The ego only comes about when there is an emphasis of DIFFERENCES between any two things.

If two holy beings are relating to each other, recognizing their equality, there is no egotism involved. Their equality makes it impossible for them to be different or to have different interests or for different rules to apply to each.

Without differences there cannot be a difference of opinion, therefore there cannot be conflict. Without conflict there is no ego. The ego is made of illusory differences or the idea of inequality. When there is equality there is no ego.

Therefore, recognize that "having an ego" does NOT necessarily equate with "having a self", nor does it equate with "being an individual".

The only way in which a self could turn into an ego is if that self is DIFFERENT to other selves in some way - a different appearance, a different opinion, a different form, a different nature, a different interest etc.

The only way that individuality turns into ego is when a person attempts to DIFFERENTIATE their individuality from others by trying to make their self SPECIAL. Jesus says that the separation (creation of ego) occurred only when we sought "special favor". We already had our own self and individuality BEFORE we tried to be "better than" or "different to" others. Before that, we were equals with all of God’s Children - our "brothers" in Heaven.

Ego is NOT the idea of "being separate", as in, there being many individuals. The only way that individuals become separate in an egotistical way, is when they aim to be SPECIAL and thus in COMPETITION with others. That is egocentric, because the individual is then seeking special exclusive treatment that they would deny to others.

This also ties into "what is not love is murder", in which when one thing applies to one person that does not apply to another, cause and effect are separate and it seems you can escape the consequences of trying to attack a brother - thus getting away with murder. What is the opposite? The opposite is not to have NO brothers, it is to treat your brother as an EQUAL. LOVE, therefore, recognizes EQUALITY. Love does not have to mean "one self", when those selves are cooperating lovingly.

The same is true of free will, which each Child of God is granted. You would think that if everyone had free will there would be ego chaos. Not necessarily. If everyone wills IN THE SAME WAY or with the same GOAL, there is no disagreement and therefore no ego. When all wills are "united" or "in accord" with God’s Will, there is HARMONY.

Harmonious, ego-free relationships arise from mutual recognition of holiness and equality. Therefore every child can have their own free will and be co-creators, provided they are always desiring to share joy and love. When their interests are not different, there is no war, and thus no ego.

We need to be careful to recognize then that EGOTISM means SELFISHNESS, and being selfish isn’t inherent to you having a SELF - it’s just a bad attitude. Selfishness means self-interest or in some way believing that something applies to you which others should not be a part of. It is a lack of SHARING or willingness to be equal and share everything with others. When there IS a willingness to share everything equally, there can STILL be selves, but now these selves are holy and innocent.

The idea therefore that ego means "any kind of separation" is not true! It’s okay for MANY BEINGS to be LOVING. For brothers to be loving, equal, identical and to share everything. The fact that brothers are getting along in a NOT-SELFISH way, lacking ego, does not mean they have to stop being separate beings. You getting along with your neighbor doesn’t entail you having to destroy them.

Jesus says that the ego entails selfishness, while the SOUL entails SELF-FULLNESS. If you think about it, when you are being selfish you actually WITHDRAW part of yourself from sharing with your brothers. Therefore you are no longer being the fullness of yourself. To be ego is to be NOT YOURSELF. It is a withdrawal of yourself from your brother and an attempt ISOLATE so that you stop SHARING. Egotism is simply lack of sharing, not being a "separate being". When you isolate yourself you become UNNATURALLY SEPARATE, but your inherent "self" which is "separate" from other selves is NOT unnatural.

Although it looks like being self-oriented, ego is actually the ABSENCE OF SELF, because self is naturally open and sharing. Ego is confinement, imprisonment, limitation, lack and a loss of identity. This is why being in the ego ends in death of the self. Self denial, self attack, self abuse and self sabotage are attempts to UNDO the Holy Self that God created you as. Death is a denial that you are a free-willed individual who lives forever.

Becoming "more ego" does not make you MORE SELF, it makes you less self. And the more you TRY to emphasize your "self" the more you LOSE IT. This is also why waking up means returning TO BEING YOURSELF, and is NOT a loss of self but a GAINING of self. It is only the LACK of yourself that disappears!

Being FULL of self is the opposite of being "full of yourself". Being full of yourself really means PRETENDING to be someone you are not. It is a lack of authenticity. Being your authentic SELF means being the Child of God that God created. "I am still as God created ME" means you are still the holy child which God created as ONE of his holy children.

Egotism or having an ego does not mean having a self or being an individual. It means HIDING YOUR SELF behind a facade of lies. You DO exist. You have a Holy Self with your own Holy Mind. There is nothing WRONG with that. It is not ego to say that God created many children. Ego does not equate with all forms of separation! It’s OKAY for God to have created "separate beings", provided those beings are loving, equal, and have no egotism or specialness. It’s only when they COMPETE that there is a separation problem.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share tit to increase their joy."

That is a recipe for harmony, happiness, joy and peace. There is no ego in that. God creating a Kingdom with many things in it, doesn’t mean there is any EGO in it. It’s okay for WHAT IS REAL to be a living world filled with light beings who love each other equally. Being one of many children of God does not man that you are fundamentally in competition with or attacking other children of God. Love brings order to God’s divine creaion.

Did you know God is very, very, very powerful?

Did you know that you inherited that power and are also very powerful? God is the source of all power, and is all-powerful, but he also shares his power with you, so that you too have power.

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

Without God, you would have no power at all. But with God, you have all power.

"To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The power of God and not of you engenders miracles."

This in no way means that you have no power to work miracles. It means you have ALL of GOD's power to work miracles.

This also means that miracles, of the supernatural kind, actually do involve a use of a POWER.

There are far too many people doing ACIM who either do not realize or refuse to be open to the idea that miracles require a utilisation of POWER.

This isn't just some weak force or some willingness or a bit of help from above. It's actually a real power, a very very strong power. The power of God.

God is also love, which is why love is also power, and since love and forgiveness are related, being forgiving is also powerful.

We live in a very, very disempowered state right now, which is why it seems that we not only do not have any power but cannot access it and don't even know it's there to use. We think that we're going to remain just as un-powerful when we wake up or get closer to reality. It's not true. To be a miracle worker you must be able to use the power of God, and it really is VERY POWERFUL.

"You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you."

If you have never experienced this power in this life, you may not have a clue what I'm talking about. I've experienced it a few times. It's a power so strong, so certain, so absolute, that it feels like it could accomplish literally anything. It could move mountains, it could change bodies in an instant, it could raise the dead with effortlessness and ease. It has such strength and, if you like "force" in it, that it's like some kind of 1000-foot tall giant compared to a little ant.

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."

Jesus isn't kidding here. There is a power, a real capability, an immense supernatural strength, far far far beyond anything you've ever encountered in this world, that is literally unlimited and absolute. It is not relative power, or partial power, or a high wattage of power, or even an extreme power. It is total unlimited absolute unmoveable permanent power that is so strong it can create entire universes.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

You USED your power to make space and time and all the galaxies and planets and all bodies and all events here. Not through some "laws of physics" bullshit or some "evolution" bullshit. POWER OF GOD. Immense psychological ability.

"He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel"

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force."

Just FYI, we're not weak little frail little nuggets wiggling around on a little planet. We're super immensely powerful beings. The power of God is in us. How do you think Moses parted an ocean, and how did Jesus raise the dead and calm storms and materialise food and so on? It was through utilisation of a power that's so strong and capable that there is NOTHING it cannot do.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

This is not a course in sitting on fences and observing and doing nothing and having no power to do anything. It is a course in EMPOWERMENT and you getting your power back so that you can act and carry out God's will!

"My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save." ... "In the presence of my holiness, which I share with God Himself, all idols vanish."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator."

"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you"

"The power of God IS limitless."

"It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"Alone they are nothing. But in their joining is the Power of God." "Then let the power of God work in you and through you, that His Will and yours may be done."

"God's Teacher, and His lesson will support your strength. It is only your weakness that will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the power of God in you."

"I am not weak but strong." "I am not afraid but all powerful."

"There is now no limit on his power, because it is the Power of God."

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? "

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

"The power of God, and all His Love, without limit, will support you, as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love."

"The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of the magnitude of His dear Son."

"And He will do so, for the power of God in Him AND YOU is joined in REAL relationship, so holy and so strong, that it can overcome even this, WITHOUT fear."

"All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception of man's ability to USURP the power of God."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation."

"If you knew Who walks beside you on THIS way, which YOU have chosen, fear would be impossible."

When we look at the nature of reality, of heaven's laws, we find that it's kind of a combination of "oneness" and "multiplicity." We're told in ACIM there are many creations of God, plus our own creations, plus the Holy Spirit. There's a permanent trinity. So there's many things going on. But at the same time, it is all one.

The thing that's really super difficult to conceive of is how it's possible for one thing to be two things, while still being one thing. Like, how one son of God can be an individual, and another son of God can be an individual, but still at the same time there is effectively no boundary preventing them from being completely one.

I think that what this implies is reality really is paradoxical. The special "something" that allows one to be two, and two to be one, transcends all possible explanations. You can talk about one aspect of it at a time, such as focusing on the one. Or focusing on the many. And you can sort of tie them together by describing their holographic relationship. But there's no way whatsoever to blend those two into a single 'theory'.

Jesus actually refers to the special "something" that allows each soul to have everything simultaneously, as "the miraculous power of the soul." Somehow there is some way, in reality, without breaking any laws, for God to create many beings, WITHOUT in any way reducing or limiting the fact that they are STILL completely 100% one with him. They are joined, but they are not joined, and yet they are joined. He calls that "miraculous power".

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." I think that truly, what this reveals is that first of all, as you approach God you're approaching a transcendental, omnipresent, paralogical and paradoxical state, in which all rules and limits just fly out the window. This actually literally forces it to be IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a "universal theology".

I think it may even be correct to say there will NOT EVER be a "unified theory of everything", scientifically speaking. When you approach reality everything becomes everything else. It becomes a kind of infinite blur. It is specific, yet abstract. It is personal, yet impersonal. There are many parts, yet they are all one, and each part is the one whole. And it also means one number equals all numbers. You can't even do math at that point.

So really the nature of reality is that it literally cannot ever be explained. This isn't actually a matter of whether people are smart enough, or whether they can study it, or whether there are things they can or cannot say about it, or whether words or formulas are satisfactory. It's simply that the NATURE of God is so transcendental that it utterly defies any attempt whatsoever to pin it down, limit it, confine it, label it, put it in a box, or break it up into nice little pieces. It's nature is just so incredibly "everything at once" that you just can't MAKE a concept about it.

I think also that this "true nature" of reality is very appropriately described as "miraculous". It seems as though its nature is utterly impossible. Yet at the same time, it is possible. It seems impossible that one thing can be two things, or two things can be one thing, while still being two things. But somehow this is the nature of reality. Every son of God is the whole kingdom. And yet there are many sons. And what makes that possible at all is so beyond and defying all possible explanations that you really have to just say, it is miraculous in the true sense. It utterly defies explanation.

Because of that, I think we can say that it cannot EVER be understood. Not that it can't be KNOWN, or make sense to those who experience it, but there can never be a theory accurate or encompassing enough to describe it. You will never find a full definition of "what makes it possible" in any text book.

An extension of that is, that quite possibly, even after years of trying, the answer may be that we CANNOT UNDERSTAND MIRACLES. They have a nature which transcends all logic. Even very advanced paralogical reasoning simply reveals that reality is more than just "one or two", it's BOTH one AND two at the same time, and there will not ever be a way for anyone to get their head around that. This is why I think in ACIM Jesus says that you do not understand miracles.

So I think we've spent so much time and years trying to understand what a miracle is, how it works, what makes it function, how to do them etc, and ultimately it's actually a fact that we cannot ever understand them. The Holy Spirit knows them and so dose Jesus and perhaps when we reach a state of total enlightenment it will dawn on us that WE simply ARE miraculous and our natural way of expressing in that state of sharing has miraculous qualities. But HOW that's actually possible I think may remain so transcendental that no-one will ever be able to truly explain it.

I think in some ways we can get close to it, we can come up with models and symbols to try to reveal some of its properties. We can see that it seems to be a paralogical, paradoxical, omnipresent, holographic kind of a system. Where seeming impossible things become possible. But I don't think we can get much closer than that. Which means if you really want to be intimate with it you're going to have to live it, experience it, and be it.

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it." "Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand." "A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand." "Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do NOT understand it. Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him."

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE." UrT9C1

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT." UrT9C3

"But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are." UrT8D6

When you are being an ego, you believe you are a separate body. You suffer. And then you think that in order to improve yourself, you will work on improving YOU, and NOT others.

You think of yourself as isolated in a box, separated off, not sharing. And then you think that if you work on "yourself", you will be able to rise up to a high level, accept atonement for "yourself", and then be done. And it won't matter that everyone else has not chosen to do the same, because they're none of your business.

We could go about practicing the entire ACIM principles but still staying within the confines of the "I am a separate person" box. Improving me, awakening me, me becoming more loving, me undoing my own guilt, etc. This is all selfish of course and part of the ego identity.

What ACIM is ACTUALLY teaching, is something quite radical. That we are all part of a collective mind, sort of a collective hive mind of consciousness. And that means we are all one, and other people are a part of ourselves. Literally we are in them and they are in us. Our souls are fused together. EVERYONE CONTAINS EVERYTHING.

This is massively different. Because now it means that in order to come OUT of the prison of the ego and the body, you cannot just treat it like it's something that applies "only to you." You can't just "work on yourself" in isolation. It's not a "self study". It's not even POSSIBLE for you to approach awakening while still retaining a sense of "I am only myself, and other people are not me."

What we should be doing is recognising that at the higher level, the golden rule is kicking in, we are SHARING EVERYTHING with everyone, we are part of the whole sonship, and our mind is SHARED with other people's minds. Our souls, our identity in Christ, it is all SHARED. We are NOT just ourselves, we are many people.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth." UrW161L4

This is a holographic relationship. One whole (God), with many parts (beings), in which every part contains the whole (oneness among brothers), and there is ultimately only one whole (God) yet it has many wholes (sons of God) within it, which are collectively the shared one son/christ/heaven.

So if you are to make headway out of physicality, away from the body and the ego, any kind of progress in spiritual awakening, it can't be with the starting ego mindset of "I am a separate person", and you cannot KEEP that mindset if you want to awaken. It's not true of you. You are not ONLY yourself, you INCLUDE others. You are waking up FROM a sense of exclusion and selfish isolation, TO communion with everyone.

So if you want to apply something where you're like, I am holy and innocent and guiltless and sinless.... you can't really be regarding that as applying ONLY to you. It has to be more like, WE are BOTH innocent and guiltless and sinless. We are ALL innocent and guiltless and sinless. Because you ARE the sonship.

This reveals the extension of this that.... you have to INCLUDE your brothers in your own awakening, your own healing, your own giving and receiving. This is what makes you a teacher of God - shared interests. Other people are part of your self. You have to be willing to give love to the part of you that is in them, in order to receive it.

This is why, per the golden rule, what you do unto others you ARE DOING unto yourself. This is why you have to look for the GOOD in other people, in order to FIND it within yourself. Because you are not just you. This is why your BROTHER becomes your savior, because essentially there is part of YOU in your brother. If you want to see yourself as Christ or soul, you have to see the Christ/soul in the other person AS WELL. You are BOTH that.

Whatever applies to them applies to you, because you are equals. That means whatever you are trying to give to yourself - do for yourself - apply to yourself - you have to get out of that mindset and instead apply it to EVERYONE EQUALLY. You can't find your "self", or even your soul, by focusing ONLY on your own self/soul exclusively. You can't tap into "just my higher self", it has to be that you're tapping into the entire Kingdom of God.

You have to give to others what you want to receive for yourself. Which means you have to give love to other people in order to simultaneously give it to yourself. Giving and receiving are one.

The ego's law is one of inequality in which what applies to you does not apply to anyone else. Where you are separated off in isolation in a prison all alone. And to focus on accepting atonement "for yourself alone" is completely contradictory to how things really are. The golden rule, which is an unbreakable law of God, says that whatever is true of you is true of everyone. So either you BOTH are innocent, or you BOTH are guilty, but never can you be DIFFERENT or have something special that applies only to you and not them.

So our whole practice of applying spiritual principles "to ourselves", "for ourselves", HAS to start to OPEN UP and INCLUDE other people. It has to be about SHARING. Because heaven's law is all based on sharing. Everyone in heaven shares everything equally and fully. So I should be saying, WE are innocent, we are BOTH innocent, we are BOTH sinless, we are BOTH guiltless. This erases the SEPARATION BETWEEN us.

It's the separation that needs undoing, not some personal issue that hides in a separate box. If all you do is "fix only yourself", you are NOT undoing the separation BETWEEN you and the others, or between you and the part of you that is in them. And so that will put a ceiling on how much 'you' can wake up, because by not including others you are maintaining the separation and keeping it going, which limits you. You cannot go ALL the way without including everyone.

It is therefore ONLY through communication, shared minds, joined minds and hearts, union, holy relationship, true oneness, that the separation is actually undone. It's not enough to "work on yourself". You have to be open to working "on the sonship". You are working to help heal THE WHOLE, not just your selfish self. To accept atonement for yourself ACTUALLY means that you INCLUDE EVERYONE in "the truth that applies to all", in which you accept what is TRUE OF EVERYONE, not just yourself. Otherwise we're just staying selfish little separate people.

"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other." UrT1B24K

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made." UrT16C4

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them." UrT5B1

"18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

This touches on the essence of A Course in Miracles and the Golden Rule. Jesus is literally telling us that YOU ARE ONE WITH OTHERS. This means you are literally IN THEM. And therefore the way that you treat them is the SAME as the way you treat yourself.

There is no exception to this. You treat BOTH yourself and others the same way at the same time. To recoil for another is to recoil from yourself. To not love another is to not love yourself. To hate another is to hate yourself. There is no escaping this because fundamentally, by the Law of God, you ARE them.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."

So per the Golden Rule, that means that every person you encounter, you should love them, IF you want to be loved and if you love yourself. You should SEE YOUR SELF in them. Because both you AND them are Christ. And your love of them IS your love of yourself, directly. What you give to them you receive. What you transmit to them, you transmit to the part of you that is in them.

The "part of you" that is "in them" is the target of everything you give to them, so you have a VESTED INTEREST - a shared interest, in treating them well in order for YOU to be treated well. This is not a play on words or an option. This is how minds share and relate. This is how they were created. This is the dynamics of the laws of God which are always applying.

It is always the ego that suggests, the way you treat another is NOT the way you are treating yourself. Or that you can attack without being attacked. Or you can be murderous without experiencing the consequences. Or you can judge without being judged. Or you can hate without being hated. Or you can be right and they can be wrong and there is no equality between you.

These are all LIES because they fly in the face of the inescapable LAW. It can SEEM as if you can treat someone differently to how you treat yourself, but all of that MUST be an illusion. Because the only truth is that ALL of God's children are perfect EQUALS. Making them perfect brothers in the sonship. And this is permanent fact.

Any kind of inequality is an illusion. And that not only means that you and your brother are SEPARATELY EQUAL as individuals, like two identical twins standing next to each other. It in fact means that you SHARE EVERYTHING, which means you OVERLAP with each other, are ONE with each other, JOINED with each other, IN each other. You literally are in your brother's mind with him. Even if that means part of you seems to be "over there" in another person, from a separated point of view.

This is really the only thing to be learned. How to love yourself AND others equally. How to recognize that you are ONE with all people. To realize that, you cannot GET AWAY WITH anything. You cannot hurt without being hurt. You cannot attack without being attacked. Scapegoating and blame are delusional and denial. When you attack anyone you are hurting yourself, and you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep hurting yourself?

Anger and attack towards "others" drives a RIFT into your mind between the part of your mind which seems to be isolated to "inside your body" and the part of you which seems to be "inside other people's bodies". The more you attack what you THINK is a "separate them", the more you are SPLITTING OFF part of you which is in "you" (as a body identified self) and the part of you which is ONE WITH THEM. Which means you are directly attacking yourself and splitting your mind.

The split mind is divided by bodily boundaries, and as you focus on the ways in which you are NOT ONE, by emphasizing the solidity and reality and restriction of bodily obstacles, it simply SPLITS your mind and causes you to disassociate from yourself. And now you think you are literally two selves, with one part of you trapped in your body and the other part of you trapped in another person's body. You've now made an ego for both of you. And now you want to attack another to steal back from them the part of your SELF that you believe they have kept from you. As discussed in "the laws of chaos", everyone is looking for the self they think they lost.

So this seems to be a catch. The catch is, that if you choose to attack someone, you WILL be attacked, and you will suffer consequences, directly inflicted BY YOURSELF upon yourself. This is the secret of salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. And the only way to alleviate this suffering is to LOVE the other person. If you love them you will be loved. If you hate them you will be hated. By yourself. You cannot escape this "clause". It is the law of God. It is the Golden Rule. It is both a curse if ignored, and a clue to how to be happy if embraced.

The Golden Rule doesn't just mean that if you might treat someone as you would have them treat you, they MIGHT elect to treat you in a similar fashion. If there is any possibility that cause and effect breaks down and they MIGHT NOT treat you how you are treating them, then the law is breakable, and it is not a law, and it has devolved to the level of physical behaviors. The true nature of the Golden Rule is the oneness you always have with everyone in the mind, whereby you LITERALLY are DIRECTLY treating yourself the way you are treating them, because you are IN THEM.

"Do unto others because you ARE doing unto yourself." is what it should say.

If there is a person you hate, you will drive a separation between you. In this separation you will believe that person is completely separate from you, and you want to have as much distance and dis-association between you as possible. You do not want to be associated with them. You want to destroy them and have them not exist. And in this intensity of hatred and rage and attack and anger, you believe THEY ARE NOT YOU. And as such you can hurl as much blame and condemnation upon them as you can muster, and it seems to be 100% about their faults, and 0% about yours. This is a state of insanity.

This is a great way to split your mind, leading to states of personal suffering, unlove, a total lack of peace, and literal self destruction. Those who murder are trying to kill themselves. And those who attack are undermining their own integrity. And those who hate do not love themselves. Just as those who are sick have made themselves sick in an attempt to accuse OTHERS of sin as well as themselves.

"You but accuse your brothers of your own sin."

"Damaged bodies remain accusers."

The only solution, and the only option, and the only law which you HAVE to abide by, and cannot escape, is the law of God, that how you DO treat others IS how you are treating yourself, because YOU ARE ONE WITH THEM. And being literally part of that person, anything you hurl at them you are hurling at yourself. And you WILL experience the consequences. So really, your hands are tied and you do not have any loopholes or ways to get out of it.

Either you love BOTH you and your brother, or you hate both you and your brother. Either you love both you and your brother, or you attack both you and your brother. Either you attempt to make both you and your brother sick, or you HEAL both you and your brother. When you suffer you suffer along with him. The truth that applies to you applies to them equally and to the same degree. And not simply because they are your equal, but because THEY ARE YOU.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."When this is recognized as true, when cause and effect are reunited so that anything you cause you also experience the effects of instantly, and when there is no way to attack without attacking yourself, you now have shared interests and the only option is to love. The only sane choice is to love. If you don't love you will hurt yourself and others. If you do love you will uplift and heal yourself and others. And "when I heal I am not healed alone."

It is by recognizing that you have a vested interest in loving others, because it allows you to be loved, that you will automatically steer clear of attack upon yourself. You will realize that you CANNOT attack another person WITHOUT suffering the consequences. And there is no way to hurt them without being hurt. So your only sane choice is to love unconditionally, so that you will be loved. Otherwise a failure to recognize your oneness leads to it seeming plausible, justifiable and warranted, that you can attack without consequence. And then you are on the slippery slope to hell.

Since all things physical are rooted in separation, it is impossible to do ANYTHING in this world without it being in some way connected to being separate.

Eating, breathing, talking, touching, fighting, whatever, everything physical is not God’s nature.

We tend to section off certain physical things as somehow “meaning” that they are good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, more or less spiritual. But physicality can’t really be said to be selective in terms of what it represents.

A war, a butterfly flapping, people hitting each other, baking a cake, painting a picture, on the physical level it’s all still forms in a dream, images made of ideas of separateness and conflict. But somehow arbitrarily we’ve assigned all kinds of hierarchies and categories to physical things to say that some are better than others.

Given that you can’t DO anything in the world without it being rooted in separation, it then comes down to PURPOSE. And by purpose we have to mean that how it is being USED or toward what ultimate goal. The use of it isn’t inherent to the thing itself, because purpose is about mind and the meaning the mind gives to things.

It is mind that judges murder as bad, or as worse than kissing. It is mind that decides that a dead broken body is more evil or proof of sin that a healthy athlete running a race. It is mind that decides to say that people shooting others with guns is bad while hugging is good.

Ultimately the strange truth is that all things physical cannot be used to determine “what it means”, or whether it is a good thing or not. Our categorizations of stuff comes from judgements, and most of those judgments are rooted in ego. It is technically the ego that says that physical war is ”an ego thing.” Which is kind of a confusion of two levels - mental and physical.

Let’s remember the world is a dream. And the dream is made of symbols. And the symbols can sometimes look what we have decided is nice and other times not nice. Even the death of the body has been artificially endowed with negative meanings, while the non-dead bodies have been endowed with positive meanings. Yet:

“The body cannot be meaningfully invested with attributes of Christ OR the ego.” Because the body is actually “nothing.”

So if we stop completely trying to evaluate whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, spiritual or not, based on its FORM … we might be better off. This means all illusions are equal and there is no hierarchy. Just because something looks like “a big disaster” doesn’t mean it IS actually in truth “worse than” a seemingly small problem. These are DECEPTIONS based on being blinded by perception of form.

A headache or cancer are technically both equally unreal and untrue, and one is NOT technically worse than the other. One is not more serious than the other either. Both are supposed to be regarded as equally meaningless and their forms are meant to be regarded as illusions of deception. We are not supposed to buy into how stuff looks on the physical level, as though differences mean something.

This is a bit radical because it means putting physical war and murder alongside kisses and hugs as equals. And not just categorizing the arbitrarily as opposites. It means that terrorism and abuse are “just another form” of the same illusion as someone throwing a birthday party and giving gifts. Because the FORM something takes is not its real meaning.

As the course teaches, when we look to the form tell us “what it means”, and USE and depend on the form to “describe” its meaning, we are deceived by illusions. A healthy body is not better or worse than a sick body in this sense. But the world is very accustomed to evaluating rightness or goodness based on what form something takes. Technically a nuclear bomb is no more ‘evil’ than a feather falling to the ground lightly.

“Let me not use this as a sign of sin and death, or as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming.” This applies to all the seemingly physical FORMS of “bad things” in this world as much as anything - you should be able to find a way to laugh at it and see it as affirming a mental purpose of peace.

In terms of judgement, meaning, purpose, evaluations of whether its good or bad, judging whether it is spiritual or not, an ego thing or not, more or less ego based, etc…. that’s all mental stuff happening on a separate level from the physical. We have to give stuff all the meaning it has because it has none of its own. It’s a meaningless world. It has many different forms and we seem to prefer some over others, but truly we are not supposed to. The form illusions takes is not supposed to sway us whatsoever.

So then it comes down to the mind’s USE of the form, the PURPOSE it gives it from a higher level. What is it for. What meaning do we give TO it. What goal will we use it to serve? Who are we looking at it with - ego or holy spirit? You could say that a physical war could be used by the holy spirit’s vantage point to welcome laughter and happiness, just as much as you could say that a happy dance with hugs and kisses could be used by the ego as a sign of treachery and betrayal and conflict.

We’re not supposed to be dividing up the world based on what FORM things take, whatever category we put those forms into, or what meanings we give to those categories. Otherwise we start to try to “spiritualize form”, by saying that certain behaviors, acts, physical movements, styles, wardrobe choices, words, whatever, are somehow “more spiritual”. And before long we’re creating an illusion of being “physically spiritual.”

Of course a mind at peace, coming from Holy Spirit, may well tend to be guided to act in a certain way, to avoid certain things, or to do other things. But the things that are done are done for a higher purpose. And the form that these things appear to take may be misunderstood as “not looking spiritual.” There could be a higher purpose at work even if on the surface something does not “look spiritual.” Who are we to judge anything?

Can physical forms of separation and attack be AVOIDED in this world? Probably not. No matter what you eat, no matter how you move, what you do, it’s all still technically unreality and an attack on truth. Forms of sin and weird strange behaviors. You can’t avoid it. The whole system is one of death. But you can change how you look at it, what meaning you give to it, and what you make of it. And that’s all you can do with it. See it differently.

The key to seeing it differently is detaching from HOW IT LOOKS, disregarding the form, not trying to make the form take on a certain shape in order to be more spiritual, and not feeling guilty about what form it does take. Even going to the toilet is technically an act of war on the physical level. Nature’s nature is to devour. Everything you eat requires something else to starve. There is no escape from problems in this world. But you can change your mind about it and how you use it.

To believe God created Earth or that Earth is worth keeping, is clearly in contradiction to what the course says about the earth, frequently contrasting it as being the OPPOSITE of heaven and not something worthy of the Son of God. The world seen with forgiving eyes might well be "lovely", but it’s still not heaven.

Here is how the Course speaks of the "Earth"... (with my emphasis and minor comments)...

"Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in HEAVEN, so on EARTH (does not mean heaven=earth, it means you have the power to create here). Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil HEAVEN of Your Love, where EARTH WILL DISAPPEAR, and separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God"

"His little life on EARTH was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the HELL YOU MADE (earth) to God."

"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in HEAVEN AND EARTH (separate places). My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision."

"God has one Son, and He is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH (separate places)."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is NO PARALLEL in your experience of the world (earth) to help you understand it. There is NOTHING ON EARTH with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly."

"It is our function to remember Him (God) ON EARTH as it is given us to be His own completion IN REALITY (not on earth). So let us not forget our goal is shared. For it is that remembrance which contains the memory of God, and points the way to Him and TO THE HEAVEN (pointed to away from the Earth) of His peace"

"Father, IN HEAVEN it is different, for there, there are no needs. But HERE ON EARTH (which is not heaven) the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? (references to earth) Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts BEYOND the worth of ANYTHING ON EARTH. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with HEAVEN’S treasures, WHICH ALONE ARE REAL (earth’s treasure are dreams and illusions). Thus is the law of love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You (reference to ascension!)."

"Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while HEAVEN’s Son is born. Let EARTHLY sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed DISAPPEAR."

"(speaking of true perception/real world...)EARTH is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world (earth) that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, ETERNITY HAS SHINED AWAY THE WORLD (illusion of earth), and only HEAVEN now exists at all."

"(talking about Holy Spirit) His Words will work. His Words will save. His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this EARTH (cus otherwise it sucks). His Words are born in God, and come to you with HEAVEN’S love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of HEAVEN, for these are the words which all merge as one at last"

"Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to HEAVEN’s GATE; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God (to take you home to heaven). How far are we progressing now from EARTH (something you do not want!)! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!"

""I will forgive and this will DISAPPEAR." To every apprehension, every care, every form of suffering repeat these selfsame words. And then you hold the key that opens HEAVEN’s GATE, and brings the Love of God the Father down to EARTH at last (extending Holy Spirit temporarily), to raise it up to HEAVEN. God will take this final step Himself. Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him."

"Forgiveness represents your function here (on earth). It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon HEAVEN (opposite to earth where forgiveness is needed)? Yet on EARTH you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your RETURN (to heaven) to be acknowledged, not to be complete. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the WORLD (definitely talking about earth here). It has no meaning here (earth is meaningless). Forgiveness is the closest it (heaven) can come to EARTH. For being HEAVEN-BORNE, it has no form at all. (Earth, place of forms, is not heaven)"

"All power is given you in EARTH and HEAVEN (two distinct places apparently). There is nothing that you cannot do."

"Repeat the Name of God and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name and all the tiny, nameless things on EARTH slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."

"There is one major difference in the role of HEAVEN’s messengers which sets them off from those the world (earth) appoints. The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like EARTHLY messengers (but only like, not the same as), they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of HEAVEN’s CHILDREN and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game UPON THIS EARTH And then we GO (to heaven) to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

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

"You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines IN HEAVEN so your joy ON EARTH calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you (in heaven) in God’s plan"

"How could there be a meeting place at all where EARTH AND HEAVEN can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? (Clearly they cannot both exist) The mind that sees illusions (earth) thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down UPON THE EARTH after HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is ETERNAL and has never changed. He was "called down upon the EARTH" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

"There IS no change in immortality, and HEAVEN knows it not. Yet here on EARTH (place that changes), it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things"

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into HEAVEN, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes HOME. The incomplete is made complete again, and HEAVEN’s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it."

....

I pulled the quotes from a searchable urtext version. There are MANY MORE references to being "in heaven" versus "on earth", making it clear and obvious they are both distinct and OPPOSITE, and that only heaven is real, only heaven is what you want, and only heaven is befitting the Son of God.

God did not create the earth. This world is not our home. There is no life outside of heaven! The world - earth - holds nothing that we want. There is no world (earth). A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world (earth) (beacuse Heaven is FAR BETTER!) :-) Heaven is EVERYTHING, Earth is NOTHING.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Golden Rule states that whatever is true of one Son of God is true of another. Because all of God's children are perfect equals. This means that anything true of you is true of the entire sonship. You are created in the likeness of God and so what is true of God is true of you and all brothers and all creations. This rule, really a law, is always in effect regardless of how awake you are.

What this means is that in this world, when you believe you are guilty, you MUST also believe that everyone else is guilty. This rule is a LAW of God. It cannot be broken. But you can be deceived in believing it is not applying.

We talk a lot about projecting your stuff and then taking it back, as if to say, there is something confined to myself that I am ONLY doing to myself. We talk about being responsible for this self-attack, that all attack is self-made and we're not really attacking anyone else. We also talk about how I am the one who needs forgiveness and so on.

But there is something happening as a result of the Golden Rule. IF I attack myself, I AM attempting to also attack my brother. If I see myself as guilty, I MUST believe the whole sonship is guilty. If I find myself unworthy of love, I will believe everyone is unworthy of love. Whatever I see in my brother is a reflection of my own attitude about myself. Which means if I have attacked myself, I MUST also be attacking them.

This extends also to sickness, because while many believe that "only I am sick" or "the sickness is only in my body", as if separated off from others, the fact is that sickness is a two-sided affair. It arises because you accuse your brother of sin, which is an attack on him. Using the body to attack through, your body becomes sick. Your mind therefore HAS to believe that BOTH you and your brother are sick.

This also plays out on the level of relationship because when you are regarding your brother as being as holy as you are, you are in a holy relationship with them, seeing your own holiness in them. When you separate off, by ceasing to extend your mind to them, a gap forms in between you both, coming between you. It doesn't just separate you off from them, it also separates them off from you. It's a two-sided wall. What applies to you applies to them.

So what we have to realize is, while it's definitely beneficial to look at what we are doing "only to ourselves", we have to remember nothing ever really applies only to ourselves. Which means that if we are indeed in any kind of ego state, having any kind of guilt or sin belief, some aspect of that belief IS directed at our brothers. If we are attacking "only ourselves", we ALSO are attacking others.

This is part of the unhealed healer as well. If I have not received love, and therefore cannot give it, and therefore am unhealed, because I have guilt in me, I am going to have to see that guilt in everyone. And seeing it there, I will perhaps disassociate and think it's someone else's problem that I need to save them from. That blindness, that separation thought, where you think something applies to you and not them, or applies to them and not you, that is always ego. And there is temptation in the whole "it's all my own stuff" approach to not realize that it's not JUST about you as a "separate" mind.

Shifting blame from someone else back onto yourself does not heal it. It's a step in the right direction because it's sort of "coming from you", but WHERE are you? You think you are in a body, separated off from others. Assuming this is true, you will think your attitudes and your self attack are contained within the confines of your body/mind. That its inside you, not outside, and not in another. This is actually a false premise based on the belief that you fundamentally are a separated-off isolated mind-container.

Your mind is not really, ultimately, isolated to your body. That's part of the illusion. Your mind is shared with others, it is IN your brother, and it is everywhere. Your nature is to be an omnipresent spirit, like God. So when you are thinking in terms of, its mine, or its in me, or I am doing it only to myself, that still has isolation and separation in it. It doesn't mean that the problem is confined to the insides of your mind-body association.

It would actually be more accurate to say, the mind that is mine, which is united with my brothers and is everywhere and in all people, is temporarily believing that the entire sonship is under attack. I am temporarily coming between myself and everyone. My attack thoughts are against myself and them. Separation is coming between me and everyone. I am trying to apply unlove to the whole sonship to bring us all down together. My attack is upon the whole Kingdom. I am still thinking the same of everyone else that I think of myself.

So in this we start to realize, that while it's important I own what I'm doing to myself, I have to also realize that included in "what I'm doing" is actually an attempted attack on others as well. "You but accuse your brothers of your own sin" and "it can be but myself I crucify" are helpful in realizing that you are included in what's being attacked, and in fact that you ARE only really doing this to yourself (because your brother cannot be attacked because he's real). But as you crucify yourself, YOU DO attempt to crucify everyone.

This leads to the uncovering of the "second kind of scapegoating". Which is, the aspect of "what I am doing to others". Most often we are reacting to and trying to overcome "what they are doing to me". To blame them for attacking us. But let's say that this form of scapegoating is actually a disguise. It's a way to pretend that YOU are not doing anything TO THEM. That you are not the attacker. While yes, you are actually attacking only yourself, in truth, you ARE trying to attack everyone if you believe in sin. Including God.

And to project this and disown it is an attempt to cover this up and make out that someone else is the attacker and not you. To take back the projected sin means taking back the identification of WHO is doing the attacking, and this attacking is an "act" that comes out of someone and goes toward another. It's not just some lump of sin that sits there idly. It's not a commodity that you shuffle around or displace like "some guilt". We are either actively attacking others or believing they are actively attacking us.

So if we get honest, we're going to find out, that all our attack thoughts are kind of a form of murderousness, toward everything - me, my brothers, the world, and God. If I am projecting guilt in the first place, I am actually trying to attack. When I do not see the real world, I am attacking it. As Jesus says: "You attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it." and "God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. and "Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace."

So if you look at what sin is all about, it basically is "attack" or attempted attack. Attack thoughts. Judgement. The attempt to separate, push away, deny, reject, unlove, to cause irreversible damage to something in an effort to make it go away, to destroy it. It's part of the ego's murderous thought system. "What is not love is murder" says the same thing. And actually makes it very clear. If we are not being loving, which means to ourselves AND others, per the Golden Rule, we ARE attempting to be murderous towards ourselves AND others.

This is uncomfortable to look at because it reveals that we cannot have ego beliefs in "self attack" going on in our minds WITHOUT believing they also apply to everyone else. Whatever I see in myself I will see in everyone. As I enter into any sin or guilt, I am trying to separate, which means I am attacking both myself and others. As an unhealed healer, I will attempt to heal by attacking, by trying to give what I do not have, and by therefore giving attack as a remedy. And of course this cannot heal. Those who are not healed cannot heal.

So we have to get in touch with this. Look at it. What I'm doing to myself, I am trying to also do to others. What I think applies to me, I also think applies to everyone. Even if in my state of denial and unconsciousness, I am not aware that I think this. Because the ego's states of mind are always an imbalance where you think it applies to me not them, or them not me. That's part of the disassociation, which is the separation idea.

The ego is the denial of the Golden Rule, but denial does not overthrow the law. The law still applies at all times even as the ego does its thing. Everything always applies to everyone. When I think it does not apply to me, it does, but this also doesn't mean that because it applies to me, it doesn't apply to others. Ego is always the temptation to believe something is special or true of me that isn't applying to everyone. And "special forgiveness" of "only myself" is not forgiveness of the sonship.

Transitioning from ego thinking to Holy Spirit thinking entails shifting from the whole "me vs them" to "all of us". Wrong mindedness means I think things do not apply to everyone equally. Right mindedness means I recognize everything applies equally to everyone. So to get to right mindedness I'm going to have to admit along the way that I am actually trying to attack BOTH myself and others. What I'm trying to do to them I am doing to myself. We BOTH need forgiveness. We BOTH need to be recognized as innocent. And I need to learn to stop attacking BOTH of us.

Thinking that you only attack yourself can be a trap. It can disguise and hide the fact that you also think poorly of others. Or that you are secretly attacking them while trying to save them. It can cover up the fact that if you are attacking at all, you are also attacking everyone. Yet recognizing you are attacking everyone can also be a trap, because it can induce more guilt. You shouldn't be trying to "not attack" on the basis that you would feel guilty for doing so. And you don't need to.

All we really need is awareness. In awareness, you know that you are in your brother. There is an automatic vested interest in not attacking them, IF you are aware that you literally cannot do it without attacking yourself. It's the unawareness that you are included in the attack that makes you believe murder is justified and that you can get away with it without experiencing any effects. If you were aware of and not in denial of the Golden Rule, it would leave absolutely no room for attack of any kind, because to attack when you know it's yourself you attack would be insane.

If I am believing in attack I will attack myself and all of creation.

If I am only loving I will love myself and all of creation.

Father let me not attack myself or my brothers today and let us all be joined in complete holiness and unified will that you may resurrect us into your light and heal the entire sonship as one.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."