I am experiencing. It's got nothing to do with you. I must've wanted to experience this. I chose this myself and made a wrong decision and can choose again.

Notice regardless of the words you use, that there is only ONE THING happening here over and over. I am CUTTING TIES between myself and the other person. These are ARTIFICIAL ties of horizontal causes and effects. They are not real or true at all. I am SEPARATING MYSELF from the "fictional causes" so that I am not at their effect. You could express this a 1000 different ways, whatever words or aspects you need to use to break up all of your personal perceptual errors and beliefs in how something is affecting you.

But note that in order to FULLY CANCEL the ego's illusion of horizontal causality, you need to also apply this same set of clarifications to the other person or cause as well. This helps to "balance it out" or to complete the undoing of any other beliefs or perceptions which you might have such as that YOU affected the other person, resulting in guilt etc. This really helps to clean up any possible effects which have come from what you falsely experienced. For example:

I did not cause you. You are not at the effect of me. II have not made you upset. I am not the one who attacked you. I did not do anything to you. I have no power over you. You are free of me. I am not the source of your upset. Everything you are experiencing you have chosen. Your feelings are your own. Your hurt is something you put there yourself. YOU are responsible for everything you are experiencing. It's got nothing to do with me. You must've wanted to experience this. You chose this yourself and made a wrong decision and can choose again.

When you do this, you BREAK the ego's chain of fake causes and effects on the horizontal level. That means you actually will no longer believe or perceive or experience that there are ANY CAUSES on this level affecting you. While this is still a horizontal state of perception, it actually lays the groundwork for you being able to then shift into VERTICAL perception. You may be still in the world not affected by the world, but now you need to position yourself ABOVE the world, above the battlefield.

You got into your right mind, now you need to get into the ONE mind. So if there are no causes in the world that you believe in, this makes it pretty easy to then recognize you are ABOVE, in terms of levels and causality, the divine order is re-established, the levels are in their proper sequence, and you recognize that everything in this world is AN EFFECT and you are a HIGHER CAUSE.

This readies you to be MIRACULOUS. Miracles flow from a higher level to a lower level, like love or creation does. God causes you, you are the miracle of God. You then cause a level below yourself, and these are your miracles. When your higher mind CAUSES effects in the lower level of this world, these produce SUPERNATURAL EFFECTS. This is what miracles really are about. A higher level causing a lower level and proving that the lower level is nothing but an effect of the mind - that mind has total power OVER it.

This more or less is ALL you need to do. If you can really go deep with this, it will undo all your false perceptions, your upset, your stress, your emotional reactions, your fears, your obsessive thinking which can't let go of the situation, and it will bring you back to peace AND empowerment. Then you are in a position to ACCEPT THE ATONEMENT by recognizing that you are the effect of God, you accept that you are STILL as God created you, God has NOT been affected or changed, and therefore is not willing against you.

This process ALWAYS WORKS to undo ego because it addresses THE ENTIRE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM at its foundation. There is not one part of the ego that escapes this, because the ego is BASED ON the reversal of cause and effect, so the correction of cause and effect cancels out the entire ego. Therefore it can be applied to EVERY situation and will always lead you back to truth.

Try it.

We can perhaps summarize this way:

God causes me.

I have not caused God.

I am the effect of God.

I am the cause of what I made/projected/created.

What I made/dreamed is not the cause of me.

Therefore I am still as God created me.