This pretty much explains why you have the freedom to deny God.

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. 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 do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack HIMSELF, and God is not insane. When you denied HIM, you WERE insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's Creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HIMSELF to you in your Creation, and His gifts ARE eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?"

Note also that "separation" as in the theoretical idea that you CAN BE separate (which is impossible), is totally different from "THE separation", which is another name for the fall of man, the tiny mad idea. We DID in fact have the idea, we DID believe it, and we DID "fall". This is why there appears to be a facebook. BUT, the fall is not actual real separation, it's just belief in it and a denial that actual separation is impossible.

"The Separation (not ACTUAL separation, but the state of believing it's possible) HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

So we did have the tiny mad idea, we did go into it through belief (which is really denial), and we did find ourselves in a "lower order reality". But this state in which we SEEM separate is not ACTUAL separation or real separation, which is impossible. It's just us MISTAKEDLY believing that it's possible and happening.

THE separation, the fall from Heaven, did occur. But it was not an actual separation.

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. "

The failure to communicate (to receive, to give equally), resulted in a state of denial, not listening, being unaware of perfection, a breakdown in the experience of oneness. It did not change anything perfect, it just closed the communication channels to a degree.

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened.""

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

"Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception.

Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam". While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anaesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor."

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

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer.

The fruit of only ONE tree was "forbidden" to man in his symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it, or it could not have BEEN eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?"

"Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the "self concept," a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself."

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior."

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.

In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:

First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him.

These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.

To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

So you see, we are IN a state of sleep, dreaming, denying, pretending not to be as God created us, imagining things are true which are not, being unwilling, and trying to give it reality through belief. But none of it is true, or really happening, what it represents (an actual separation) is fictional, and it's just an illusion masquerading as a separation.

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

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK"

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

Years ago when I began the course, I thought I understood forgiveness. I thought it basically meant not blaming people, and trying to learn that everyone is innocent. It's kind of that. But over time and with deeper study my grasp of forgiveness kept expanding.

I realized at some point forgiveness is a state, a high state of mind, in concert with true perception, and that our efforts "to forgive" move us in the direction of that state. At some point we would achieve a truly forgiving state of mind as an end result or goal. And this state recognizes there is no real sin.

And so then "doing forgiveness" to me was more to do with purification, healing, release, not judging, taking responsibility, embracing the secret of salvation etc. I made effort to forgive myself and others through various means and to move out of fear into guilt, out of guilt into sin, and out of sin into innocence. But this still wasn't the whole story.

It gradually became clearer that the entire world needs to be overlooked. Particularly because the world itself is an illusion, it wasn't enough to undo my mistaken ideas and beliefs about it, somehow I had to learn to "see past" the world to a light or reality beyond it. And this is significantly challenging. The world hangs like a veil before the face of Christ, a granite block of sin, designed to tempt you to believe everything you see.

It became clearer that the entire physical universe, all forms of matter, all bodies and planets and objects, are there as temptations, appearances and deceptions. That seeing something seem to happen in the flesh was in fact untrue and unreal. That people are not bodies, but something beyond their physical form that I'm meant to see. And so my efforts shifted toward trying not to be deceived by the world in general.

This is where things seem to become quite difficult. When you consider that we've lived in a physical body for many years, assuming the world is real, reacting to everything the body senses as if it's happening as proof, there is a lot of conditioning to undo. And it starts to go into a territory where you have to literally question fundamental reality, whether events are even really happening, whether sick bodies even exist, whether all of the hierarchy of illusions really testifies to bad things happening or if it's just some awful dream. And that means questioning even what your body senses say is happening.

For me lately the challenge has been intensified because I've been presented with some very difficult "physical" scenarios with my wife that present powerful temptations. Temptations to believe that awful things are happening, that there is physical loss, that body parts are malfunctioning, that there is seriousness and heaviness and fear-inducing problems. I've been extremely pushed and impressed upon by the apparent reality of these horrors.

Just the mere act of seeing something physically "wrong" and believing it is truthful, real, happening, or a danger, is enough to incite fear and reactions. When the world is dangling "proof" that sin is happening, attack is happening, that bodies seem to be real, in front of your face, proving that sin is real, what do you do? Because this is where we really get into some major need for forgiveness.

It has become more and more apparent that everything physical is an illusion. All body states are fictional. The ego uses forms to hold the idea of death in front of our noses, asking us to believe that it's really happening. It asks us to regard people as bodies as though, when parts of the body are threatened or lost, the person is threatened or lost. And if you buy it, you will be very upset. And this is why the world is so unhappy.

Presented with a torrent of nightmarish happenings, my challenge has been to try to learn to disbelieve them. To not buy the appearance. To trust a bigger plan. To see beyond the short-term nonsense. To not believe it means something. To not go into fear as a reaction to my own belief that something is very wrong. From what I've been shown through these trials and lessons, not only that our immortal reality the only truth, but also everything bodies testify to is an illusion.

My wife had to have an amputation of her left foot. At first this was horrifying. Just the idea of it made me guilty and afraid. I feared the "loss of her" because if her foot was gone, part of her was really gone. That's what the ego teaches through form. Physical loss means something real has been destroyed, which automatically leads to loss and grief. And so I entered into loss and grief and had to struggle to get out of it. It was induced by the belief that what the body was showing was true of her. That a) she was a body, a b) she was attacked and really suffering and c) it was an irreversible sin.

This is where forgiveness really meets the road. I've had to learn to try to see past and disbelieve all physical events, happenings, states, conditions, people's expert opinions about how serious it is, the physical testimony that "it really is happening", all proof, and all suggestion by the ego world that something is terribly wrong. It is not easy. The level of temptation has been so high and so frequent that I've been thrown far off-center and struggling to get back a sense of truth.

But I do realize through all of this that the opportunity has presented me with a "test", a way to find out if I will be willing to not buy into this problem and laugh it off with love, perhaps to even become miraculous and healing through that love, or whether I will sink into fear and forgetfulness. To say that the road has been extremely bumpy is an understatement. And so the challenge to forgive is to NOT BELIEVE that any of this is even happening at all. To disregard it as illusions and as lies.

Somehow through the clearing smoke, it seems I disbelieve the physical with more certainty now. And as I see other people's sick bodies, somehow I now see them with the same attitude that I see my wife's body with. Her example has changed my perception. Whatever the education has been, it now applies to a transformation in my vision. I can't by any means claim this is total or even halfway to where it needs to be, but it's clear that forgiveness has evolved way past what I thought it was, and now onto a more living experience of not being deceived by form. Even the suggestion of physical death now seems like a ridiculous lie.

It's no small undertaking. We literally are being asked to not believe ANYTHING in this world. That all forms, appearances, bodies, objects, are mere illusory appearances designed to tempt us, causing us to have to learn NOT to be deceived by them. It's very difficult to not buy illusions when someone close to you is seriously ill with visible and "serious" physical symptoms. But this is what we have to do. The body is a denial of the truth. We have to deny the denial of the truth. We have to learn not to buy a single thing the world says is happening, and look beyond the world to the light. We are safe in God, merely dreaming of exile.

In this view, our task is to overlook the world, which transforms it into the forgiven world. And a forgiven world cannot last. "A forgiven world cannot last. It was the home of bodies but forgiveness looks past bodies." We look beyond the forgiven world, beyond the real world, to the Kingdom of God. We regard the Kingdom as the only reality. We are vigilant only for its truth and immortality. We are not deceived by lies of mortal death or suffering. Nothing that the body senses can distract us from an unwavering fixation on God's truth. We are under no laws buy God's, and only the truth is true and this world is not true.

This is what we are asked to do. This is how we forgive. We overlook the false world we made and see it not. We ask to see only the reality of the Kingdom. Nothing else is real. Nothing else has value. Nothing else attracts us. Nothing else satisfies. Only in the forgetting of the world and the complete overlooking of its transparent veil of lies can we look upon the face of Christ and finally move beyond to our True Home.

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make.

Consider the Kingdom which you have made (Earth), and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect his peace, and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving?

That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, anymore than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you (Heaven), as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty.

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear."

The body is a wall, like a fence, which was drawn around a PART of your total mind, in order to section it off and claim it as personal territory. The purpose of this body fence is to define that some tiny portion of your mind is yours alone, not shared with anyone, and that all of God and Creation are kept outside. Within this fence is the idea of the selfish self, the ego, which now regards itself as a whole self, but through bodily identification lacks the relationships that imply being.

This means that as you return to the wholeness of yourself, of your soul, you necessarily must re-inherit and open up to the vast expanse of the rest of your mind, which had been disconnected and externalized. Literally, the rest of you is out there, in your brothers. You are much larger than the tiny little PIECE of self that is hidden in a body. Only a PART of your mind finds itself imprisoned in flesh and the rest of you is unlimited.

Your mind is in fact so unlimited it is larger than the universe of spacetime. And symbolically we invented bodies as a tiny speck of a fence around a tiny speck of the total mind/self. This tiny piece of yourself is what finds itself within the body, as an ego, believing it is the whole of yourself. The whole rest of yourself symbolically is outside the body fence as the external universe. And it is huge in comparison. When you awaken, you reunite with the rest of the universe that you separated a PART of your mind off from. Thus not ALL of you went into the separation, only a tiny portion of your total mind.

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate ***parts of his Self from other parts***. It is ***within this fence he thinks he lives***, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love (the whole of himself). Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love (the rest of him) outside (symbolized by the external world)?"

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence ***around a little part*** of a glorious and completely limitless idea (your full self). It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little ***segment*** of Heaven (a PART of your full mind), splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules (the selfish/special/posessive self that produces the body fence), and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe (the rest of you which seems outside the body and symbolically extremely vast).

***This fragment of your mind ("the ego") is such a tiny part of it***, that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam is to the sun (you are much bigger than your little body self). Or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it IS the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart, against the universe. The sun (God/soul/oneness) becomes the sunbeam's "enemy," which would devour it. And the ocean terrifies the little ripple, and "wants" to swallow it.

Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity (God does not acknowledge your belief that part of you is separate from the rest). They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. ***Even that segment is not LOST to them*** (this tiny part of mind must be KEPT and reintegrated), for it could not survive APART from them. And what IT thinks it is in no way changes ***its total dependence on them FOR ITS BEING***. Its whole existence still remains IN THEM (you are always joined to the rest of yourself). Without the sun, the sunbeam WOULD be gone; the ripple WITHOUT the ocean IS inconceivable.

Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a SEPARATE mind (a part of your total mind that is separated off), a DISCONNECTED thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained (your little sense of self), needing each other for SOME things, but by no means TOTALLY depended on their One Creator for EVERYTHING. And needing the whole to give them ANY meaning, for by themselves, they DO mean nothing. Nor HAVE they any life apart, and by themselves. (the little part of mind separated off in the body is still part of the whole).

Yet, like the sun and ocean, your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards ITSELF as you. It is not missing; ***it could not EXIST if it were separate*** (its not really separate), nor would the whole BE whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an IDEA of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it (body is an illusion), preventing it ***from JOINING with the rest*** (of you), and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is NO DIFFERENT from the whole (still holy mind), being continuous with it, ***and at one with it***. It leads no separate life, because its life IS in the Oneness in which its being was created.

Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect ***as*** your Self (because you are unlimited). The sun and ocean are as nothing, beside what YOU are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom (body), a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing (the world/gap), but who would still die to DEFEND it? This little self is NOT your kingdom. Arched high above it, and surrounding it, with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to EVERY part. (including the separated off mind that's in a body)."

Here is also an additional quote from elsewhere in the course which confirms further that only a small part of our mind was stolen away from heaven, not all of us, and finds itself now to be in a body.

"Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.

This is the LITTLE part of you you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but YOU have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it up, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who DOES surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the Eternal Light."

Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…

“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”

“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”

“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”

“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”

“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”

“I rest in God today, and let Him work

In me and through me, while I rest in Him

In quiet and in perfect certainty.”

“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”

“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”

“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."

“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”

“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”

“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”

“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”

“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”

“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”

“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”

“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”

“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”

“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”

“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”

“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”

“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”

“I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.”

“It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”

“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”

“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”

“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”

“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”

“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”

“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”

“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”

“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”

“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”

“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”

“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”

In the separation, you confused the true and the false. You assigned God's properties to the false world, BUT YOU ALSO assigned false properties to God. This turned God into an evil enemy to you in your perception of him. This was necessary in order to believe that the world you made was something you would want instead.

This means you actually framed God as opposite to his nature. As if God is evil, destructive, attacking, sinful, deadly, sick, suffering, weak, powerless, unreal, illusory, vengeful and special. While many people focus on how they are going to forgive the false world, which entails lifting truth from it, you ALSO have to forgive God and lift the FALSE from him.

You may not realize that you have assigned false properties to God. But you have in fact framed God as a special false God. You have tried to make out that God is evil and an enemy. The ego believes this. It wants nothing to do with God because IT believes and perceives God as "everything evil", while seeing itself as holy.

"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

"You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome."

"And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible."

This means you do in fact have within you various reasons to avoid God, to fear God, to not want God, and to hate God. Part of you wants God to be dead. You have to therefore actually forgive God of the projections and misperceptions that you have laid upon him, and recognize that he is not those things.

It is your attempt to AVOID looking at your "attack on God" blasphemy that compels you to focus on forgiving the WORLD instead. You do not want to look at this because you actually believe that your attack on God has made you GUILTY. And you do not want to revisit the idea of approaching God because you believe it means admitting to having sinned against him, and you think he's going to kill you for it.

"You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father."

"Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety."

"For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself."

"It is your Father Whom you would defend against."

If you think that God is evil you will not want to go home. If you think the world is NOT evil you will not want to go home. You've turned God into an enemy and do not trust him. That's why there is a whole process of "the development of trust". You have misplaced your trust in the ego world. You have to learn to trust God again.

"You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so."

To trust God you have to be willing to accept the possibility that God is not the scary monster that you think he is. That he is not going to hurt or attack or reject you. That he still loves you because he is still love. You have to take away from God the false accusations you've made that he is evil and vicious and not to be trusted. You have hurled abuse at God and have accused him of sin. This has to be undone.

You will only approach God, tentatively, if you can have a little willingness to be mistaken about him. And this requires that you trust and have faith that he isn't out to destroy you. You have to be wrong about God, because you have become mistaken about him and his nature. You cannot conceive of him without a body, or think of him as anything but selfish like your ego. This has to be reversed.

"And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand."

"Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them." "You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love."

This aspect of forgiveness doesn't seem to be talked about very much in ACIM circles. A lot of time is spent talking about forgiving the world and its contents and the people that piss you off, but very little about looking at the fact that you rejected God, hate God, do not want God, and are trying to destroy him and his son. This picturing of God as an enemy has to be undone in order for you to feel safe to be intimate with God again.

You have to unlearn your rejection of God and learn to love him again. Perhaps the real reason that many people do NOT focus on forgiving God, or looking at how they have framed God as evil, is because it would suggest tremendous guilt and fear, to admit that you have tried to attack and kill off God himself. Fortunately God has not held any of this against you and dispels it entirely, and is his hands are held open in welcome to receive you as his most loved creation once again.

To want to go towards your brothers in Christ, to want to forgive anything, you have to be willing to forgive God. You have accused him and must correct this. The world was made as an attack on God. You can forgive the world but you also have to forgive the idea that you've attacked God. You have made God into a false God and have redefined what you think God is like. This has to be corrected. You have to learn to love God again, and you can start by admitting that you don't.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him."

"The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey."

"You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal."

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father."

"You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father."

"You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him."

"GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come."

"There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms."

"The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father." "You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over."

You made the ego as a device for separating from God. Symbolically, the body is the ego - the hero of the dream. The ego is a machine designed to operate in separation, opposition, and delusion, believing that illusions are reality and that reality is an illusion. Its perspective is that what is true is false/evil, and what is false is the truth. It is convinced that death is salvation from God, and that sin is real.

You who made this ego really are not bound by it at all, since it is imaginary and doesn't really exist. But you chose to believe that it is real. You gave reality to it by using it, since it is a device for turning illusions into reality.

Your decision to identify with it, was an attempt to attract yourself and attach yourself, or cling to, something other than God, like a magnet, which would allow you to attempt to resist the attraction of God.

So you tried to wear the ego like a piece of clothing, and this is pretty literally symbolized by the wearing of the body, which is the symbolic manifestation of the ego - the false self image. It is helpful to recognize that the body itself is the symbol of the ego, within this dream, although this entire dream is also the ego.

Now, in order to try to repel God and attract yourself to something more attractive than His Love, your ego device offers you the pretend opportunity to be magnetized to something else. You hold onto the ego, cling to it, attach to it, attempt to join with it, and try to be one with it. You try to make it your identity.

Your very sense of self you try to give to it, you empower it, you add reality to its illusory nature, and really you are trying to bring it to life. It is like a frankenstein which is made of death, that you pretend can be animated and take over your self. This is the ego's version of raising the dead!

One of the major ways that you accomplish this, and how this symbolically plays out in the dream, is in your identification with the body - the symbol of the ego. The ego is hiding in the body, as the body, as its attempt to withdraw from God and be protected against the truth. This is why the body is fundamentally an idea of sickness, which must eventually disappear when it gives way to the truth. The body is a defense.

Knowing this, each time that you identify with the body and thus the ego, you do so in order to pull yourself away from God. You are trying to rip yourself away from being identified with God and to anchor yourself into some other identity. You're trying to fuse yourself with the ego and body and turn yourself into them.

The closer that you associate with the body, and the more you push God away, the more the body starts to exhibit sickness. Sickness is a defense against God, and it makes the body more real. The more reality you give to the body, the more you are able to become "one" with the ego, and therefore whatever happens to the body is happening to you.

Eventually, a profound "unity" with the ego, as the body, produces death. Death simply means that you've created so much sense of clear distinction and separation between you and God, that you have super-magnetized yourself to the body, and have done everything you can to cut off the source of Life.

The body then cannot be long maintained when it is starved of Life, and the perception that you are disassociated from God makes you perceive that you have no power and no causality. What has no cause cannot exist, so without a cause you will die.

In attempting to overcome this, the journey simply involves giving up the identification with the ego and thus the body. But at first this is going to be difficult. Each time that you find a willingness to expose yourself to the truth, your association with the ego is going to have a major reaction. Since you've come to see through the ego and with the ego, you will interpret the meaning of the truth as the ego would interpret it.

Whatever the truth says, the ego perceives to be false, unwanted, an attack, dangerous and threatening. Whatever the truth claims is true, the ego cannot see clearly or correctly, will read into it, and will see reflected back to it its own ego nightmare, which will be frightening. So this produces a lot of resistance. You will defend the ego, protect its beliefs, side with it, trust it, believe it is telling the truth, and go along with its guidance. You will think you're doing this completely sanely and in order to not only uphold innocence but also to protect your life. You are trying to preserve your sense of self.

No-one in any state of mind wants their self to really be destroyed. Whether your self is identified with your real self, or with the ego self/body, you will protect it and defend it. If you are associated with ego and the ego experiences the truth as an attack, you will defend your ego, believing that you're doing exactly the right thing. However, when you defend the ego, you are choosing death.

Each time that you are aligned with the ego and try to protect it, because you think that you are protecting what you are - what you perceive yourself as - your self/identity - you protect illusions and give reality to them. This cuts you off from God/Life, which is a step towards death. It will produce sickness. So in the name of self-preservation, you will actually believe you're preserving your existence while in fact you are destroying yourself.

This is how people choose to die! This is why all death is a choice and all death is suicide. People don't realize that when they're identified with the ego/body, they keep doing the perfectly natural thing of defending themselves, but because their identity is all caught up in the ego, they inadvertently defend the ego. And that is a major problem. Everyone defends the truth, as they see it, and if the truth is the ego's truth, they will defend it to the death, literally.

Also when you are exposed to the truth, if you are holding onto the ego identity/body and believe/see yourself as the body, you will perceive that the truth is threatening you. Anything in agreement with your current beliefs is seen as truth and anything not in agreement is seen as an unwanted evil attack. This is what makes it difficult to learn to trust God - because initially God is thought to be evil, a threat, a danger, and an attempt to stop you from existing.

This is why you have developed in your mind a sense of a "false God" who is evil, out to get you, wants you to stop existing, is trying to destroy you and wants you dead. This is your ego's view of God. This is its interpretation, and you've made it your interpretation. This is the God of wrath and vengeance and revenge. And this part of you, the ego part, really believes that it is God's will that you die. And it uses this as perfectly rational-seeming justification for why you should die - because it's what God wants for you and you think it's inescapable. This is the death wish.

In order to overcome this "evil God", you need to recognize that your association with the ego has clouded your judgement, has presented the truth as something false, has presented what is false as something true, your whole world is upside down and back to front, and you need to become willing to rediscover what the truth really is.

That's not going to seem easy or welcome, especially to your ego alliance, because the real truth appears as the complete opposite to what the ego believes. It seems to be evil and dangerous, and you will feel tremendous resistance to approaching it. You think it wants you dead, and nobody in their right mind would want to approach their most feared enemy.

However, you need to learn that the God you fear is not REALLY what God is like. The God you think will mean you don't exist, does not REALLY prove you don't exist - that's just what the EGO thinks about God. God demonstrates not only that you exist but that you exist forever, are immortal, eternal, and that God completely supports and sustains you in every way.

This isn't the view of God that the ego will ever be able to see or accept, because it was not designed to do so. It was only designed as a kind of filtration device, to block the truth and invert it, and make illusions seem real. That's all it does and that's all it was meant to do. That's what you designed it to be, and that's why the ego cannot awaken. How can an illusion awaken? The ego isn't really anything at all.

So to awaken, you must awaken FROM the ego, in spite of the ego, and in order to recognize that the ego is not real. Everything the ego perceives and believes in MUST be false and unreal. So you get this choice, to decide who you are going to side with. God or the ego. There isn't really a choice because the ego isn't real and doesn't exist, but it will seem like a choice so long as you think the ego is who you are.

Believing you are the ego goes hand in hand with believing you are a physical body, because the body is the symbol of the ego thought system. And as you expose yourself to truth, mis-perceiving it with the ego will threaten "you", or your sense of self (ego aligned self), and you will want to defend yourself against it. Therefore you will resist the truth, resist waking up, want nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, will not want to entertain the idea of powerful miracles, and you will fear the rejection of God. Not just God's rejection but that, if God is real, you (ego) do not exist.

That is terrifying to the ego, so if YOU have associated yourself with the ego and believe it is you (you are a body), then you will be afraid that you don't exist. You might have noticed when you read ACIM especially at the beginning, that you feel like it is saying a truth that completely ignores you, doesn't even mention you, doesn't acknowledge you, and acts as though you don't even exist.

It can be maddening and make you genuinely angry. This is the ego, because the truth DOES ignore the ego and does not acknowledge it as existing. Because it really doesn't. It simply overlooks it entirely and demonstrates that it is not real. So if you are tied to the ego you will think that this applies to YOU, and that is pretty upsetting.

You might even put up a defense against the truth because you do not want it and see it as an evil enemy, and therefore implement sickness in your body/mind/emotions to try to protect your identity from the truth. You'll try to make the body more real than the truth, and give truth to the body.

This will put power into the ego, will distort your view of yourself as someone little and vulnerable, will shut you off from the Source of Life, and will show up in the body/as the body as sickness and disease. Eventually if you do not choose to be willing to accept the real truth as it is, and not the ego's misinterpretation of it, this will produce death, and you will have chosen it on purpose because you thought you were saving your life.

So really it's a struggle to wake up when you have this ego thing that you made that you are still pretty fond of, which you side with and listen to and trust and use, because it makes you very defensive against the truth and very suspicious of it. Remember the ego will go from suspiciousness to visciousness, and you can bet that with enough exposure to "reality" it will turn viscious in an effort to block it out.

Gradually you will surrender and let go, allow the truth to seep in with little steps of willingness, open yourself up to accepting God as the truth, allow Holy Spirit into your heart and mind, and come to recognize that illusions are not real. This will mean realizing the body is not real, just an illusion, as a symbol of the ego in the mind, and that you do not need it.

Your dependence on it and on the ego's laws regarding what the body needs must also go. And so your mis-identification with the ego will come to an end. Finally you will let go of it, detach from it, and recognize that it is nothing at all. It has no power, it is not real, it holds no truth, it cannot do anything to you, and you are free of it. And having no further purpose or use for it, it will disappear, and it will not be YOU that is disappearing but just something that didn't really exist to begin with.

So you can see this is all really an exercise in identity. Who are you? You've become an ego, but it's not who you are. You cling to it and the body like you're trying to turn it into yourself, or yourself into it. You use the body and your oneness with it through sickness to reinforce your ego's reality and deny God's. All because you are always trying to protect your "self" even if your sense of self is misplaced.

The desire to defend yourself isn't misplaced, although the course says "If I defend myself I am attacked", meaning that if you defend the EGO, you are attacked. Defending your enemy will result in attack. You just don't quite as yet recognize fully the ways in which you and the ego are best buddies, trying to stay associated with it and to keep it ONLY because you've become convinced that it is you.

If you were to recognize clearly that YOU are not the ego at all, and it is nothing but an illusory device, having withdrawn all belief that its illusions are real (including sin and death and sickness and physical matter and the body and the world), then you wouldn't have any real reason to need to defend 'it' AS you, and you'd simply be who you really are. YOU need no defense at all when your sense of identity and self is associated with your Real Self - the Higher Self - or even as Christ.

Be free!

Do you think you know what the ego is?

Do you think you know what separation means?

How many of you believe the idea that "ego" means "separation", and that therefore any kind of separation is ego? Or that all forms of separation must be removed in order to have oneness?

This is NOT TRUE. And it's not what Jesus says in ACIM:

Jesus: "Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

Jesus: "You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it."

BEFORE THE SEPARATION, there were many of us in God's Creation. Many Sons of God, directly created by Him. There wasn't just one Son. There being many sons IS NOT SEPARATION. IT IS NOT EGO. Here's why.

God's children are all created in the likeness of Himself. They are identical reflections of Him. They are all IDENTICAL. He loves them all EQUALLY and therefore they are all created in PERFECT EQUALITY. There isn't a single Son of God who is different to or unique from the others. They are like "clones". Perfect beings of a like order. A good analogy is spherical orbs of light which all look the same. These are souls.

There is nothing wrong with this. There is no ego there. There is no ego because there are no DIFFERENCES. There is no inequality. Every son is fully equal to all the rest. Every son has access to share everything with everyone. Every son is perfect and whole and complete within themselves and needs nothing. Every son has everything that all the other sons have. Every son is perfectly IDENTICAL to all the others in every way. In this there is NO ROOM FOR EGO.

The Sons of God in the Sonship are in perfect permanent harmony. It is perfectly normal and natural for there to be many FREE WILLED beings who all correlate and agree and are in accord with the Will of God. They each have their own minds which God created, and their own free will, and yet there is not even the slightest trace of disagreement. Every son is perfectly UNITED in the willingness to will like God. To create in His likeness and in their own. Even though all children of God are CO-CREATORS with God, there is no discord, no competition, no comparison, no differences, no exclusivity. NO ONE IS SPECIAL IN ANY WAY. And this leads to the perfect harmony of Heaven's peace.

Now. What is the ego really? The ego is NOT the idea of separation. The Sons of God are "separate beings" and this is NOT EGO. So to say that any kind of separation is ego is wrong. It is also wrong to say that having separation means you can't have oneness. That's bullshit. Oneness means OF LIKE KIND, being identical and in the likeness of God. It means they are ONE KIND. Jesus even says you can even be "one with yourself" - meaning you are of one single kind of state within yourself. That's what oneness really means, not "only one thing with nothing more than a count of 1."

WHAT EGO REALLY MEANS, in Jesus's terms as well, is any form of SPECIALNESS, which attempts to ISOLATE OFF some Son of God from the rest, describing him as DIFFERENT IN SOME WAY, unique, special, unlike the others, no longer equal to anyone else. THAT is the oppositie of the identicality of God's perfect creation.

Jesus: "You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it."

WE (many) had our own right minds BEFORE EGO. Then we tried to believe in "special favor" from God, that we would be thought of as NOT IDENTICAL TO others, and therefore gaining in some way and losing in others in order to have exclusivity.

It is PERFECTLY OKAY for there to be individuality in Heaven provided the individuals are PERFECTLY IDENTICAL. There is nothing wrong with there being a million Christs. Having individuality IS NOT AN EGO THING. It only becomes an ego thing when it turns into a SPECIAL INDIVIDUALITY or an individual identity that is NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.

"EGO", in ACIM terms, really means... being exclusive, isolated, imprisoned, limited, lacking something that others have, having something that others lack, not being equal to anyone, being unique, spiritualizing something, demonizing something, condemning others for what they have which you lack, being in competition, being selfish, wanting to own and hoard and posses something in denial of others, denial of your brothers, denial of God, rejection and abandonment, failing to share anything with anyone, not-shared interests, privacy, private thoughts, your own subjective perception, withdrawal from Life, isolation into a specific point in spacetime (in a body), being cut off from abundance or sharing, a breakdown in communication, contrast, opposition, war and conflict, murder and suffering and sickness and death.

That is basically ALL THE SAME THING. It's just different ASPECTS of the same wish to be exclusive, to be different, or to be un-alike your identical brothers. That's what leads you to withdraw from sharing from the entirety of Creation and to narrow yourself down, withdraw and isolate into a little corner, and to then hide yourself in a body. Specialness produces body-identification and reincarnation and sickness and death.

So egotism, or selfishness, or specialness, forms a barrier around yourself which tries to keep something exclusively within, while also rejecting stuff as outside of you. The body is a symbol of that. It means you want to be seen as DIFFERENT and not identical. And that's why all bodies are unique and unalike. They were made as devices for proving separation. This special exclusivity and isolation is the same thing as sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

So in this more-accurate view of what ego is and is not, which is perfectly in line with what ACIM says about it, it's not your individuality or self or soul or free will that's a problem. The ONLY problem is your sense of SELFISHNESS which has attempted to set you APART from others in terms of BEING DIFFERENT TO THEM, rather than identical. To be un-equal is to be in disagreement and conflict. It is an act of war. And it produces a split mind. Your mind cannot stop being split and become "right minded" until all inequalities are ironed out and made equal again. Then, when there are NO inequalities, your mind can return to ONE MINDEDNESS, which is a mind experiencing a SINGLE STATE, ie "oneness" as in - ONE KIND.

You do not need to forego your free-willed individual soul or self. It has never been a problem. The ONLY thing that needs to be let go is the sense of being SPECIAL, exclusive or isolated. Any form of inequality is ego. Any form of equality is God's Will.

"You cannot enter into relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all equally".

Loving MANY BROTHERS EQUALLY is not an ego state.

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad."

When TWO MINDS REMAIN TWO MINDS, BUT see each other as IDENTICAL, they become glad. Oneness means identicality and perfect equality and LIKENESS, it does not mean "there is only one Son" nor does it mean "many sons is an ego thing" nor does it mean "many sons is separation."

SEPARATION, as in separation from God, doesn't mean "being separate from one thing" it means being EXCLUSIVE an ISOLATED FROM THE REST. What constitutes "the rest" isn't necessarily "only God". Isolation isolates you from your brothers as well. It is the sense of isolation and inequality from your brothers that must be undone and undoing that DOES NOT ERASE YOUR BROTHERS. Attempting to do that or to claim that doing that means oneness is MURDEROUS. It's another way the ego interferes with the truth.

So what I've come to do is that whenever I think of ego or separation, think more in terms of exclusivity, isolation and inequality. It's FAR more accurate and lines up with absolutely everything Jesus says. We are to overcome our self-imposed imprisonment and open up to SHARING, to RECLAIM OUR IDENTITY AS *A* SON OF GOD, and return to sharing in all of Creation of which we are a PART.

Jesus continues his passage:

"For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.

In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so.

To SINGLE OUT is to MAKE ALONE, and thus MAKE LONELY. God did not do this to you. Could He SET YOU APART, KNOWING that your peace lies in His oneness? He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having GIVEN you creation, He could not take it FROM you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer, which would abide with you in your insanity. AND THIS HE DID. No-one who hears His answer but will give up insanity. For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane. But seek this place and you WILL find it, for love is in you, and will lead you there."

In the very big picture, this is what ACIM is getting at. This entire world does not exist. No bodies, no planet, no sun, no galaxies, no spacetime, no events, no happenings, no consequences. It is all nothing. Only the Kingdom of God - a world of spirit and light - really exists at all. Only that means anything and is of any value to you.

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

We made up this world when we tried to separate from God. We invented time and space. We made the galaxies and planets. We invented bodies to hide in. It's all a hallucinated wishful-thinking dream of denial and the belief in the opposite to eternal life - death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought." "What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"

In order to accept this profound, extremely radical idea, we have to first acknowledge that we do NOT believe it. We are heavily invested in this world, we give it reality, we value it, we want it, we think it has things to offer us, we are attached to it, we fancy ourselves as being human bodies, we seek for bodily relationships, we want to collect stuff, we idolise and worship objects and bodies and places, and we just basically want to stay here as long as possible, all the while believing this is reality.

This is a problem.

In order for us to accept the atonement truth, that none of this has happened and this world doesn't exist, we're first going to have to go through a process of relinquishment. We're going to have to come to recognize, primarily, that this world is not actually a world - it is nothing. Bodies are not really bodies, they are nothing. Nothing is really happening here. Spacetime itself is an illusion. There is no space or time and nothing in it. All events are nowhere. All of the sickness and death is a lie and doesn't exist.

"It (mind) dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

This means we're going to have to become willing to not only recognize that the world is nothing and not worth having, we're going to have to stop trying to accumulate it. We're going to have to stop having psychological "ownership", possession and attachment to objects, people and places. We're going to have to recognize that the world holds nothing that we want, that it cannot give us anything, it cannot cause us to be happy, it cannot inherently mean anything to us, and it has no real value. And this also means letting go of all identification with (attachment to) the body, and re-identifying as a spirit being.

This is going to take an uprooting of everything that keeps you rooted in this world, all your commitments, all your investments, all your hopes and dreams and wishes, all your denials and anticipations, all your attempts to deny that this world is made of death. A big part of this involves recognising that death is woven into everything in this world, even in those things which seem like new or just born. That all the world's roads lead to death, all its laws are laws of punishment, and that it will always disappoint you. You have to come to realize that the world will not ever satisfy you, and that in itself can seem depressing.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR."

Basically, we have to recognize that this world is fundamentally broken, spacetime is an attack on omnipresence and eternity, everything you try to do here will end in death and destruction eventually, there is no point and no meaning to this life, and then turn around and realize that there MUST be a better way, there MUST be another world, there MUST be a light and a way out of this nightmare. There MUST be a world that means something, there MUST be a truth and a light that you can depend on, and there MUST be a way to live forever. You're not going to find any of that in this world. Heaven is the reality that you heart really desires.

So then you're going to have to sort through all the ways in which you depend on, want, attach to, value, find important, give meaning to, want to keep, believe has power and will, believe can attack or heal you, basically anything to do with this world that might be a reason why you'd want to stay here and not go home to God. You're going to have to give up the whole world.

You're going to have to surrender and let go of absolutely everything and recognize you DO NOT WANT ANY OF IT. And thus you will let it all go and detach from it and become empty handed. And only by being empty handed, or rather, empty of your desire for spacetime and its bullshit offerings, will you be ready and willing to choose heaven.

So when Jesus says there is no world, which is literally true, that is the central theme of the course. The thing to "get". That there is not really a separation, there is not really a spacetime, or a planet earth, or a world of bodies and suffering and death. It's all a fiction.

In order for you to wean your mind off of it, you're going to have to go through a process of purification, of withdrawing power from the world, of recognising the world does nothing to you or for you, that it can no more please and save you than that it can offend and hurt you, of withdrawing all value and desire for the world and all wish to resist its impossible nature, recognizing that the world literally is nothing at all, and that giving up truly entails giving up a non-world.

Empty your hands of this world and reach for what God has given you in your creation in heaven. Accepting atonement is nothing more than accepting God's reality.

"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS. From HERE, it seems to be outside, and ACROSS the bridge. But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this, YOU GAVE UP NOTHING!"

"the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished. In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth"

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." "The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible. The final lesson which brings the ending of the world cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made 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."

"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. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

'"And so, our Father, we return to You, remembering we never went away; remembering Your holy gifts to us. In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own"

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"Here He leans down to lift you back to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and into timelessness; out of all fear and given back to Love."