Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.
But this is actually the ego in action. It wants to get rid of these things because there is a potential that these things might be used to wake you up.
So long as you're in the midst of a lesson, in which something seems to be against your will, you will have this sense of "I don't want this and it shouldn't be happening". This is the ego's reaction. It does not want you to use this opportunity for forgiveness. It does not want you to learn the lesson.
Not that the ego is arbitrarily against you. You made it and you asked it to do this for you. You wanted it to deflect you away from sources of healing, from anything that might trigger an awakening to truth. You wanted it to keep telling you that stuff isn't supposed to happen to you, and you wanted it to make you see things as if they are happening against your will. That way you could stay asleep.
But each time you try to 'get rid of' what you do not like, or be free of a lesson, or fix a problem, or make a bad person go away, or stop something from happening, you're really using ego denial. And you do this in the name of spirituality.
You think it is spiritual to have a life where there are no problems, where nothing is happening to you, where you have no enemies, where everything goes well, where people seem to just adore you, and where you aren't hurt or offended by anyone. I mean, as a goal that's great... That could be true of real spirituality, but the ego wants this goal WITHOUT awakening.
So that means, getting rid of all protagonists, all offenders, all enemies, and all threats. It tells you you shouldn't be afraid and that fear is a bad thing. It tells you not to be guilty. It even tells you you should be constantly happly or people-pleasing. These are all deceptive ways the ego gets you to NOT deal with your shit, and it forms a spiritualized ego.
When you are afraid, that's very good, because you are being confronted with the results of some belief that you have and it's coming into your awareness. This is a great opportunity. Instead of the fear hiding out in the back of your mind, it's being brought into awareness. You don't like it, for sure, but recognize it is an opportunity because now some normally hidden dark shit has come out into the open where you can take a look at it.
It's all about how you use things - whether you use it to deny your shit or use it to bring light to your shit and undo it. So you could take the fact you're scared as a great opportunity to look at WHY you are scared, rather than to just want the fear to go away. It's pretty normal to want the fear to go away, but it's not healthy. It is healthier to take a look at it with Holy Spirit and find out why you are afraid... What guilt is the fear based on? What's the deeper cause of it? Why do you want it? How's it serving you to keep you in the dark? Where is the so-called truth that surrounds the fear to make it seem justified? What is the real truth of this situation?
Its the same with feeling guilty, upset, angry, offended, whatever... Each time this stuff comes to your awareness it's a great opportunity to heal and undo. So don't try to hide this stuff away. Don't shove it back down or want to get rid of it or to avoid it. And don't blame people for triggering it off - they're trying to help you to look at the stuff you don't want to look at. You're better off dealing with it and then being done with it, rather than constantly hiding from it and feeling its torment in the back of your mind, only to keep resurfacing saying "please acknowledge me and recognize my message to help you grow, and please use me for awakening."
This is all great material. Great opportunities to make progress. It's hard work but it's worth it, and it's far better for you than to want to just keep making this stuff go away. You can be free of it permanently if you deal with it properly and heal it. Isn't that better?
Perhaps rather than say everything in this world dies, which really only describes one aspect of it which seems to shut out the 'living' part of it ..... we should say instead, everything in this world changes. It's a place of change, in which everything is constantly transforming. Nothing stays the same. Everything is constantly in a state of turning into something else. Almost like it has a curse upon it which forces everything to stop being itself and transition into something different and strange.
The sperms and eggs turn into babies which turn into children and adults and old people and decayed corpses and compost and plants. It all just keeps changing. Change encompasses both birth and death and every illusion. Things becoming other things, transitioning between things, never stopping forever to be anything permanent. Always temporary, always shifting and modifying and losing itself. It's an entire system of things becoming unrecognisable, where truths turn to lies and everything becomes lost.
Seeds become plants which become flowers which become seeds which become dried up leaves which become soil which join again with seeds to become plants. It all just keeps changing all the time. It's not just that things die, because thing are also 'born', but all things here are encompassed by change. Nothing stable, nothing permanent, nothing trustable, nothing reliable, nothing consistent, nothing constantly true, nothing that is ever anything for very long.
All things that seem to be here now will not be here at some point, when time has converted them into who knows what like a systemic disfigurement and a constant distortion of reality. The world has always been this way and always will be until it disappears someday. Don't expect ANYTHING in this world to last forever. Illusions come and go, but what is of God is eternal and never changes and is not a world of change.
"The shifts and change are what the dream is made of."
"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain."
"Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge."
"Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness."
"The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests, and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment, and grow dim, as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness, darkness and light, sweep constantly across your minds. The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order which YOU establish. The very fact that you can DO this, and bring ANY order into chaos, shows you that you are NOT an ego, and that MORE than an ego MUST be in you. For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible."
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur."
The opposite of the ego’s spiritual path, is to acknowledge what you already have.
Everything about "seek and do not find" ensures you move away from God, truth, Self and life, trying to find what you already actually have.
If we could get this, it boils down to something extremely simple:
You already have everything.
You lack nothing, you are already perfect, you are already innocent and holy, you already have divine health, and you are already whole.
God has guaranteed you have everything worth having forever. It cannot be lost or taken away. It has been given freely and fully. Your very life, as a Son of God, is the greatest Gift of all.
As Jesus says, there is nothing He has which has not been given by God, and God has also given it to you. The only difference between Him and you is that you have ‘other stuff’ as well, which you think you need or want.
So the only question here is, what is this other stuff you are trying to want or think you need, which you have made up the meaning and value of, and do you really want it?
If you were to want only what God has given, you would have no needs. Which is quite a strange paradox, because it may seem to the ego that having what God has given is not enough, or you’d be missing something. But strangely, by having only what is real, you automatically uncreated all artificial needs for things that you thought you lacked.
It comes down to the simple fact that by trying to be separate from God, you invent artificial needs that you did not even have before, and then set about trying to fill those needs through external searching.
The needs are based purely on the absence of God. And in truth, only the presence of God can fulfill those needs. There is no other source of what God is offering: real love, permanence, eternal life.
So we have this one choice. Do I want God to be the one who supplies everything I could possibly need or want? Or do I want to keep my artificial needs and attempt to get them supplied from outside of myself?
Slight hint: trying to supply these needs by myself is guaranteed to always fail.
Only God can fill God’s shoes.
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
Nothing belongs to you exclusively. Everything is shared by everyone inclusively. This is the law of God.
"We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth."
"what is Yours belongs to me as well"
"As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me."
"We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth."
"everything WE do belongs to you as well"
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part."
"Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son."
"And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."
"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."
You have nothing that is yours alone. Which means you have nothing special or exclusive or just for you. This means you aren't special, have not been granted special favor, and don't have any treasures that belong just to you. This however doesn't mean you have nothing at all, because in fact you share everything with everyone. God's Kingdom is not a place of exclusive ownership. It's kind of like an open buffet. Everyone is welcome, everything is for everyone, everything belongs to everyone, and everyone has simultaneous access to everything. It's completely open and unlimited.
"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."
God who is complete, cannot add anything to himself. He is already infinite and everywhere. He is kind of like a closed system that way. However, all parts of God host all of God, because every part of God is God. And this means every part of God shares the whole of God. All of God belongs to every part of God, and every part of God is whole.
God can therefore create by sharing himself. He hosts his creations within his own being, literally sharing his own existence. But this requires that anything he creates, must be created to purely and completely share all of himself. Any created being must have full access to everything God has, and must inherit everything from him.
Inheriting from God does not mean you receive a windfall that's exclusively just for you. It's not like winning the lottery. Everything that exists still belongs to God, and is him. But he creates you by allowing you to share everything he has. He gives himself to you in your creation. You inherit God, and inherit everything from God, but God is a co-owner of everything he shares.
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him."
"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever."
"And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him."
"The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."
This means that you are created to share everything, and the only way you can exist at all is if you share absolutely everything. God cannot add anything onto the outside of himself, so can only share what is inside of himself. You are hosted by God within his own being, and your entire function must be to share everything openly and fully. Only by sharing it can you have it at all, and you must be willing to give it all in order to have it.
This creates an environment in the Kingdom that we might describe as a totally open society. It's a relationship in which everyone has total full access to everything at all times. Everyone has all of God. Everyone is plugged into God. Everyone has FULL access to everything that exists, simultaneously and in parallel. One being having full access does not deprive any other being any kind of access. Their access overlaps.
"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."
"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
You can exist only if God shares everything that exists with you. And now both of you have everything that already exists. And you can only exist if you are willing to fully share everything that exists with everyone else. Which means that no-one anywhere in the Kingdom has anything that anyone else lacks, and no-one lacks anything that anyone else has. Everything belongs to everyone forever.
This also leads to the fact that no-one can have anything that belongs ONLY to them. You have absolutely nothing that is yours alone. The ego begs to differ, because "the ego is the idea of selfishness." It is the part of you that believes in specialness and in exclusivity. It wants to have everything for itself, such that it shares nothing with anyone. The ego is the antithesis of sharing and openness, and wants exclusive rights, ownership and control. It was the desire not to share that led to the separation. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."
What this leads to is the truth that, in and of yourself, by yourself, alone, you have absolutely NOTHING that belongs exclusively to you. Nothing you can put your name tag on, nothing you can say is legally yours, nothing that is just yours and no-one else's. If it seems that you have such things, possessions, toys, clothes, cars, houses, bodies, whatever, which seem to be exclusively "yours", and no-one else's, then you are aligned with the ego.
We need to recognize that in and of our own selves, we can do nothing. We have no life without God. We have no power without God. We have NOTHING without God. You don't even have any existence without God. You have nothing that is personal just to you which is yours alone. Nothing belongs just to you. In effect, you are utterly powerless and tiny and weak and afraid and empty and non-existent if it all boils down to "what is only mine".
"I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."
"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength."
"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."
This is where it becomes interesting. You alone, on your own, in isolation, have absolutely NOTHING. That is to say, ignoring God for a moment, ignoring your inheritance, ignoring anything that anyone else has, you actually have absolutely ZERO "for yourself'. Zero that is "of you". Nothing that has been sourced in you, that you have invented, within yourself, which is unshared or belongs to you alone.
That really means that you don't have any kind of special talents or abilities that can be said to "make you unique". You don't have any special "super powers" that others lack. You don't have any exclusive "something", some kind of special secret treasure, that no-one else has. You don't have any possessions that really are yours alone, which is easily proven by the fact that anyone can take them away from you, and they all can be lost, because they were never really yours to begin with.
So you are empty. Without God, you are nothing. Without God you don't even have existence. HOWEVER, you are not without God. If you are willing to go beyond your ego, you in fact regain access to your inheritance. You become once again a member of the Sonship. You open up to receiving your inheritance, which is everything real, in exchange for giving up the NOTHING that you have otherwise. "We will gain EVERYTHING by giving HIM the power and the
glory, and keeping NO illusions of where they are."
"As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"
"for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing" "Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"
"Of yourself you can do none of these things."
"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light."
So here are your options. On the one hand you have what the ego is offering, which is absolutely nothing, disguised as something special and rare, something which is exclusive just for you, something special, which makes you important and unique and different. But which really is made of nothing at all, and is not something you can really have, nor can it last forever. And by trying to have it, you may seem to gain the fictional world, and lose your soul.
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" The alternative on offer, is that you are invited as a guest to join in the Kingdom of God, in which you are allowed to participate openly, freely, and fully. Provided that you are willing to share everything that exists with everyone. And provided you are willing to share your entire self with everyone. And provided you are willing to grant everyone total free access to everything at all times.
And provided you do not in any way attempt to hoard anything for yourself, to have any trace of selfishness, nor to regard anything as belonging ONLY to you. That nothing belongs ONLY to you doesn't mean you have nothing, only that what you HAVE isn't ONLY yours to have and must be shared. You DO have power, but it only so long as you acknowledge that you SHARE this power with God and with everyone. To take it away from them, to have it just for you, is to strip it from yourself and be powerless.
Provided you are willing to enter into a relationship with the whole sonship, where everything belongs to everyone equally, then you can enter the Kingdom of God. To receive your inheritance isn't to receive a big special christmas gift that no-one else gets to play with. All things that are real, that you can actually HAVE, have to belong to everyone. It belongs to God, it belongs to you, AND it belongs to all your brothers. And everyone can access all of it all the time at the same time. "To have all, give all to all."
So you can either have basically nothing for yourself, disguised as receiving the illusory riches of the world, which appear to be valuable bullshit items that you don't even really want, and which have no real value, but which appear to be extremely valuable treasures. Or, you can openly share non-exclusive rights with everyone, to own ALL of the Kingdom of God, ALONG WITH God and with everyone else, in which everything belongs to everyone.
The gifts of God are given in order to "passed forward". He gives you the power to create, so that you can share and give what you have been given. Quite simply, "give what you have been given" is the only rule of the system. Give the love that God has given you. Nothing is ever given to just you alone, it is given FOR everyone.
"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."
"Healing must be for everyone"
"It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you."
"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."
"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."
"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."
"Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons?"
"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."
"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE."
Quite simply, you either can be utterly powerless, afraid, weak, lacking, deprived, miserable, sick, unhappy, lost, desperate, improverished, bereft, and empty, OR .... you can acknowledge that the ONLY real thing you can HAVE is everything God has given already, and you can ONLY have it IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SHARE IT. Be selfish and end up alone and with nothing, or share with everyone and gain everything there is to have.
You can truly have what EVERYONE has, and only by ackowledging that it belong to them as well, OR you will end up empty handed. To try to take possession of some part of heaven for yourself, all of heaven will slip through your fingers. The more you try to own something, the less you have it. The more you try to depend on yourself alone, the less you become able to deal with life. The more you try to "go it alone", the more helpless you become.
God is your strength! His shared strength is literally YOUR strength. Without God, you have no strength at all. Of yourself you are nothing and have nothing. He is the battery-pack which fuels your power. However, because you are OF GOD, you HAVE EVERYTHING AND ARE EVERYTHING. God's power belongs to you, God's life belongs to you, God's entire creation belongs to you.
Everything real is YOURS. It is not just partly yours, it is FULLY yours. But it is also fully everyone's. You cannot have it by grasping for it to keep it for yourself, you can ONLY have it by acknowledging that it is EVERYONE'S RIGHT. And therefore you have to be open to GIVING IT. You must give what you have received, be open to sharing what you have, and everything must belong to everyone.
To admit that you have nothing SPECIAL about you, is humility. But this does not leave you powerless. It simply leaves you without a SPECIAL power that you invented. It strips you of your "super powers", your fictional sense of personal strength, and your illusion that you can do this ON YOUR OWN. You cannot do ANYTHING on your own. You are helpless and powerless on your own. The ONLY way you can live at all is to join with God and let him help you.
This is why you have to surrender your ego. You simply can't do life by yourself. When you try to you will depend on your own exclusive strength, which is pitiful at best and nothing at worst. And you will not be able to deal with anything. Only WITH God do you have stength. Only WITH God do you have anything at all! But with God, you are ALL POWERFUL. With God, you CAN DO ANYTHING.
"You can do ANYTHING I ask." "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "Do his works." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."
"He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. 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. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"It knows that it is EVERYWHERE, just as it has EVERYTHING and FOREVER." "No-one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he value the body's offerings."
"Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special."
"No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT."
"Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."
"Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness."
"When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary."
"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them."
I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.
All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.
I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!
The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.
It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.
There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.
All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.
It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.
Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.
The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.
It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?
The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.
The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.
Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.
The ego mind is in the business of seeking to try to find whatever it is that it believes you do not have.
And that is pretty much everything, because the ego is quite adamant that you are totally empty and devoid of all-that-is and therefore MUST go off on a lonesome journey to try to REPLACE it.
And in that journey, you will attempt to replace it with things, stuff, artificial idols, false values, etc... which attempt to REPLACE what the ego says you lost.... i.e. replace it with something ELSE. You want something else instead of the real thing because you believe you CANNOT HAVE the real thing, so have to SETTLE for substitutes (unworthiness).
But this other 'stuff' that you try to replace God with, does not really satisfy you like God does. So you really continue to feel empty.
There are a lot of business people especially who are very much excited about the pursuit of money and riches or fame and fortune, who believe that they ACTUALLY WILL FIND and CAN ACQUIRE what it is they are lacking. Their sense of lack is so great, that they are profoundly COMPELLED to seek strongly. And with a passion.
And in so doing they may indeed seem to find a lot of success in business. But at some point, they may also find, that they have really not found a solution to the emptiness inside. They've tried to replace the need for God with a need for other stuff, thinking that to get other stuff fills the hole, but it doesn't work. There is still an emptiness. And this is why many people then eventually throw in the towel and realize that they need something more meaningful in their lives than shallow accumulation of wealth.
I know someone personally actually who was very successful in business and very driven and passionate about it, making a lot of money and having all the gifts of a wealthy life etc, and pretty much everyone assessed that he was not really a very spiritual person and seemed to be quite strongly egotistical... and then later in life he hit this very same realization that all of this 'stuff' wasn't getting rid of the empty void inside. He had some kind of breakdown/breakthrough and realized that all of that pursuit and seeking did not really 'work' and that he needed a deeper meaning. And so began his sudden 'flip' into the pursuit of spirituality and a deeper truth.
The problem is, once we realize that "the world holds nothing that I want" - ACIM - we might unfortunately flip into a continued ego activity of "seeking for the truth". The presence of the seeking is still strong, and the subject matter of the seeking has changed to trying to find meaning and truth, but it's still actually the intense seeking that is the problem itself. And as you seek, you may seem to find, or at least take steps closer to the truth. But to really find the truth, you have to get DONE WITH SEEKING.
You only sought in the first place due to the profound sense of emptiness and lack of God and separation from the awareness of His presence. So THAT has to be healed and undone. And then the truth will be revealed, that you do not need to seek for God at all because GOD IS HERE!
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
Jesus is asking us to be fully responsible for everything we experience.
It means you cannot ever again be a victim in any way.
It means nothing happens to us against our will.
It means if we decide something, it happens. If we don't, it doesn't.
It means the body and its condition are exactly what we asked for and were given.
It means that everything that happens around us is what we explicitly asked for and are given. That all prayers are answered.
It means everything you feel, everything your body is doing, is coming from you. Directly.
It means there is no cause in the world able to do anything to you whatsoever against your will.
It means absolutely everything that you do and experience is 100% deliberate, intentional, on purpose, and there are no flaws, no accidents, no mistakes, and everything is exactly the way you want it.
It means you have freedom of choice, because choosing one thing gives you that one thing, and choosing something else gives that to you also.
It also means that whatever you decide to perceive, you will perceive. Whatever you want to see with your perception, you will project so that you can see it. Literally, projecting objects out of thin air.
It means nothing can attack you and nothing can affect you and you cannot be sick nor can you die and the body can be used to demonstrate this, proving that the Son of God cannot have anything happen to him against his will.
It means you do not ask questions, you express. You create. You create (or make) whatever it is you want to create (with or without God's will). You paint pictures. You do not ask pictures to change, in that they might decide not to. You put there what you want to see. You create what you will experience.
It means projection makes perception because you first project and then you perceive what you have projected. You project whatever you want to see. If you want to see an entire planet you will project an entire planet, "making it" in your dream. But when you are done projecting and perceiving, you will stop doing that, and it will disappear.
It means when you make a decision, the consequences are immediate and permanent, and there is no ifs or buts, no fears or doubts, no uncertainty. God's will BE DONE. What God wills CANNOT BE DENIED.
It means that because you have free will, whatever you ask for you will be given. You will never fail to be given what you ask for. Only what you ask for will be all that is given to you. And nothing that you receive will ever be something you did not ask for.
It also means that the world is not causing you, God is not attacking you, other people are not doing anything to you, no-one can hurt you, you MUST be invulnerable, and you cannot die.
It therefore also means that YOU MADE sickness and death and can therefore ABOLISH both, in yourself and in another IF they are willing to ask for help. This means you do not have to go through death if you do not choose to do so, and you would only choose to do so to attempt to prove you can be hurt against your will, which is a bullshit lie.
It also means other people with free will are 100% responsible for EVERYTHING they experience, there is nothing you can do to them, you cannot hurt them, you cannot attack them, you cannot judge them, you cannot forgive them, and they are absolutely immune to anything you express, other than your sharing of love.
It also means, therefore, that anyone's victimhood or sob story or justifications for revenge or reasons to be right or wrong or ego reactions or upset emotions or pain or suffering or sickness, which are all acts of IRRESPONSIBILITY, are attempts to get rid of ourselves and to disown who we are, denying the ABSOLUTE POWER that we share with God.
It also means, that nothing real can be threatened! Reality could only possibly attempt to threaten itself, and if it does so, it will make only illusions of threat - pretend threat - because reality cannot be threatened, and nothing can happen to it against its will.
Can you sense the absolute explicit deliberateness of this? This is the thought system of a miracle worker. This is the kind of belief about ourselves that we need to have, or rather, to get rid of the belief that things happen for reasons OTHER THAN yourself. This is RIGHT MINDED THINKING.
The secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. That's because of all of the above. NOTHING can happen to you against your will. No-one can die without choosing to do so. No-one can suffer or be sick without choosing to do so. No-one is a victim of anyone else. No-one can be hurt against their will. No-one can show "effects" caused by anyone or anything else, unless they themselves PUT the effects into their own body to pretend that someone else put them there.
You are not at the effect of the world you see. You are not a victim of the world. No-one can suffer without his own consent. The secret to salvation is that you are doing all of this to yourself, including making your body sick and die, to try to prove you are not doing it to yourself. No-one needs to die. The dream of separation is NOT left by death, only by THIS TRUTH.
Total absolute responsibility for everything makes you IMMORTAL, INNOCENT, INVULNERABLE, and incapable of death.
You are in a dream world. Everything here is symbolic. Nothing that appears visible is whole, because symbols are not the whole of something. Symbols represent something beyond themselves, and all physical matter is symbolic of something greater.
Physical matter, at all, is symbolic of the idea of separation and fragmentation. The multitude. The opposite of oneness.
The physical body is symbolic of the idea that you are separated from the whole and are only a part of it.
Outer space is symbolic of the unconscious mind in which anti-matter is unconscious guilt, and stars are all that's left of a light which was once everywhere.
All bodies, be they stars or planets or people or animals, are symbolic of the ego, individuate identities roaming around cut off from the rest.
Clouds, above which the sun shines, are symbolic of blocks to awareness, in which sunlight on a clear day is symbolic of seeing clearly.
Light and darkness, visibility and shadows, are symbolic of the polarization of good vs bad, persona and shadow, as well as symbolic of the light of truth vs the obstruction of darkness.
Even in the physical world, when light shines, it obliterates the darkness, being symbolic of the way that the light of truth shines away illusions.
Things that happen in the world are symbolic as well, being shifts in symbolism and psychological content, and this is also why most of your dreams at night become even more symbolic representations of what happened in the day.
Waking in the morning is symbolic of awakening from unconsciousness and sleep. Going to sleep at night is symbolic of going into unconsciousness and dreaming of a world that doesn't exist.
The people you meet are symbolic of other stuff in your life. Phases of life are symbolic. Certain events happening and significant life changes are symbolic.
The sky is symbolic of heaven, the Earth symbolic of hell.
Each time that you experience rejection or abandonment or separation, it is symbolic of the separation from God.
Each time that you experience a sense of loss and grief, it is symbolic of the loss of God.
Each time that something suddenly comes out of the blue and changes things for the worse, it is symbolic of the moment of the separation from God and the sudden entry into terror and sin.
Everytime something is born or dies, it symbolizes the limitation of form and the fact that it must have a beginning and and, making it inherently mortal.
Each time there is intense weather and storms, it is symbolic of stormy attitudes in the public and the threat of punishment.
Each time someone says a prayer, it is symbolic of commitment to God and an acknowledgement of reality.
Birth is symbolic of the separation from God. Death is symbolic of succeeding in separating from God.
Pretty much everything that you do in your so-called physical life is SYMBOLIC. Your body is MADE of a symbol. All of the events in your life are symbolic. It all represents ideas and concepts in the greater mind.
By not realizing that everything going on in your life is symbolic, and that this is entirely a DREAM, and that there is not ANYTHING that isnt symbolic, you instead focus on appearances of objects and events, as though you're seeing the entirety of what it is. This means you are turning symbols into 'things' in their own right, as though they don't allude to anything else and really have no symbolic meaning. You look at meaningless "form" in this way and then project other meanings onto it, but the only reason you think it is meaningless is because you are in denial that you're in a symbolic dream.
All around you everything that's happening right now is symbolic. All of the objects in your room are symbolic or representative of something. Every event that happened today was symbolic of the separation from God. Every time something "happened" in form it was symbolic of sin happening, proving your guilt.
This world is not a world of end results or finite objects or mortal bodies or stuff that is "complete" in its own right. Nothing is WHOLE here. Everything is a symbol, and is less than whole, and less than perfect. There is stuff missing that you do not see. There is more than meets the eye.
If you look into it, you might start to recognize some of the symbols in your life, that certain people are symbolic of other people, or that certain relationships are symbolic of certain ways that you are relating to God. You think this world is physically real and objective and final. It is not at all. It is a dream, and dreams are always made of symbols, meaning that there is always something ELSE that they're not showing you. To OVERLOOK the symbols, to forgive, and to shift awareness to the WHOLE MEANING, awakens you from the dream.
Sweet dreams.
Ok. Think about all the ways that people try to understand ACIM. All the opinions. All the "figuring out" what it means. All the discussion, debate, arguments and disagreements. And still it seems no-one quite knows the whole picture.
Well none of that is necessary. In fact, behind all of the words of ACIM there is a purely logical metaphysical structure and progression of thought, which if followed precisely will automatically reveal the components of separation, why bodies show up, what the world is, aspects of creation etc. All of it follows IMPECCABLE LOGIC.
All you need to do therefore is discern, from a completely sane and logically-sound starting point (God), what is the progression of logical outcomes or consequences. All of God's creation and everything about it proceeds according to perfectly logical rules. Additionally the separation from God, the ego, the ego thought system, sin and death, all proceed according to perfect logic.
For example, the idea of an "opposite" to reality, which is the separation idea, is a logical argument suggesting that something *COMPLETELY* opposite to God's nature can exist. And this for example is reflected "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way". .. because Earth is the logical outcome of the separation thought system and must be opposite to God's conclusion.
It is a "black and white", very clearly defined "state". And as the ego progresses in its thought system, it produces states of MIND, which correspond to logical conclusions and consequences.
All you need to do is learn this logical structure, what specifically MUST be the outcome and logical conditions that arise based on each step towards death, and the entire picture of existence is revealed, with everything in its right place and everything understood in its relationship to the rest.
This then forms "the metaphysics" of the course, which is kind of a living experiential description of the "states" of mind which have arisen, what they are based on, and how they are corrected. Once you get this underlying structure, which is deeper and less removed than words, you can take any statement in the course and fit it into the picture accurately and understand it far better than any other "random" or disjointed attempt to form an opinion.
You don't then even need an opinion. All you need is to comprehend the logical basis for things. This circumvents all discussions, debates, arguments and misinterpretations. You can also then USE the logical basis to evaluate any new statements, or to base expressions on that structure in order to "extrapolate" the course or say things about it which are completely in accord with the Course's teaching.
Jesus in the Course is extremely logical and clear. For example:
"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."
This is a progression of pure logic. There are many many other examples. Below, Jesus talks about LOGIC and how everything proceeds according to logic...
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And, HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. "
"In one sense, the ego’s fear of the idea of God is at least logical."
"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth’s reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."
"Upside-down logic produces this kind of thinking."
"Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him."
"You HAVE carried the ego’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."
"Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic: If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and
If you have been forgiven
Then you have everything else.
This happens to be the simplest of all propositions.
IF P then Q
P
Therefore, Q
The real question is, is P true. If you will review the evidence, I think you will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely True Witness for God."
"This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimical to its existence FOR its existence."
So if you have a "question" about something in the Course and you're sure where it fits in relation to something else, or what it means, or how it's structured, or whether something is on a certain level or another level etc... once you get a visual of the logical layout in your mind, you can quite easily determine where things go and what they MUST mean, due to logical conclusions that are sound.
But of course to do this you HAVE to develop a very clear sense of what logic IS, and be very careful to discern when you are making logical errors. This means you have to be careful with reasoning, be aware of skipping around in levels, beware of trying to make "glue" that ties stuff together that doesn't go together, etc. There doesn't have to be any fuzzy boundaries or blurry conclusions that you're not quite sure about. It all makes SENSE.