When I used to be sick or suffering, the only options at my disposal was to take a medication, or "wait it out" or "let it run its course" or go through the suffering until I had "fully suffered". Like waiting for the body to heal itself.

Like there was some kind of requirement or this was the only way to "get past it". There was no quick fix. And so I was simply used to this way of existing where problems could not be easily resolved. This seemed "normal."

But then Holy Spirit started to do his thing. And all of a sudden this assumption that suffering and healing take a lot of time, came into question.

All of a sudden it started to seem possible that, "maybe I don't have to suffer"... or "maybe I don't have to tolerate this" ... or "why should I have to wait for this to run its course"... or "what if I can choose not to just let this snowball into weeks of turmoil?"

And as I began to receive Holy Spirit's help and healing, I started to discover that if I was willing, I could start to challenge whether or not I HAD to suffer... I could start learning a little at a time to question this.... maybe I don't HAVE to go through this, or let it just have power over me to dictate how long I have to put up with this. What if there is a better way?

And so I stated to peel back my alignment with the ego and my belief that I should just "go along with" the suffering, as if I had no other option. I started to get used to this idea of stopping myself and not just blindly going along with the program, and realizing that maybe I don't HAVE to. And as there started to BE another option - that I could get healed by Holy Spirit, that really started to bring into question whether suffering had to be TOLERATED or put up with.

What also has increased is a kind of REFUSAL and strength to say NO to the prescribed suffering, to rebuke it, to realize that I DO have a choice, and that in actual fact there IS a POWER in decision. That I can decide NOT to suffer. That I do not have to accept or tolerate it. If I am willing, there is another way. I can instead refuse to just lay down and accept this and instead forgive and get into willingness and choice and get out of victimhood and learn to let go, to let myself receive help and get some healing.

This has really undermined the sense of having to just let shit happen. Holy Spirit is adamant that you DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER. There is no merit in it. You don't have to be guilty for a month and suffer with a sickness. All He wants is for you to return to happiness - it's God's will. So as you start to practice this and open up to it and receive help, you also start to erode the belief in "required suffering", which is a belief in sin and guilt.

This is also part of why sickness and death are NOT GOD'S WILL, and being sick or dead is AGAINST God's will. God wills instead that you be FULLY HEALED, that you do not have to merely tolerate or put up with suffering or being sick or hurt or damaged in any way. He wants to release you from this torture and help you to realize that you deserve and CAN ACCESS permanent healing and health and happiness. That death and sickness are not supposed to be part of your experience AT ALL.

A lesson for me at the moment has two parts to it. One part is realizing that underneath a person there is a completely immortal, invulnerable, innocent being that has absolutely nothing wrong with them and has done nothing wrong. The other part is, connected to this, that therefore I need to learn to 'overlook' the appearance of anything else that they are trying to demonstrate to me as the truth about them and not join with them in it (false empathy).

Being able to overlook the 'obstacle to peace' that other people put in place is a tuff one. But it also means I have to be able to not have obstacles to peace in myself, and that I need to take any kind of 'veil' or 'persona' off of my own mind so that I can see past the personas of other people.

Being able to overlook appearances is forgiveness. When your awareness fixates on looking AT an appearance, AT a body, AT a person's form, this is blinding. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit in you is not allowed to fully extend outward, instead being stopped by the form of another person. But it's not their form that stops your 'vision', it's your belief that it's real - your buying into the illusion of it.

There's sections in the Course that I read not long ago about how the Holy Spirit projects/extends outward PAST your own body and PAST the bodies of other people, to recognize Himself WITHIN the mind of the other person. When your mind is looking past these forms in this way, there is no sickness because the mind isn't getting 'stuck' on form. Fully extending THROUGH and PAST the body is COMMUNICATION, which the Holy Spirit wants to use it for - to join with others beyond their bodies. But if we're fixating on the content of form such as guilt, fear, sin, death, bodies, appearances, etc then this puts a road-block in the way of extension, creating sickness and death. The body then becomes an 'obstacle to peace' - it's in the way we're looking at or past things.

The truth is that the body is never in the way of a truly forgiving mind. The body is not powerful and does not have the ability to prevent the extension of love. The body (mine, or someone else's) also has no ability to snag my mind or get me to pay attention to it. Instead, if my mind is truly forgiving, it will simply see THROUGH and PAST the obstacle recognizing that it is not real and has no ability to prevent extension. Then there will be a recognition of Oneness with your brother.

The issue is that when the mind itself has blocks to awareness, these blocks prevent full extension of Spirit. And that means there's some kind of belief in or attachment to guilt/sin/fear/death/spacetime/bodies etc within the mind. That means, instead of the mind just moving past and extending past everything in form, it instead 'stops' at or becomes fixated on form as though it has some power to block your awareness/sight/vision. You focus on something which is NOT THERE, and you think it is real, and this blocks your awareness. Blocks to awareness manifest as blocks to energy flow and vitality, where ultimately a 'big block' brings about "death".

It's an ongoing challenge to learn not to fixate on form or appearance, especially when you are used to seeing other people as though they ARE the way they appear. So if someone comes along with a sickness or a story about themselves or a really attention-grabbing attitude etc, if I am tempted by that and look AT it and MAKE IT REAL then my mind has become snagged by it, attached to it, and resistant of it, and that will have an affect on my own wellbeing. It will make me sick because I am seeing my brother as sick by failing to overlook sickness. We need to literally see the Christ in ourselves and others in order for our mind to fully extend and to be unhindered and unrestrained. I think in the Course Jesus used a word like "arrested". When the mind is arrested by sight of form we become sick. When the mind is freed from arrest, sickness is loosened up and flow is restored and there is no more death.

It's difficult but I have to learn to look past the ILLUSION that people have something wrong with them, the illusion that people are really sick, the illusion that people are actually able to suffer, the illusion that people really have something to be afraid of etc. And this goes back to the first point.... .underneath all of our shit there is an immortal being that is absolutely unaffected by any illusion and has no faults and is perfectly innocent, invulnerable, powerful and free. If I believe that and know that and experience that and look TO that, then I will overlook all the other illusory bullshit. But if I forget that, or lose sight of that, or fixate on any other DEMONSTRATION as though it is the truth about me or another person, then now I'm into la-la land, hallucinating, suffering, caught up in stories, reacting to appearances and struggling with my own self.

I'm looking forward to absolute certainty. Someday it will appear within and without simultaneously. We are all really free, we just don't recognize it.

(anecdotal. .... People looking down at their iPhones fixated on form, hmm... A great way to make illusions real and to shut out everything else, and they call this a 'communication' device lol it's really an isolation device :-)..depending who you're dialling with ;-)

Here is another way of interpreting this well-known quote:

"Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see."

Instead of this meaning, that the world exists objectively and you must change your perception of it, so that you see it clearly....

What if it means...

What you see reflects your thinking. Change your mind and what you see will change, because YOU are MAKING the world. You are the cause of what's out there. YOU are the dreamer of the dream. Change your mind and the world must follow. Not just a change or a shift in your own perception, or a position of seeing it from a different vantage point. Instead, it's a position of recognizing and admitting that you have power OVER it and by changing your mind the world will change!

This means the exact opposite to what is it is commonly interpreted to mean. It is the sheer difference between merely changing how you perceive and attempting to accept and keep what is out there, verses realizing that you PUT the world there and by changing your mind you can be miraculous in changing it with the Power of God.

You don't think you have this power over the world because you believe heavily that it decides everything for you. That's being a victim of the world.

You are not supposed to just change your perception or INTERPRETATION of the world. You are supposed to realize that you have the power to create physical matter, to change objects, to heal sickness and undo death. That this world LITERALLY is coming from your mind and you have power over it.

If you perceive that you have lost something, then your logical response is despair. You are not grateful because you have not received. Something has been taken away instead, and it inspires ingratitude. You also can feel the same way if you think you are getting something you do not want - you resent it, judge it and reject it instead of being grateful for it.

You will then feel that you do not want what has happened. You will fight with it, resist it, hate it, and wish it was the way it used to be. Whatever has been lost, you want it back. And you feel justified in feeling loss so long as it remains absent.

At the same time, the ego wants what has been lost to stay lost, because it really believes in loss as death. Loss is the gap of spacetime. Loss is the absence of love. Loss is the suggestion that something of God is missing from reality. It is a rejection of life and love and happiness. It is an attempt to die.

Such a state of mind does not inspire gratitude because it feels more like a treachery, a theft, a taking away, a diminishment, in which you now don't have what you should have. And then there will be hate and anger and resentment and a sense of not wanting whatever else someone or some place is offering, because it's not the thing you're missing.

In loss, you will then reject everything, not acknowledge what you have, not appreciate or even recognise what is present, and will just wish that you had the thing that is absent. But wanting what is not there can only produce what we call grief, which is the unhappy despair and sadness and sense of horror that everything of value has gone away.

But what can this be other than a denial of God, a rejection of love, an unwillingness to live, an insistence that death is true, and a failure to recognise what has been given. There is no gratitude because there is no acknowledgement of what you are receiving.

In fact, loss can be a lesson in which you have to learn to become grateful, and to receive. It is a state in which you are are trying to do the opposite of receive, as if you gave and didn't receive in return.

It's based on the ego's breakdown of the golden rule, in which it insists that giving and receiving are not one, and therefore you have not received what you have given. This is a state of sacrifice, as if something has been sacrificed.

But such a state of mind, which is really the rejection of love and God and receiving, can only produce feelings of loss and despair. It can only incite an attachment to what is gone, a wish it be present, and yet a firm belief that it must not be. It is a way of pushing love away, pushing the valued thing away, while at the same time wishing it was here.

This can only produce a kind of "split" in the mind which produces insanity and intensifies the ego. The ego loves to be in this contradictory state of wanting and not wanting at the same time. It wants what it does not have, and it does not want what it has. This is completely backwards, of course.

The remedy requires the recognition and acknowledgement that you are NOT at a loss, and in fact the total opposite is true. It must entail realising that God has given you everything, and therefore you lack nothing at all, loss is impossible, and everything you could ever really want has been given you.

This requires you to be willing to receive. It requites a willingness to want what you have, and to no longer want what you don't have. But the ego will say, it's impossible not to want the thing that's missing because you love it so much. You want it badly. And the idea of not wanting it seems like a betrayal.

Yet badly wanting something is a state of lack and need, and the more you believe in this lack the more you will want it. So you aren't really wanting it based on love, but based on not getting what you want. The loss is therefore selfish, as part of the ego.

It is in fact by wanting what you don't have instead of what you do have, that you produce a rejection of what is here right now, and therefore a denial and unwillingness to be grateful for what has been given you in the present. It is a rejection of the acknowledgement of gain, and a dwelling on absence and death. But in fact, a willingness to want what you have, not what you don't have, is the only sane approach.

In truth, if you move into a space of being willing to receive, acknowledging that everything has been given you, and that you have everything from God, you will suddenly find that in fact that means that you have love. And the only way to really acknowledge that you have the love you thought you lost, is to acknowledge that it is still being given to you right now. In fact, God has eternally given you love, and the only problem in you seeming to "lack it" and being at a loss, is an unwillingness to receive it. You might complain by feeling it is lost, but this is really an attempt NOT to have it.

By moving into a willingness to RECEIVE, you therefore admit that God has GIVEN everything, and fully, and so completely, that in fact you have been gifted, blessed, honoured and completely recognised. In fact you have not been left out at all, you have been utterly showered with everything you could ever really want. And in that recognition that it is coming TO you, and you HAVE it, you immediately move into a natural response of gratitude. Gratitude opens your awareness to RECEIVE and to WANT what you are receiving, instead of wanting what you are not receiving.

Gratitude is therefore the antidote to loss, because it recognises gain and completely ignores the ego's insistence that death is possible. Loss is really ingratitude for what is. In fact, gratitude to God for life is the way to receive life, and is the rejection of death and the belief in death. And without a lack of God, there can be no sense of loss at all. And then suddenly you will find that everything you thought you did not want is suddenly something you can embrace and accept and want. And then you open up to a whole new life that was in front of your face all along, even while you were unwilling to acknowledge it.

And the good part is, that the love you thought you lost, is not only still with you, it is in you, as you, given to you, shared with you, and had never really left. And thank God for that. How could you actually experience that you had the love you thought was lost, if you weren't willing to gratefully receive it?! This is simply a lesson in becoming grateful to God for what he has guaranteed to be yours forever. A simple movement out of loss and despair and disaster and failure, into total happiness and gladness that everything is present and accounted for.

"Love is the way I walk in gratitude."

"And gratitude can only be sincere if it is joined to love."

"Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love."

"Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are now entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future."

"Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of."

"For gratitude is but an aspect of the love which is the Source of all creation."

"For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God."

"A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight into the real extent of all the gains which you have made; the gifts you have received."

"Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair, and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. We sing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do."

"In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my Reality at last."

"What IS Heaven, but a song of gratitude and love and praise, by everything created, to the Source of its creation?"

"YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"And with My gratitude will come the gift first of forgiveness, then eternal peace."

"What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love?"

"The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but he is NOT grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something TO them, and is NOT receiving something equally desirable in return. His TEACHING is limited because he is LEARNING so little. His HEALING lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness."

"Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want."

"Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world."

"God's justice warrants gratitude, NOT fear."

"And by this LACK of thanks and gratitude, you make YOURSELVES unable to EXPRESS the holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it." "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

The mind and intention behind your words has power.

What you speak is powerful, IF you are speaking words of truth.

Sometimes people will say something like, "I'm worried that..." or "try not to...." or "be careful because you might...." etc. These are all coming from the victim mind and are statements of what the person believes.

They are actually affirmations, which affirm that they believe there is some potential for bad things to happen to you. They are an attempt to diminish power. They are CURSES.

It may seem as though someone is being considerate when they say they are worried about you, or that they are seeking for your preservation when they say they're afraid that something could happen and to be careful etc... but secretly this is laced with attack.

If you are really looking out for someone, SPEAK TRUTH INTO THE SITUATION, don't speak and make more real the ways that bad things are going to happen.

Instead of "be careful you don't hurt your back", what about "your back is strong and safe and cannot be hurt"?

Instead of "don't go to that store because that person might be there", how about, "I see you as empowered and confident and nothing can affect you."?

There's a big difference between fake concern and real support.

Just as guilt is not love, fear is not support. Fear is an attack. It is a further attempt to condemn and curse the situation and keep your brother in a prison.

You can set people free when you use words of powerful truth that are aligned with and extend God's power. They are not just words but carrier signals for His power to flow across. They can move mountains. When your word is the same as God's word, you can perform miracles.

A bible quote along such lines: "Have faith in God," Jesus said to them. "Truly I tell you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and has no doubt in his heart but believes that it will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.…"

What is more important?

To spend huge amounts of time studying and analyzing sickness to try to describe all the ways that it is behaving and all the possible causes and all the remedies that may or may not work, only to likely just apply a bandaid that barely conceals the damage and doesn't really improve the situation long-term...

or

To fricking heal the problem once and for all in its entirety right NOW?

How about being DONE with sickness instead of dwelling on it? How about an immediate healing miracle which SOLVES the problem without fuss of fanfare and without the need to constantly dwell on or tolerate or suffer from all the justifications for why this sickness has to remain?

God has the power to heal anything. And provision has been made for how we can accomplish this healing by working with Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit can and will heal anything in an instant.

The ego loves for us to lament on how long a sickness has been around, for how long we've had to suffer with it, all the reasons why it can't be cured, all the explanation for what is happening, the laundry list of artificial causes, the big long story about how all of this suffering wasn't asked for in victimhood, all the depth and detail of medical history that everyone loves to dwell on etc.

The ego also loves the fact that the ego has made sure there are no real 'cures' in its world of suffering. The cure would be the undoing of the ego, the restoration of God's will and the complete healing and wholeness brought back into demonstration. The ego will not allude to or align with that. It will instead come up with ways to KEEP the suffering, maintain the sickness, not address the real problem, avoid cause (God), and patch it up with archaic, bizarre, blind 'medical treatments' which may or may not help, and often can have fatal side effects.

The ego would trade one sickness for another, it would have you accept a new problem as an alternative to the one you had, wagering that if you do so you will be better off. It has no cures. It has no hope for your continuation of life. It wants you dead.

God has another answer. God has miracles. God can heal. And God is not interested in any illusions that talk about how serious or difficult or long-lasting or incurable a sickness is. God simply heals, completely, now. God is permanent health. Divine health. And we are actually entitled to experience and demonstrate divine health 'in the body' in this world even if it's an ego illusory world. We CAN bring divine healing to our own body and that of others, here in this crazy dream, even if that is not the ultimate goal of awakening. God doesn't want us to suffer.

The only reason we have stupid contracts of suffering and 'scripts' in which we're supposed to learn certain lessons, is because we want to take our sweet time in suffering and going through experiences in order to slowly accept God. But God is available for complete acceptance right now. And God wants to heal completely right now. And God has made it possible, through the Holy Spirit, to heal all sickness right now, regardless of whether people are even anywhere remotely ready to wake up yet and regardless of whether they are riddled with sin.

God just wants to love. We're the ones who think we're supposed to suffer with valid reasons to do so. And we're quite capable of being extenders of God's healing power, even while we're in this strange world.

Isn't it time we stopped focusing on sickness and all the reasons for it and all the explanations of it and all the ways to attack it that don't really heal, and to instead spend at least as much time focusing on learning how to work with God to permanently erase this problem forever? What do you want? A life of torment or a life or joy and gratitude?

Doctors, dentists, hospitals, clinics, nurses, pharmacies, they're all substitutes for a disconnection from God and an unawareness of His divine intervention. We are severely out of touch with the Holy Spirit. We are severely disempowered. We need to get plugged back into the source of LIFE!

There is a view of what ACIM says, based around the idea that this universe is all there is.

It's a view that God created this universe, and thus created all the galaxies and planets, all bodies and objects etc.

People with this view will adopt a model of ACIM in which perception is projected onto God's creation.

They will then believe that false perception means a misinterpretation OF God's perfect creation, and a true perception means a perfectly accurate view of God's creation.

They also will then believe that knowledge is merely a slightly different or more direct way of seeing the SAME stuff that you saw with true perception. That this same world is kept and known.

And therefore to these people, forgiveness means that you forgive the world instead of attacking it, BECAUSE it is real. Because it is God's Kingdom, it's thought to to be your job to "forgive the Kingdom" and stop attacking it. As if "forgiveness means to "be loving toward what's really there."

Another side effect of this view is the belief that, in the separation from God, we DID NOT make a second world. There was no making of space or time by us. There was no forming of galaxies or planet Earth by us. There was no making of human physical bodies by us.

Essentially that there was no result from opposing God, no other world made, no effect producing a dream world, other than that you entered into some kind of egoic state of mind where you don't see heaven correctly. And then the correction of this lets you see heaven directly.

This leads to yet another strange occurrence, whereby since there is no "second world" covering over heaven, and you didn't make THIS world, any references in the course which refer to "the world" are now grouped together with references to egoic perceptions.

So when Jesus says something about "the world", which would be referring to the second world we made without God, and since it's believe such a world was never made be us, those same quotes are now thrown into a "must be an ego interpretation" bucket.

If any such statements suggest that "the world" is not real, is not created, is cruel, is in denial, attacks itself, is contradictory, or anything else that seems un-God-like, then such believers now have to put ALL of those statements into a "false perception" bucket. They have to be interpreted as being egoic mis-perceptions of what would otherwise be recognized as a perfect creation.

As such, since in this model there is no second world to assign anything to, and there is only the first world of the Kingdom of God, anything speaking about "this world" in a less than holy way is thought to be part of the ego's use of it, and NOT a statement about the world itself. Thus false perceptions/interpretations and projected meanings are now MIXED IN with factual statements about the INHERENT nature of the world.

This of course then strips away every single statement which might suggest "this world" is not God's Kingdom, and shuffles all of those facts into an ego bucket where they are safely tucked away and brushed under the carpet. If there is no second world, there is no world to ATTACH them to or associate them with or see them referring to, except "the ego's world".

The end result of all this is that, if you believe there never was a second world made in the separation, and if you believe that Earth is therefore literally God, as God's creation/extension, then you will be completely unwilling to question this world's authenticity.

Forgiveness then becomes a love-affair with the planet, in which we think that we should love what God created, and keep what God created. And forgiveness is no longer seen as UNDOING something that's unreal, but rather as "correctly seeing" something that IS real.

The fact that forgiveness would make what is forgiven DISAPPEAR, because you can ONLY forgiven illusions, becomes swept under the carpet. The notion that the world will disappear when recognized for what it is, as NOT God's creation, now becomes completely denied. There is no place for such a notion in a mindset that cannot accept that we made this world.

So now instead of forgiving the world in order you undo it, we would see our function as forgiving it as though it's something completely perfect and real that we've been mean to and need to apologize to and come to love again. Our entire relationship to this world and what it is thus vastly different when you think of it as God's creation and will, rather than the antithesis of God's nature.

In this model, which seem simple, there is simply God's creation and our perception of it. If we perceive it as anything other than God's perfection, we're seen to be doing something wrong. And if we perceive it as holy and perfect then we're doing something right. And direct cognition or knowledge is then thought to be almost identical to true perception - that true perception shows you what you will still continue to see in a state of knowledge.

But while this model seems simpler and, in and of itself has internal consistency, it still flies in the face of a great amount of what A Course in Miracles says. ACIM actually does say many many times in many many ways that we produced a second world. It says that we made a world opposite to God's world.

It also distinguishes clearly that this second world was DISTINCT from the ego's USE of this world. That ego projected meaning onto this world AFTER it was made by us. And that the Holy Spirit's REPURPOSING of what we made, is NOT a repurposing of the ego or of false perception, but a repurposing of a second world. We can see Earth reflecting heaven or hell, due to its neutral nothingness.

If God truly had created this world, the course would actually be somewhat easier to grasp. We would simply need to realize that we should love everything we see with the body's eyes. That it is all real. Another problem arises though, that the course does not speak well of the body. It even states that it does not really exist and is not God's creation.

In a mindset that thinks that this world IS God's creation, references to "the body" HAVE to take on a different meaning. If the course says the body "is nothing, which it is", this doesn't fit with the idea that God created the physical world. So then we have to shift the body once removed from the world, ie think of the term "body" not as referring to the physical "God created" body but rather to some kind of internal EGO PERCEPTION. And now, this should mean, that all references to "the body" are NOT talking about the physical body, bur about some internal interpretative state.

This kind of shifting of levels, this displacement of meaning and the need to completely redefine basic recognizable words, is an unfortunate side effect of this warped view of the course. Changing the meaning of words becomes necessary otherwise they would indeed imply that physical things are not God's Kingdom.

Indeed, "The body is clearly destructible and therefore not of the Kingdom" tells us that all physical things are not the Kingdom of God. And yet a belief system bent on believing the opposite to this will refuse to accept this meaning. Instead, "body" will be redefined as "must be something the ego is doing", because we don't like the idea that the actual human body is being identified as inauthentic and not of God.

In fact, what we find is that in many many areas, believing that God created this world leads to a completely OPPOSITE belief to what ACIM is actually saying. It produces beliefs which are absolutely and completely diametrically OPPOSED to the teachings of A Course in Miracles. 180-degrees opposite, heading AWAY from the truth instead of towards it.

So when the course tells us that Earth and the body are not of God, such a believer will believe they ARE of God. And when the course tells us that WE made this world, such a person will believe we DID NOT. And when we're told that false perceptions look at an illusion and make it seem real, such a person will invert this to mean that a false perception happens when you're looking at something REAL in an illusory way. And now as someone develops a special-love relationship with the planet, they THINK that they're entering into a genuine and holy relationship with it.

This whole view of ACIM leads to a complete flipping upside-down of almost everything it teachers. It puts reality and creation where it does not belong. It fails to see that the Kingdom of God is not like this world. It cannot comprehend that the physical body is not of God and nothing like our true nature. It completely reverses the meaning of false and true perceptions. It suggests that keeping the world is atonement, instead of its undoing. And it finds no reason to leave this world behind.

In this estimation of the world, it also includes having to believe that things which die are a part of God. That the seasons are God's will. That murder and rape and torture are entirely within what God allows to happen. That war and conflict and destruction are completely normal and natural. And that if you're not accepting them with love then you must be perceiving them with the ego.

As such, believers of "Earth is God" will insist that all of the dark twisted things of the world, when seen with true perception, will be seen as so holy and perfect that they will be deemed on par with God's will and nature. That it is absolutely natural for leaves to fall from trees, for animals to be squashed on roads, for weapons to be manufactured and guns shot towards bodies, for explosions to destroy buildings and for wars to destroy cities. These "destructions", these physical events and objects, are considered to be absolutely divine creations. And it should be fairly obvious that such a suggestion implies that God is far from sane.

It is one thing to forgive a world in which these things occurs, on the basis that they are NOT God's creations, which leads to seeing them in a better light with more forgiveness. But only as a stepping stone toward their dissolution. It's quite another to suggest we would not only love these things but even desire to KEEP THEM FOREVER, as an inherent part of what God is like. The PURPOSE of forgiveness is no longer seen as the end of even the potential for destruction, and instead is seen as a way to recognize that from God's view, destruction IS creation.

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them. But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and TO FORCE YOU TO FURTHER SUBSTITUTIONS."

If we realize that we are immortal beings, we must also realize that we are perfect. Being immortal means living forever, which is only possible if you never change. Being changeless is part of reality, and it's what makes it impossible for anything to happen to you to persuade you away from eternal life.

But upon realizing this you may also come to realize that you are immortal because of God. It is God who sustains you permanently in his mind. It is God who protects you with his infinite power and permanence. It is God who gave you eternal life in your creation. And it is because of God that you live forever.

Then you can go further to recognize that if you need merely acknowledge and accept your true nature, to know thyself, as God created you originally without modification, then it becomes obvious that God already gave you perfection.

When you were created, you were already given everything to make you live forever, be happy forever, be whole and healthy forever, be invulnerable forever. Every one of your immortal attributes is a gift from God.

Then you come to realize that in acknowledging your immortality, you are also therefore acknowledging that you are ONLY immortal because of God. And this goes further to realize that you are ONLY what God wills that you be. It is because of him that you are what you are.

And in this acknowledgement there is the recognition that God created you, God gifted you and gave you, and everything you are and have is from God. And that means, ultimately, that God is you creator or father. So by acknowledging your true nature you automatically start to become aware that you are not only perfect, you are perfect because of Him, and you we already created to BE perfect from the start.

Then it's a matter of appreciation and gratitude to God, acknowledging God as your creator, and realizing that you don't need to DO ANYTHING in order to become perfect. You merely need accept a perfection that God already put in place, and surrender all your attempts to redefine or improve yourself. You need only be as God created you to be and simply be true to yourself.

That's an act of acceptance of the atonement, because now you're simply settling into accepting that you've been perfect from the start, because of God. It's like saying, instead of getting my perfection from the world, I now realize it comes from God. And instead of having to do something to earn it or turn myself into it, I just need to be as God intended.

God has already given me my perfection. I need but accept and receive it and allow it to be wholly true. And accept nothing else as a substitute. I don't even need to do anything to make it true, I just need to let go of trying to make it false.

I had a dream last night where I seemed to be teaching someone about using the mind to heal.

This woman and her husband were in a hospital where their daughter was in the bed. She had some problem with her knees and couldn't walk. The parents were pleading with the doctor to do a procedure, but the doctor was hesitant that she was not ready.

I approached and spoke to the mother, and I asked her, when you look at your daughter's knees, what thought do you have? She said that she thinks "my daughter is sick". I told her that her mind has power and her thoughts actually cause things to happen. So when she thinks her daughter is sick, she actually makes her sick.

I then told her that she has these thoughts as reactions and is letting the situation tell her what the truth is, instead of using her thoughts to heal. I told her that she can have thoughts of her daughter being not sick, and that this would actually cause her to be healed. That this was the power that we all had in our minds to be able to change the situation.

That was the end of the dream. It all seemed very simple and straightforward. You have to ignore what you see as the current state, because that's just the result of past choices. Then you choose what you want to see and use the power of thought to believe in it. This causes the situation to change and now you see what you wanted to see.

It's because people think that their thoughts have no power or influence, and are afraid of them, that they think there is nothing they can do to change situations. That thoughts are just neutral commentaries on what is happening.

But thoughts have power and can cause things to happen. This is what we are afraid of, that our thinking can actually influence situations. And by not recognizing that our thoughts are powerful, we end up reinforcing sickness by "reflecting on it" instead of choosing to undo it.

It's much more supportive to believe someone is not suffering than to believe that they are. The mind doesn't just observe, it creates. Everything you think and feel has an influence on the whole world.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"EVERYONE teaches, and teaches all the time."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

Either its love or a call for love. But you can't recognize that a call for love is ONLY a call for love if you are not already loving.

So there you are, not being loving yourself, and you see another person not being loving either, and instead of being able to see clearly and recognize their call for love, you instead see it as a call for attack.

In other words, you see your own attack reflected in the person and can't look past it.

So it's all very well saying that people are calling for love and that we need to give love, but if you are not giving love you won't even be able to perceive this clearly. You'll see the person attacking you and not loving you and you won't think, oh, that person is calling for love - it won't be obvious and immediate - and if you try to force yourself to 'see it' then you're just faking it.

When you are love, it frames all of reality and all perception in such a way that everything strikes you differently. You have enough clarity and knowing to be able to DISCERN that someone is either being loving or is calling for love. Its obvious to you that the person is hurting or that they need help or that their real need is love, rather than what they say they need.

I don't know that it's helpful to try to go around thinking of everyone as calling out for love. If I'm not 100% loving then it isn't genuine. It can be a GOAL, however, to become able to discern that there is only love or a lack of love, but I can't possibly expect myself to be able to perceive this while I still have an ego.

With an ego I will see ego in others and I will see it as a justified attack that justifies why I should NOT love in return. I need to use this to help me to raise my own awareness about how *I* have blocked love and am calling for love, then allow love in, so that I can allow it to extend to others also.

Once I've done that, and have become the light of love, then I WILL be able to see that what other people are doing is calling out for love, and that love is the ONLY appropriate answer to respond with in every case.