While you are believing that your ego is your real self, and as you attempt to do something about this to wake up spiritually, you're going to be pulling that ego self along for the ride.

It does not want to come along for the ride and can't. Its way of perceiving, which you have made your own, must see the approach towards truth and God as dangerous. Your attempt to expose your "self" to the truth will be seen as an attack, and is highly offensive.

This is why every time you (ie your ego-aligned self) tries to allow some light in or tries to become more spiritual, you inevitably find this strong voice emerges in you which retaliates. You have this big ego rebound where you feel all hurt and afraid and abused, as though someone just told you that you don't exist and aren't worth anything.

Your alignment with the ego while simultaneously trying to wake up from it, makes you try to wake up WITH it, and thus to wake IT up. But it cannot awaken. It is purely a device for separation and is illusory. It doesn't have a life of its own without your support.

When you try to pull it towards the truth or transform it, which produces the "spiritualized ego", you might well create an illusion or persona of looking and acting "like" someone who would be spiritual. But deep down you will have this part of you that deeply mistrusts and is threatened by what you are trying to do. Like a hurt child, that part of you will attack the part of you that's trying to pull it into the light.

Over time I've seen how personally I attempted to become more spiritual, for example by writing things which seemed as spiritual as possible. And it produced a lot of backlash for the "rest" of me that was still identified with the ego and didn't want to wake up.

When I was writing my first book, I really believed that I was opening up to light and truth and it was powerful and healing, BUT at the same time it was very painful. I felt like I was flogging myself to death, or sacrificing, or attempting to push myself to the brink of tolerance. I had a lot of ego rebounds.

Partly I felt that I was approaching truth more but there was a big chunk of me that was still holding on tightly to the false idea that I was the ego, and was trying to change "it" into something more spiritual. It could not change and did not want to and saw my attempts as deeply hurtful. And so because I was aligned with that, I experienced deep hurt along with it. I kept trying to be more spiritual in my persona.

While you're "seeking" for spiritual truth this is pretty much a given that this is going to be your experience. So long as you believe you are the ego self, that part of you is not going to like or want or believe in or see sense in the truth. It is going to be threatened by it, offended by it, hurt by it, it's going to take it to mean things it doesn't really mean, and because the truth proves that the ego does not exist, your alignment with ego is going to imply you do not exist. And that's just going to scare the shit out of you.

Gradually over time, making all of these mistakes, yearning to be closer to God, willing to push my "self" (idea of self) towards the truth, and going through endless rebounds, I think I've gradually lessened the belief I have in the ego.

Letting the ego GO is really the only way to become "more spiritual". It's not through changing it at all. It's not through making it more spiritual. The only way to be free is to be free of IT, which means your sense of who you are, your identity, your definition of self, MUST shift from ego to your Higher Self, or Holy Spirit (right mind etc).

The ego can't shift there with you. If you try to take your ego self there and pretend that you're doing it, you will just enact the ego's bungie cord. Like an elastic band it will just pull "you" right back to its territory, and the more you are trying to pull it away from its territory the stronger the rebound is going to be.

This is exactly what produces reincarnation - the attempt to get out of the world without really letting it go, elasticly brings you right back into it because you still belive you are made of it. Exposing ego to too much light will burn it, and with you believing it is yourself YOU will experience that suffering, and you will flee from the light right back into the body.

Gradually, we have to let the ego identity go and awaken FROM it to realize that it is not who or what we are. Everything it perceives is not our real perception. Everything it believes about itself cannot be what we believe about ourselves. Everything it trusts in cannot be what we trust. We have placed our faith in it and are attached to it. We have to let go and "surrender" its position to make room for God.

Waking up is painful. If we could see the areas where we believe in the ego and could simply gently relax and let go of them without adding threat to them or making them confused that we're trying to imply things which are not true or real to it, then perhaps we can awaken more gently. But that kind of ability probably only comes from a more awakened self that is able to discern lovingly. In the midst of the ego we rarely have such clarity and compassion and tend to step on our own toes all the time.

Often when I become more aware of truth and want to really "get it quickly", which can also be spurred by the ego because it knows that if you "do a lot of course" you will have such a reaction to it that maybe you'll stop doing it, using it to attack you, I'll just do too much too quickly. I will have deep emotional releases and become overwhelmed. It will also become frightening.

When I started to see that sin was not real and that it could only be my belief that I sinned that is keeping me from God, I went looking for the sin in me to try to undo it all, and that was simply too much at once. I spazzed-out for a few days and it was not at all pleasant. I had to stop and take it slower. Baby steps.

There are also times where I write about the Course a lot and maybe go into overdrive and am writing several times a day, and it all seems so wonderful and truthful and inspiring but then comes the parts of me that are still holding onto lies and they fly up into my awareness like a slap in the face. How DARE you claim that that's true! How COULD you believe that! Stop it!

By all means take a big leap if you are genuinely ready and can do so without the huge ego backlash, but otherwise, take your time and be gentle on yourself. Take a break.

There is a certain leap of faith required in learning to trust and work with Spirit. It's like opening up to trusting that something completely out of sight and out of control is going to be there when you need it. We are completely unaccustomed to seeing situations this way and it requires a lot of TRUST.

Since we have been relying on our own self all this time, on our ego intellect, our own abilities, our knowledge etc.... we are very used to needing to have a sense of personal confidence in a situation in order to proceed with an action.

So we'll have to make sure that we're in the right mood, we have to have all the ducks in a row, we need reassurance that this is the right thing to do, and we feel that we need to kind of talk ourselves into the right frame of mind to 'perform'. We have to ready ourselves, and we won't move ahead to take actions until we have gathered enough ego information and enough reliance on our own capabilities. And to create something of quality simply threatens us to have to perform at the top of our game, which is nerve-wracking.

But the problem with this is that it shuts out Spirit. The problem is, since we are experiencing ourselves as disconnected from Spirit, we keep having to rely on ourselves, depend on ourselves, accumulate our own skills, develop our own prowess, acquire our own knowledge, and build ourselves up to try to handle situations. But this puts all of our sense of TRUST squarely in our own ego abilities. Trusting our own ego produces FEAR which undermines any sense of reliability.

Spirit doesn't work the same way the ego works. Spirit is much more spontaneous. Spirit is also extremely capable and unlimited and doesn't suffer from the inadequacies, limitations, insecurities and difficulties that our ego self has to deal with constantly.

Spirit is actually ready to fly right now, right away, without any preparation. God is immediately on hand and ready to heal, right now. Holy Spirit is immediately on hand and ready to teach the highest of truths, right now. They don't need time to get ready. They don't have to figure out what to do. They don't need to get themselves into the right mood or to be on their best form or to have put aside as many fears as possible in order to take some decisive action.

So what this means is, if you want to work with Spirit, such as to express Holy Spirit's Voice or to teach from a higher place or to perform a healing miracle, there has to be a certain amount of 'blind faith' and a different kind of trust. This trust quite literally means that you really need to actually START taking steps to move forward and express, knowing that Spirit is going to show up immediately and be there to help you.

It actually kind of requires you to be much more spontaneous and UNPREPARED. (Who knew that being unprepared could lead to greater confidence when trusting Spirit?!) And even if you feel unprepared and uncertain and afraid and doubtful about whether YOU can pull off whatever it is that you're about to attempt - teaching, healing, writing, whatever.... even though you do not know what the heck you are going to say, even though do not know how the heck you're going to 'do this', you have to actually start doing it with faith that Holy Spirit is right with you in the MOMENT.... and that as you begin to 'flow', all of Heaven is going to rush in to support and help you.

There are people who receive healing miracles, let's say for example they have a broken arm or something. The person prays for them and healing begins, but the person still believes they don't have a healing, and the arms seems to be a problem. But then the healer tells the person, MOVE YOUR ARM. And the person moves their arm, and AS they move their arm, healing comes to the arm.

There are countless examples of this in Jesus's miracles where he tells someone to actually DO something, to do something that they supposedly currently cannot do, so that WHEN they attempt to do it, with some faith that it will BECOME possible, their willingness and openness is what actually brings the miracle into them and healing occurs, AS they ACT AS IF they are healed. For example Jesus might've commanded 'get up and walk', and a paralyzed person who could not walk, would at least ATTEMPT to get up and walk, with enough trust and faith that perhaps it COULD work, and then as they get up, suddenly they can walk. But not until they started trying to do so.

So you see, Spirit is very immediate and becomes a part of the flow as and when you are willing to actually take some action on faith. You will not be prepared. You will not be ready. You will not know how you're going to do this. You'll get to the very limits of the edges of your own ego abilities and all the information you could possibly have gathered and all the preparedness you could've possible done, and still there is another step needed. To trust Spirit, you have to take the leap. You have to ACT AS IF miraculous things can happen, ACT AS IF healing is going to flow when you say it will, ACT AS IF Spirit is going to back you, even if right now you don't feel even connected to Spirit. And Spirit will rush in and be right there to support you.

For example, I am writing a book and I have procrastinated on this for a long time because I kept feeling that I wasn't quite ready, or in the right mood, or I just wasn't prepared. I felt like I needed to get MYSELF into the best possible frame of mind, the most purified readiness, the most spiritual of mindsets etc, in order to be ABLE to pull off this writing. And I could never really rise up to the occasion. I couldn't get myself into the 'heights' of what I knew needed to be written down, and was just always riddled with insecurities and excuses and fears and worries about how was *I* going to write this and how was *I* going to be able to know what to say or to say it correctly etc. So I avoided it.

But then what broke, was that I came to a place of at least realizing it's not going to be me doing this on my own. It's not going to come FROM me, its going to come from Spirit. And I'm going to write it down, but I'm not going to know WHAT to write. I'm not going to be able to prepare for it or study for it or have everything all organized to try to get a sense of confidence about it. Instead, what its going to call for is for me to actually sit down, hands on the keyboard, and to be in that moment WITH Spirit, inviting Spirit to be the one to write, and to then just start doing it. Just GO. And that means trusting something totally outside of myself, totally beyond my own abilities, beyond my mind, beyond any personal readiness. And in that moment, in the now, in the present 'flow' of it, Spirit is right there and started talking, and I started typing, and out it came.

Surprisingly easy once it got going, but I'd avoided it so much because my mind, my ego mind, my separate mind, couldn't see past itself. It couldn't get outside of its own box or its own reliance on "I must do this all by myself". The mind needs to be handed over to Spirit. Spirit is meant to be in charge of how the mind is used. And this really does mean actually surrendering this constant reliance on independent self, on separately having 'the power' or 'the skills' to do whatever. To be Spirit-backed we have to stop being so independent and so self-reliant and trust something that we don't even seem to have any control over, a source of confidence and teaching and creation that is beyond our own self. And nothing can prepare you for that. You have to just do it and try to trust that you're going to be backed up, and you will be.

This is why development of trust is so important. Learning to trust that Spirit has got your back, that Spirit can heal, that Spirit can do miracles through you, and that Spirit can help you no matter whether you have everything under control or not. It's all about learning to be part of a TEAM, instead of going solo all the time. You don't have to do this all by yourself, and you DO NOT have to find the confidence and prowess to pull off some amazing feat of expression all on your own. It's much easier to let Spirit do the heavy lifting, if you can let go enough to take a shot in the dark. And that's what it's like often, just blindly assuming that Spirit will do its thing when you take action to begin the flow.

I'm glad to say I got a whole chapter written, once I finally stopped fearing (depending on my own strength) and trusted that I just had to 'show up' in the present moment and be ready and willing and that Spirit would do the rest. It can really be daunting to have this kind of trust, to trust in something you can't see and doesn't even seem to be there until the very moment that you're having the faith that it will show up. Something outside your control, outside your mind.

Our minds are supposed to be connected to Spirit in this way. They're not supposed to be separated off and trying to rely on themselves. We're not supposed to be bolstered up, or turned into 'models of success', or superheroes. We're not meant to be thoroughly educated and learned. We're not meant to develop this extraordinary prowess at doing something amazing all by ourselves. This is not how the mind is meant to operate in isolation. It's meant to be connected to and a RECEIVER of a flow of spiritual power from Spirit. It's meant to be in service to Spirit. It's meant to receive God and to extend God, not to come up with its own separate power or its own separate abilities. Transitioning over from self-reliance to God-reliance is a tough challenge and goes entirely against our entire ego-centric way of living, but it's what we're called to do.

It adds a whole new level of meaning to "let go and let God".

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."

Let's clear this up.

For the entire time that you have a physical body with working eyeballs, you will physically see the physical world based on the laws of physics. The body functions biologically based on photons of light entering the retina etc and sending messages to the brain and mind.

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE NO MATTER HOW MUCH FORGIVENESS YOU DO, how many workbook lessons, or how much you've read. Your physical eyes will continue to report the same exact differences, conflicts, problems, wars, destruction, sickness and death. This will NOT change. If you point your eyeballs at the physical world, of which they are a part, they will SHOW YOU exactly the same PHYSICAL world.

Meanwhile, you are working on forgiveness, and on changing your mind in order to change your perception. But this is to do with your MIND in terms of what it believes. What it believes determines what it projects in terms of MEANING, and thus how it categorizes the true and the false, the real and the unreal. It puts everything into a category, and so as the body SENDS IT physical messages of physical sights, the mind INTERPRETS those signals.

It is then up to the mind to decide what to DO WITH those signals that are coming in from the physical eyes. Initially, realize that the body is LOCKED IN to false perception. It CANNOT SEE reality and it never will. The body can ONLY look upon illusions and GIVE them reality, regarding them as equally of the same material and nature as ITSELF, and therefore one with them, and thus regarding them as REAL.

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

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

Consider also then that if your mind BELIEVES everything it is shown by the body's eyes, it will categorize all illusions as reality, which is "false perception". A failure to recognize that illusions are illusions, that dreams are dreams, and that the world is not real. Taking the body "at its word" is false perception and unconsciousness.

The mind therefore has to open up to another WAY of seeing, which is the spiritual eye, or the mind's eye. The mind can see directly without photons and does not rely on the body's eyeballs to do this. True vision can see anywhere and everywhere at any time without limit, even the other side of the universe in the past or future. The mind, as it begins to OPEN UP to reality, which requires transcending the physical world, starts to IGNORE the physical sight messages and tunes into another world.

As it does this, the mind is going to start categorizing everything the BODY claims is real, as unreal. It has to in order to awaken and move into true perception. Everything the body reports is a lie because the body is blind to reality. So the mind starts to open up to seeing without the body, and seeing beyond the body, and beyond form, and beyond the world, and beyond space and time. This means it is opening up to seeing light and reality, at the same time as DENYING AND CLOSING DOWN to the physical signals coming in from the body.

However, so long as you have a body, you will STILL CONTINUE to receive signals from the physical sensory equipment. You will STILL be shown images of a broken world, images of faulty bodies, images of war and death and sickness and suffering. The body CANNOT HELP IT but keep showing this to you all the time. As soon as you open your eyelids you're going to be shown this, every single day for as long as you have a body.

So the interesting thing is then that mind is changing but the body is not. Mind is still USING a body, at the same time as learning to see WITHOUT a body. And this means that the mind is going to have to deal with TWO CHANNELS OF INPUT at the same time, in parallel. The physical sight is being phased out, so to speak, while the spiritual sight is phased in, but until you reach total atonement and awakening to heaven's reality you're going to see BOTH AT ONCE. As Jesus confirms:

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

So this now means that you as mind are going to be getting inputs from a physical and FALSE sensory apparatus, which is going to KEEP remaining fixated on the PHYSICAL world for as long as it persists, while simultaneously it's going to get inputs from BEYOND the physical which the physical body CANNOT see. The mind is closing off to unreality and opening up to reality's at the same time. So you have a kind of DOUBLE VISION, at least for as long as the body persists.

If you think this is not true then you should consider the fact that you are STILL perfectly capable of reading every single workbook lesson no matter how many of them you've done or for how long. The words on the page have not changed, the color of the text has not changed, nothing about it has changed. It is PHYSICALLY THE SAME BOOK as when you started reading. This is because the physical sight has not changed. But your MIND'S SEEING HAS changed.

So what this means in worldly terms is, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you're going to STILL get input from the unreal physical world, claiming all kinds of things to be true which aren't, while at the same time opening up to a new reality BEYOND the physical world which the body can't even see.

This means that if you see a physical body with your physical eyes and your eyes report an image of that body which has a broken leg and skin cancer and bad hair and a limp and some blubber, you're going to KEEP ON SEEING THAT for as long as it's there physically, REGARLDESS of whether you are more spiritual or not. 10 years from now you will still look upon that same physical body and see the same physical symptoms. But what it MEANS to you will be different and what you make of it will be different, as well as your mind will be opening up to OTHER sights and sounds from beyond the world. Jesus again confirms twice:

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

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

They use PHYSICAL SIGHT to watch the dream figures suffer and die, BUT their MINDS ARE HEALED. They have done forgiveness work. Their mind is opening up to unlimited spiritual vision and seeing BEYOND physical bodies, but the physical body is STILL reporting the same shit as before. This is not going to change just because you're waking up.

So if you see someone with your physical eyes and they report a certain condition or state, that's because your physical eyes are still functioning true to their design. Just because your MIND is different and is seeing from a more inclusive loving vantage point does NOT mean that you will no longer see the same physical sights! It does not mean that graveyards are going to disappear, or that the wars will be gone, or that people aren't writhing in agony and screaming for help. They will still physically do this and your body will STILL physically report it. But your mind will INTERPRET it different because it will OVERLOOK it and look PAST it, beyond it to the light of truth.

So you see, you can't say that "if you see it it's' yours". And you can't say that if you see someone doing something you are judging them. And you can't say that just because you're seeing it your mind is not healed. That's all bullshit. That's a denial of the mechanisms of perception. Many people think that perception is ONE THING and that you change this ONE perceptual mechanism and EVERYTHING you see will just transform and shift away from suffering towards some kind of beautiful world where nothing ever dies. That's SORT of true in that the mind opens up vision to seeing the real world, but it's NOT true in the sense that this causes you to NOT SEE the physical world UNTIL THE VERY END.

That's because you're in a state of transition BETWEEN the two ways of seeing, which will continue for as long as you have a body, and until you see the face of christ, and forget the world entirely, as the veil of illusions lifts from your sight and you see ONLY with vision, and completely VANISH the body from your existence. ONLY THEN will you no longer see the physical, and only then do the physical signals stop bombarding your mind. UNTIL then, until you are DONE, you're going to have to continue dealing with FALSE MESSAGES coming to you from a false world, at the same time as tying to look past them psychologically.

So no, if you see bad physical stuff happening, it's NOT because you are projecting bad stuff. It's not because you are not healed or are guilty. It's NOT YOUR STUFF. Your stuff isn't physical, it's mental. Your baggage of stuff to be healed in your false perceptions, which you project ONTO THE PHYSICAL SIGNALS, is an added layer of meaning which you GIVE TO the signals coming from the physical world. It's how you INTERPRET them. You can read into them and put hate and guilt and sin onto them, or you can OVERLOOK them and diminish their power and see them as false and sinless and nothing.

If I see a person walking past with a broken leg, that's because their leg is broken physically and it will carry on being broken physically whether I'm in a good mood or not, whether I'm lining up with the holy spirit or not, and regardless of anything else I do. OTHER than to say that if I move towards the light I WILL extend healing and this will INFLUENCE the other person, and may indeed miraculously heal their broken leg, but that's a whole other story. If I have physical eyeballs I WILL SEE the physical world. And I will keep seeing it until my mind is 100% totally committed to seeing ONLY reality. That's why you can still find your way to the toilet!

This is the point at which the physical stops showing you pictures of impossible worlds:

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

Note then that spiritual sight only very "lightly" touches upon the physical "veil of illusions", the world, earth, as it LOOKS PAST it and beyond it to the light of heaven or the real world. It sort of lightly sees the forgiven world (to forgive is to overlook) as a result of not looking heavily AT it, and instead looking THROUGH it and past it. This makes the world gradually more transparent until eventually the veil of spacetime lifts entirely, revealing christ's face. ONLY THEN will you stop seeing the physical (forgiven OR unforgiven) world. And then you will use ONLY vision and see ONLY reality.

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

So can we please try to stop saying that everything you see is because of how you're seeing, and stop saying that if you see something you're judging, and stop saying that every single claim is a projection, and stop saying that seeing a broken body means your mind is not healed, and stop being CONFUSED about the fact that there are TWO PARALLEL CHANNELS OF INPUT coming into your mind. One of them is true, and one of them is false. And the false channel can and will show you earth EXACTLY AS BEFORE, until you no longer have a body to look at it with. And this has NO BEARING on how healed your mind is other than to say that only in TOTAL healing will you stop USING the body at all.

"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."

Sometimes, we can use the truth to deny what we really believe. We can say, ok in theory I get it, there is no world, people are not bodies, death isn't real, sickness is a lie etc. It all makes sense. But, that doesn't mean we really really deep down believe it. If we really believed it we wouldn't be here in sick bodies trying to die.

So then the truth is that at this time, right now, we do believe in death and sickness and that people are bodies. We can bring in the truth as a concept that people are not bodies, and that which gets sick is not really a person, and if the body dies the person hasn't really died. But at the same time the mind is still actually believing that people are bodies that get sick and die, and that still generates suffering. I'm doing the course, but life still sucks, and this is why.

Given that we do believe all kinds of lies, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of illusions and falsehoods, as if they are real, we could be using these higher loftier truths, these theories, to hide from how we're doing right now. We could be hiding behind it and using it as a shield to cover up and deny and not look at and not recognize what we ACTUALLY believe right now. More of a spiritualised-ego wishful thinking, in love with the ideas but not living it.

I suppose that's some kind of a "bypass". We are giving lip service and partial belief to something higher, but are then using it to deceive ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe anything else. As if just by getting it intellectually that's going to undo all of our investment and belief and commitment to suffering and death. And doing a few lessons is going to fix it overnight. And just because I read some text it means I have no ego left.

There is in fact part of me still that does believe, for example, that my wife was a body, and that the body became horribly sick, so sick that it died completely, and now she is dead. That's an actual ongoing belief that I have, even if I strive towards higher truths that death is not real and she is still living in Spirit eternally. And that belief does still generate suffering.

Avoiding the fact that we do still believe in all kinds of ego bullshit, is a way to keep those beliefs protected. Covered over with a layer of garnish in the form of higher truths and platitudes. We keep telling ourselves we don't believe these things over and over again but deep down we still do.

And so the ego uses the truth to hide the lies, and keep them as sacred treasures. We can look and sound and seem all spiritual and as though we're clever at grasping metaphysics and are doing the lessons and all that to try to wake up. But it can easily be used by the ego, which is totally committed to the reality of death, to avoid admitting to what we DO believe. We're perfectly adept at using ACIM to add another layer of denial over everything the ego treasures in order to keep it going.

We do believe in suffering and death and sickness and pain and misery. We do believe Earth is reality and is God's cruel creation. We do believe that death is salvation and suffering is atonement. We do believe that guilt is justified and fear is totally rational. We do believe that we're not safe and that we are in constant danger. We do believe that the death of a body is an absolute loss of a part of reality that can never be regained.

We can't get past these beliefs if we aren't willing to at least admit that we do believe them. And we can't get past it by just going into denial and trying to take on a higher truth in order to COVER OVER those beliefs and pretend they're not there. A thorough investigation of what you DO believe in all honesty is required, to at least admit that you DO believe in it, in order to change your mind. Otherwise why would you bother.

This is also why Jesus says that we are supposed to admit that we DO believe the separation from God happened, that we DO believe we are a body, that we DO believe in things going wrong. But only so that we can THEN, in light of that, realize that we need and want to do something to correct it, and can properly undo those beliefs. If we just cover it up, Jesus refers it to a "misuse of denial".

"The Separation 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." UrT2E50

So we do need to accept at least temporarily that we do not want anything to do with God. That we DO believe we are separate from God living apart from him devoid of him and that we do not want him. We hate God and want him dead. We have these beliefs. We find ourselves in spacetime in a human body pretending to be flesh and bones and believing this it is what we really are. We have to admit that this is our position if we want to get out of it. We can't get out of it by just hammering ourselves with theories and statements about what is true while keeping these beliefs going.

For me, I recently looked at this and recognised that I do in fact believe I am separate from God. And therefore, because of that, I need to now find a way to return to God. Almost like the very beginning of the journey, starting from scratch. It was as though I hadn't wanted to look at the fact that I did squarely believe in being separate, and had spent years avoiding that belief and pretending that I didn't believe it.

What keeps us from awakening and reality is the hidden desires we have to want nothing to do with it, and that has to be uncovered and relinquished. In effect, we don't get to God by just trying to go there, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that bind us to hell first. The ego commitment to death and the fact that you do want to die, has to be looked at. You want the opposite of God, which is why you're here in the first place. Just smothering that with shiny icing isn't going to make it go away.

Similarly in grief and loss I was not feeling happy, and had to admit that I was not happy, and that therefore because I wanted something else i wanted to be happy. And that was a stepping stone to seeking out that happiness, and realising that God is that happiness. I might not have done that if I would have kept pretending that I was happy. I didn't want to admit I was not happy because I thought that was "being more ego", but in fact it's merely admitting to how much ego I already believe in. I was trying to cover it over with denial and illusions of truth and fanciful ideas and lofty metaphysics.

We have to realise we're in the shitty stinky pig-pen if we want to realise that you're the prodigal son and want to go home. The way out of hell requires realising that you're in there in the first place. And the fact is that most of us in the world are so in denial that we don't even believe we're really suffering at all. Suffering has to be recognised AS suffering before you'll be willing to want something else. So long as it is kept hidden behind an illusion of the truth, you'll keep it going.

"...I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

In order for you to fully allow Holy Spirit to decide for you, whether you are truly innocent or guilty, you need to be fully willing to accept His verdict.

That means, unconditional acceptance.

If I go to Holy Spirit holding onto some kind of hope that He will decide one way or another, or some kind of belief in the reasons why I will keep my guilt, then I'm not really allowing HIM to decide for me. It means I'm still using my own decision-making processes to evaluate my own guilt and am judging myself and having an authority problem.

So let's put it this way.

Think of Holy Spirit like a courtroom judge who is going to listen to your case. In this courtroom session, you do not have any say in what the law is. The law will be perfectly enacted. You will not be able to squirm your way out of or into anything. So really, you do not have any say in what the verdict is going to be. Holy Spirit knows about all of the evidence and nothing is hidden. So you really are not in a position to be able to control anything. It is impossible for you to sway the verdict or get off lightly or persuade the jury or anyway. All you're going to be able to do is receive a verdict. Whatever that verdict says, is going to be the law, and you are going to have to accept it. There is no point in fighting it or resisting it.

So in order to get yourself ready for Holy Spirit's verdict, you are going to need to SURRENDER. And that means, unconditionally, that you give up trying to evaluate for yourself whether you are guilty or innocent. It's no use trying to believe EITHER that you are innocent when you feel guilty, or that you are guilty when you're really innocent. You do not know. You do not have the faculties to know. That's why you've come to court, to allow He Who Knows to make a completely informed decision.

So your position now is that you will ACCEPT whatever Holy Spirit's verdict is. If Holy Spirit says that you are 100% guilty, then you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS, even if it sucks. If Holy Spirit says you are 100% innocent, you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS also, even if you think you're meant to be guilty. See, regardless of what YOU think, you have to put ALL of that aside and be willing to really hand over the decision-making to Him. It's not up to you whether you're innocent or guilty. That's for God to decide. You have to admit to yourself you are not in a position to 'invent' innocence or guilt. You are willing to surrender and accept whatever God says is true. And that means unconditionally, no matter what He says. You're just going to have to live with it.

I don't mean that to sound dire like some kind of terrible fate, but you do need to have that unconditional willingness to ACCEPT and allow Him to decide. So then you ask Him. Ok Holy Spirit, here's all the shit that I believe, all my guilt, etc... what do YOU think of this? Am I really guilty? You decide. If he says you're guilty, you're guilty. If he says you're innocent, you're innocent. So you listen. And he says.... drumroll please....

His unconditional response is ALWAYS, YOU ARE INNOCENT.

And as He tells you this, any fear relating to what His verdict will be, will lift. And you will be relieved that you are NOT GUILTY. None of what you thought about yourself or others was true. And because you were willing to fully accept, unconditionally, His verdict, you are now in a position to actually ACCEPT IT. So you allow it. And this allows His HEALING to come into you, and literally to undo and correct all of the consequences of your wrong decision, which actually does mean undoing all negative feelings and energies in your mind/body, removing all guilt, and leaving you PURIFIED. It may take a bit of practice for you to allow Him to do this, but He can indeed 'supernaturally' heal you of all consequences that came from your guilt, especially now that you have accepted that you are innocent.

Party time!

Once again, last evening, I asked God what he wanted me to 'do', thinking that there were actions or things to 'do', and His reply to me was:

"Receive."

I realize that my ego mind is SO used to 'seeking', which is kind of like an activity of 'going out' to try to manipulate the world, to find, to fix, to change, to perform actions, to rearrange furniture, etc.

It's like, we have a motor in our mind. The motor wants to keep running. It wants to keep going somewhere. It wants to keep doing something different. Finding something different. Searching for answers. Changing someone. It is all do do do do do do do go go go go go go all the time. This is its ONLY mode of operation.

And all of that is really encapsulated in the word "seeking". The ego mind is just constantly in this activity of seeking. Of thinking that it has to go somewhere or do something in order to 'get' or 'find' what it does not have HERE AND NOW.

So when I go to God and I ask, what should I DO.... really I'm saying, what should i seek for and where should I go to find it and what should I do to change it. And I have the best intentions. I think that this is noble or honest or helpful or holy or spiritual. But really, it is still seeking. It's still ego going away from the here and now, away from acceptance, away from stillness or surrender.

So God's answer to me - "receive" - really DOES actually address what the real problem is. The real problem is that I am addicting to seeking, because I continue to have this ego belief that I DO NOT HAVE GOD. This is what it all boils down to. If I'm absent from God and am not with God now and do not have God in me, then I seem to need to go fill this emptiness somewhere else.

So the remedy is clear and simple. I need to RECEIVE GOD. I need to open up to accept, admit and allow (the 3 A's?), that GOD IS HERE WITH ME NOW.

And this also means I need to SURRENDER the search, surrender the 'going and doing', surrender the 'something has to be done about this', and surrender all of the things I think are needed or have to be done 'because of' the lack of God. If I just accept that I am lacking God, I will be compelled to go find answers somewhere else, in some activity or change or manipulation. And I will think that God has to tell me what to DO in order to ACHIEVE those changes and manipulations, as if that would actually answer and solve them.

I don't realize that all of this compulsion to find - the seeking - satisfying that seeking or completing that seeking by finding outside of myself, WILL NOT bring me peace. AND, I will not be able to find those resolutions anyway because of "seek and do not find". What I think I want, is not there. The answer (God) is not there. The peace and certainty and clarity is not out there. The only thing 'out there' are illusions and distractions and dead ends.

So God knows. God knows what I need. God knows that I need to stop GOING AWAY FROM GOD, in order for this 'problem' to be solved. In order for ALL problems to be solved. Even the ones that I think are important, or every-day living types of problems. For these to be solved, I need to realize where they come from. ALL of these problems arise out of not knowing that God is with me. Of not depending on Him. I need to therefore undo THAT issue, which is by allowing God to be with me, and then the perception of all of these problems even being 'important' in any way, will dissolve.

"Let me recognize that all of my problems have been solved" - ACIM

And so.... I stop...... and I surrender....... and I receive God. And I just receive. And receive some more. And I say, "ok God, go ahead and flood me with more love".... and I receive more.... and I say "ok God, I receive your love, I receive your love, I receive your love". And I feel it. And I receive it. And all of the problems of life melt away. And who cares about fixing any of them anyway? They were all IMAGINARY!

All you need is love. It's being given constantly. You just need to receive it.

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so."

So forgiveness bridges the gap between FALSE perception and KNOWLEDGE, by producing a temporary intermediate state between the two which SYMBOLIZES knowledge closely enough to make the transition to it easier.

But if you think about it, forgiveness entails you giving meaning to everything you see, just as unforgiveness does. You project in order to perceive. So in effect, you have to "decide", somewhat randomly, that you're going to just choose to love the world. And by loving it, you push love onto it, and see that love in it. Not that it's really there. Any more than when you push hatred and guilt onto it it's seen in it but it's not really there.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell and always as you wish."

So it seems like this decision as to what you will perceive is really quite arbitrary. It's not really based on anything. It's almost like saying that you just wake up one day and decide that, for a change of pace, today you're going to love things instead of hate them. Like, the fact that you love things isn't based on what the thing is, but on what you are deciding to project.

So it's like you have to take the world, which is neutral, and just spontaneously decide you're going to love it, in spite of itself, just because you choose to do so. Not because it deserves it or is made of love or anything dependent on it. Just some internal decision that you're going to adopt a certain attitude towards yourself and everything you see.

Essentially this means that forgiveness is a kind of fiction or a lie, something that you're sort of making up as you go along. You're just choosing to be more loving, of your free will. You could just as easily choose to be hateful. Perhaps this is why Jesus also calls it a "happy fiction". Put in another way, a kind of "happy make-believe" or "a happy lie." A lie which seems to symbolize truth.

Sometimes that's what it feels like, trying to forgive stuff. It's like we're asked to just be loving just for the heck of it. Just randomly. Yesterday you were hating, today try being loving. Then tomorrow you can hate again. After all this is all about giving everything all the meaning it has. As Jesus says, the world has no meaning of its own and your mind must give it meaning.

It kind of feels to me somewhat "unfounded" to forgive anything, just on the basis that it's actually a CHOICE. It's something you have to choose to do. Just as you choose to suffer. You have to choose to be forgiving, choose to not attack, choose to not make guilty. Sort of, just for the fun of it.

Of course there's a higher purpose here in that a more forgiving attitude aligns your perception closer to God and his laws, which also brings more happiness, which you may hopefully prefer. But everyone is still free to choose what they want. I guess the moral of the story is that you are not forced to have to forgive, everyone is free to choose as they wish - always as they wish. And becoming forgiving is actually a deliberate act that you're going to have to just decide and commit to, just because you want to, or because you see it as something you prefer.

Because we don't realize how much power we have lost by following the ego, we might not realize just how much power is available to us.

Returning to God doesn't just mean we remain some kind of disempowered, barely able to do anything being that's nice and calm and unassuming. We've been so used to living in limitation and lack, spiritually starving ourselves, and so used to blocking the extension of God, that we may not anticipate the wealth that is on offer.

This wealth will return to us as we reclaim the Kingdom, and resurrect to our True Identity.

It is the difference between going from death, to being alive. Going from suffering to happiness. Going from loss to abundance. Going from fear to profound natural confidence.

It's as though we've taken God's power and presence and have tried to squeeze it and wring it out and drain all of the life out of it. We've become spiritually dry and barren.

As you awaken, your willingness to do God's will and your openness to RECEIVE, is going to open the floodgates to the extension of LOVE to flow and radiate through you. Love is power.

Quite literally, the absence of love is an absence of life-giving force, an absence of freedom, an absence of manifestational potential, and a breaking of causal power.

We're been preventing ourselves from wielding miracles, limiting and stopping or creative capabilities, and have placed ourselves in a prison with shackles on. Having bound ourselves to the ego and the body, we have shut down our unlimited power, and now thing there is no greater power to reclaim.

Your ability to cause anything has been reduced down to almost nothing by being in the ego. So much separation has come between cause and effect, to suggest they are disconnected. It's like the power cable is unplugged.

Returning to awareness of God's love WILL reconnect you with power. The power of the mind and heart. Causality will be hooked back up with effects to bring about immediate manifestations of God's will.

This power to cause and produce instant effects, where cause and effect are one, is your completely natural birthright. It is God-given and shared with God.

The potential of what can be accomplished in this power, compared to the almost complete powerlessness rendered by the ego, is staggering.

As you approach God, it is like stepping into the sun. The light radiates, warmth returns, everything becomes dynamic and alive, and life resurrects the dead. God is life and the giver of life which, by comparison, shows just how little and weak the ego is.

As you step out to express God's love, fulfill God's will, and extend God's power, miracles will become effortless and unlimited. Your word will become infused with Spirit, such that you can speak to mountains and force them to move, literally.

By reclaiming and owning up to your natural Christ Power, you will go from cowering and fearing, to certainty, authority, and complete power over all illusions. They will be nothing to you, both in truth and in expression.

You will become like Jesus, or Moses, or many other miracle workers, who share God's impressive might and powerful creative will. Going from a lifeless life to one infused with the living God is going to be night and day.

If someone is afraid, reassuring them won't help remove the fear at all unless you can remove their belief that they are guilty. Trying to tell them that the punishment isn't going to happen will be hard to believe if they still think they deserve it.

Only if they are guilty do they have any reason to fear punishment. If they are not guilty, they can be reassured in knowing that they do not deserve punishment, and therefore will not believe in punishment, and therefore will stop scaring themselves.

The person is not afraid because of what is going to happen to them, they are afraid because they BELIEVE that it is going to happen to them, because they believe they deserve it. Having believing they are guilty, they actually believe in their own deserving of punishment, and so they KNOW it is going to come, because they themselves are going to MAKE it come, and they therefore see the punishment as inevitable. They cannot escape their OWN belief in self punishment, and so are frightened by their very own will and determination to harm themselves!

They are really afraid of their own punishment. This must be undone at the cause which is guilt, and not the effect, which is a projected cause of fear.

Beyond this, if someone is feeling guilty, you can't reassure them that they're not guilty either. Instead, you need to reassure them that they did not really sin at all. Sin produces guilt and the belief in sinfulness makes a person feel guilty. Undo the belief that they are sinful and there can be no need for guilt. Only the sinful will feel guilty.

If the person believes they sinned, they will attack themselves and condemn themselves with guilt. The condemnation is coming from themselves, not from anyone else. Even if it seems like shame or misplaced causes for guilt, the decision to be guilty is their own, based on their own belief in their own sinfulness. They themselves WANT to find themselves guilty, and so cannot help but feel that way, because they don't want to undo the belief that they sinned at all. Sin is not real. Nobody sinned. Hey presto, no guilt.