Quite often we are driven by a desire to stop being affected by the world. We all want to get away from suffering and find some peace.

We initially see ourselves as an EFFECT, and we see CAUSE as outside of us. We want somehow to get away from these causes. So we try to stop thinking of ourselves as being affected by the world.

This leads to a belief that if we can just stop being affected by things we'll be okay. It begins a journey of a kind of WITHDRAWAL, where we start rejecting and weeding out the world from our experience.

This can lead to what seems to be a place of peace, where we are convincing ourselves that we're "okay with" anything that happens, that we don't mind if there is sickness, we're okay with death, we don't want to change the world we just want to let it happen.

This seems like a form of acceptance, as though atonement, because when we stop resisting the world we can be more accepting of it, more allowing. And somehow there is some peace to be found by not fighting with it all the time.

In essence, you find a state of what seems like peace by "not minding what happens". But at the same time, there is something missing here.

Originally you were seeing yourself as EFFECT, and the world as CAUSE. As though you are dreamed by the dream. So you then sought to run away from the cause or find a way to try to transcend it. You wanted to stop being an effect, but you didn't necessarily want to take on being a cause.

This seems to happen quite a lot, where people focus so much on not being affected that they don't realize that they are supposed to be BECOMING THE CAUSE. If you're not going to be the effect, you have to be causal. But many people seem to gravitate toward not being an effect WITHOUT being causal.

"This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect."

This results in a state where a person seems to be okay with suffering, still has pains and sickness, does not prevent the body from dying, has no real ability to work miracles, does not heal others, and generally has an attitude of sitting on a fence minding their own business.

It's almost like a disowning of power in a whole other way. We are in fact supposed to be owning up to being the cause of everything, admitting to being the dreamer of the world, taking back the power of God, seeing ourselves as immortal beings that can't be victimized or hurt, having immense strength, reclaiming the power to work miracles, and proceeding to demonstrate this.

But the people who get themselves kind of backed into a corner hiding under a rock and calling it peace, don't seem to be interested in this. Their whole goal is to escape and get away from things and go on a spiritual vacation. There becomes great aversion to anything that looks like it might point in the other direction.

Going toward the world, going into the world, doing anything, performing any miracle, healing bodies, demonstrating the power of God, being supernatural, anything like that is written off as noooo... we don't want to go there, that's the path back into the darkness. That's going to take us back closer to the world again and we want to get away from it.

But that's what's asked of us. We can't pick and choose. We either have to be effect or cause. You can't just drop causation entirely. Sitting on a fence in peace and having no power to cause anything in the world to change is a whole new breed of victimhood.

I think people maybe don't realize how much power the power of God entails, how strong it is, what it is capable of. It is immense and vast and deep and unlimited. And we are to demonstrate this power on earth, using it as Jesus did to teach and to show that the laws of physics are a lie, that bodies can be healed, that suffering can be alleviated by this power.

Most of all we are to reach a point called resurrection. Resurrection is the surmounting of death. It means having so much power over death that death cannot happen. Also that so much life is being asserted through that power that it can convert dead things back into living things. If a person is reaching what they call a state of peace but cannot raise the dead or show that death has no power and no cause, they are not in a state of resurrection.

"There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. "

There is no order of difficulty in miracles, which means raising the dead is supposed to be effortless for us. When miracles like this are not happening around a person and the person is claiming peace, if they are claiming peace while having a sick body still, if there is a double message of peace + suffering in any way, then that person isn't really claiming ownership of being Christ and they have not reclaimed the power of God.

They are still victims. They just are very quiet passive victims that don't want to take the leap to actually owning up to the power of God. We are meant to be strong powerful beings for whom nothing is impossible, nothing is too hard, nothing is too great. We are to be masters of our minds and masters of the world. If we can't stop death then we are still victims at the effect of the world.

"What do you think "the meek shall inherit the earth" MEANS? They will literally take it over because of their strength."

Innocence is not weakness. Innocence is power.

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"I want the peace of God." W185

I've been realising more and more lately that peace is a vital core part of awakening to reality. And here's why.

Before "the separation" there was union and oneness. The idea of separation first began as nothing more perhaps than a very subtle sense of taking sides. Of there being a very slight difference between what seemed to be two things, instead of one thing. A hint of inequality and a vague notion of something belonging to one part and not another.

This mad idea later snowballed to the fullest extent of possibility, into greater and stronger senses of separateness, opposition, inequality, difference and all manner of exclusivity. In effect, "war broke out". A state of psychological war in which the peace of oneness was brought into question.

"And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father." UrT12C11

"Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced." UrT2B43

Ultimately all of what we think of space and time, all physical matter, all objects, planet Earth, human bodies, and all the rest of it, descended as the crystallizing of this simple idea of being separate - separate instead of whole. And that was an idea of conflict, of war, of things disagreeing, of nothing being the same.

In heaven there is perfect peace because there is no possibility of war. There are no separated off things that can be enemies, nor can they attack anything else. There is no sense of threat or danger, no ability to harm or alter God's perfect creations. And without such threats there is no sense of fear, or a "loss of peace" or a disruption to "peace of mind."

Our minds did little more than enter into a state of believing in separate things. That sense of separation took on every conceivable form, including war and attack, blame and murder, sickness and death, destruction and change, judgement and condemnation, danger and threat, conflict and disagreement, inequality and disharmony, and everything we're all familiar with in our lives on earth - a planet which itself depends entirely on separation and war for its illusory existence.

We then need to seek to reclaim our peace of mind. That means, all the ways that we be SEPARATE have to end. All sense of attacking, all desire to hurt, all cruelty, all murderousness, all blame and judgement, all condemnation and grievances, it all has to collapse so that the SEPARATIONS between things are collapsed, restoring unity and oneness.

ONLY in that unity of oneness is true peace fully possible, because it's a state in which all sense of separation is absent. War becomes impossible, and without war there is no fighting, no conflict, no disturbance, no loss, no imbalance, no sin or guilt or death. Peace is an attribute of a sane healthy mind which has been restored to wholeness. Because in wholeness there is no split mind, no divided will, and you are no longer at war with yourself. This is accomplished through forgiveness.

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others." UrT2A32

To gain peace, all your psychological weapons have to be laid down. All sense of wanting to attack, wanting to resist and fight, wanting to hurt and destroy has to be undone. And undoing all of this is a surrender. It is this surrender that ends the war, a surrendering of all ego pursuits and beliefs. When you wave the white flag, you return to peace, because the end of war is indeed peace. Nor will your peace mean defeat, but victory and invulnerability.

"Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself to keep all miracles away from me." URW347

"Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again" UrM21A4

"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head." UrW192L9

"Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same, while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies." UrT24D4

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness." UrW190L9

"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys?" UrW250W45

Ok so.... weird as this will sound... when Holy Spirit does healing with me, it usually entails significant shaking of the body and also movement of body parts. Usually it entails the movement of my head into some kind of seemingly random sequence of positions.

There will be involuntary movements of the arms and legs, tensing of various muscles, vibrations, sometimes quite rapid and intense alternations from side to side, etc.

This morning after He'd done some healing for a while, which involved the movement of my head, I asked Holy Spirit if he could deliberately move my head. After a couple seconds, vibrations/shaking began and my head moved to the right.

I said ok, now move it all the way to the left. After a few seconds, the vibrations/shaking started and my head moved all the way to the left.

Then I said ok, move it to the middle. After a few seconds, the vibrations/shaking started and my head centered. I then asked and received Him moving it again to the left.

Then I thought ok, to finish off, let's move it all the way to the right. This one took several seconds before it began perhaps because I thought that, for me, this would really prove that He was moving my body. And the the vibrations/shaking started, and He moved my head all the way to the right.

Ok... so... pretty interesting. Even though I'd been used to Him moving my body around as part of healing, I hadn't really thought before to ask if He can cause it to move on purpose outside of the healing mode.

So I took it further.

I said to Him ok, can you raise my arm? After a few moments, vibrations/shaking began in my arm, muscles began to tense, and my arm raised up off the bed to over my head.

I said ok, and put it back down again. So he did.

And then I said ok, can you make it point? After a few moments vibrations/shaking again began and muscles tensed and in a somewhat shaky way, he moved it into an outreached "finger pointing" posture.

I thought ok. This is interesting. Let's do one more thing. So I asked Him to raise my leg. A few moments later, the same vibrations/shaking started in my right foot and travelled up my leg, and then my leg began to raise off the bed. It then returned to the bed.

I know this may sound very weird, because it's supernatural. And it may seem unexplained or frightening to some people. But this is happening because I have trust. And I know it is the Holy Spirit.

These things don't happen in a kind of forceful or overpowering way. They happen because the Holy Spirit has a mind and respects free will and because we hold conversations and have developed trust. And therefore I can ask Him to do things and He will do it. And I can ask Him to stop and He will stop. And I can ask Him to resume and He will resume. We work together. It is a live, conscious, dynamic relationship.

I am endeavoring to take my trust in Holy Spirit and Christ to new levels. I know there is more. I explore and discover and try new things. I experiment. This is the kind of openness you need in order to develop this. You have to be willing and interested in exploring what is possible, without fear.

Somewhere in the urtext Jesus says that some things are on a need-to-know basis and they seem to be kept hidden because you don't need to know. And when you develop a need or desire to know, they become revealed to you. Because you are ready for them.

When you see the manifestations or effects of the Holy Spirit, when you experience Him operating on your physical body, or that or another, you come to trust and recognize that He must exist. That he must be there. Because what is happening is beyond your doing.

And so as you see yourself moved by an unseen spirit force and interact with Him and talk to Him and experience direct real-time cooperative interactions, then you develop the knowing that He is there and He is real and He is powerful and He is working with you. And only by doing this do you come to be aware that He is really there.

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, ***but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there.*** Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, ***as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you.*** Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

Who am I?

What you are, is immortal spirit. You are capable of experiencing, because you have awareness, and you perceive reality. You share the Will of God.

The ego is an illusion. It is not capable of experiencing, it has no awareness of its own, it does not perceive and has no will of its own.

The ego is nothing more than a device, a tool, a machine, which if you choose, you can pick up and USE.

Since the ego is the opposite of who you are, it is impossible for you to use it while you are being yourself. To use it, you must block awareness of your true self.

Once you decide to associate yourself with the ego, it's like picking up a pair of dark-tinted sunglasses. As you put them on and perceive through them, they show you a dark world.

Yet, there you are, as innocent, shining, immortal spirit, wearing a pair of shades. With the glasses on, you can no longer see your illuminating brilliance because the dark glasses seem to filter your perception.

While wearing the ego, you will contribute your experiential awareness, your will and your power, and "bring it to life". You will extend yourself through it.

However, because it is a mechanism for distortion, you will experience a shift in perception from truth to lies, a darkening of your awareness, a loss of your real identity, and a shutting out of God.

In this state it will seem as though the ego is now who you are. Seeing through it, whatever it is designed to see, will become your perception. If it believes in being sinful, you will see yourself as sinful. If it believes in a guilty self that must die, you will believe that about yourself.

Your sense of Self - identity - is brought with you as you wear the ego, and your USE of it appears to modify your sense of self. Your take on an identity unlike your real identity and believe it is you.

Your belief in what the ego shows you causes you to forget who you are, you no longer recognize yourself or the truth, and you now perceive the truth of your very own real self as your enemy.

When the truth comes along to remind you of the fact that you can just drop the ego glasses and return to full awareness, you will resist it. You have chosen to take on the ego's perceptive mechanism, and believe that what it perceives is true reality.

You will see darkness in the truth which is not there, because the ego glasses show you a dark version of the world. And you will reject it and want to get away from it, because it will look frightening.

You will see it as saying that the ego self does not really exist, and you - aligned with the ego - will interpret this to mean that YOU do not exist. And you will defend against that by producing sickness.

Being in the ego you will defend the ego because you think that the ego is your self. You will side with it, protect it, reinforce it, and not want to let it go. You think that doing so is letting your self go. You are not really interested in protecting the ego, only in protecting your SELF, but you think that you and it are the same.

If you are believing you are the ego self, you will believe you're a sinful guilty self. That this is true of you. It's not, but while you are identified with the ego you'll agree with it.

ALL you need to do is to learn what is the difference between your REAL identity and the identity you have when you're wearing the ego filter. This is the difference between God's truth and the ego's truth.

The ego isn't anything. If you were to realize you are not it, and accept what you really are, taking off those sunglasses, you would easily and instantly see yourself correctly and know it to be true. The ego would have no defense against this.

It has no will of its own, no power of its own, no purpose of its own and no life of its own. It is borrowing yours for as long as you choose to keep using it. As soon as you drop it, it is a lifeless machine that is not even functioning. It definitely is not experiencing anything, because the ability to experience is coming from your immortal spirit.

This is why you need to learn to withdraw belief that everything about the ego is TRUTH, or REAL, because while you believe that, you will see your sense of Self as being tied to it. You'll believe that its perception is your perception. You'll see how it sees, and your identity will be its identity. And that will produce tremendous resistance to awakening. Not because YOU are resistant, but because your USE of it makes you confused.

Also when you've tied yourself to the ego thought system, if you start to try to become spiritual WITHOUT letting go of the ego, and WITHOUT undoing the belief that what IT sees is reality, you will produce a "spiritual ego". You will spiritualize the illusions the ego sees, will give them special value, and will polarize your experience.

You'll then believe that you're becoming more yourself or more spiritual, but if you're not letting go of USING and identifying with the ego, all you're doing is changing the ego from one state to another, it is NOT really becoming spiritual, and you are just spinning your wheels.

The ego cannot EVER become spiritual because it doesn't even have a life of its own. It does not exist as anything other than an illusory device for changing perception. That's all it does, like a pair of sunglasses. It is lifeless. No will, no life, no power, nothing.

YOU are the one who gives those properties TO it and tries to MAKE IT be your reality. Your MAKING of the ego is what seems to animate it and transform yourself into it. It has no power over what you are and is completely meaningless without you.

So you need to get past the spiritualization of the dream and the ego, which will show up ANYWHERE in your experience where you're both holding onto some ego and trying to be spiritual at the same time.

The ONLY true way to become spiritual is through the letting go, surrendering, relinquishing, and stoping using of the ego entirely. That is true awakening FROM it, not with it. It cannot awaken because it is not anything. A pair of sunglasses cannot wake up. But the person wearing the sunglasses can take them off and see the light of truth.

So really it all boils down to this. Just discerning who you are. Are you the real truth as God created it, OR, do you really believe that you ARE this ego identity which has no real life and is an idea of death? You cannot change your ego self into your spiritual self, but you can surrender your USE of the ego.

Using the ego is merely an act of not being true, not being honest, not being real, and not being who you are. It is dishonesty. It is denial. It is unconsciousness.

Nothing about the ego can STOP you from waking up. The sunglasses aren't glued to your head. YOU are entirely in the driver's seat, you are the one who is putting the filter over your vision, and you are the one who is trying to PUT power and will and life and reality INTO the ego. You are the one who is trying to MAKE IT your Self.

So you're doing it to yourself. And once you take the ego off your identity and stop BELIEVING that you are IT, by stopping believing that you are everything that is ITS truth (sinful, guilty, fearful, separate etc), that's all that's needed to return to the awareness of your true identity as God's Son.

What has happened to you while you wore sunglasses? Nothing. You just looked cool for a while. You take them off, you're still you. Nothing happened.

Trying to wake up from the ego while still having the ego is PAINFUL. We have identified ourselves AS the very ego that we're apparently trying to undo. And even as we take some small steps to undo it, we still retain much of it, and that means all the things we did 'to' it (as it perceives it), we will experience as being done to ourselves. That means we will take all of our attempts to wake up as slaps in the face, like being punched by the truth and attacked by the Holy Spirit.

I remember early on when working with the course especially, the feeling that the Course completely 'ignored' the existence of my ego self, and it sure as hell took that as a kind of huge slap in the face, like being ignored and unacknowledged. That produced suffering.

I also know that early on my understanding of course concepts was too ... unrefined, and full of holes, and too broad, so when I would apply some concepts I would grossly overshoot the mark and come to all kinds of conclusions which was not in alignment with the course. Those false conclusions and implications produced suffering. In particular I remember feeling like we had to 'give up' all of the things we have previously become interested in, like new-age stuff, a love of crystals, healing, various books etc, because - you know, if the world is not real then doesn't that mean we're not supposed to do any of this stuff? And so there was a lot of needless sacrifice, because we did not understand accurately enough.

It's kind of like we are attached to (identified with) this big lump of darkness and we're trying to rid ourselves of it, but at the same time, because we are doing basically both things at once - keeping it and tryin to remove it - we can't help but be in CONFLICT. Some people refer to it as "having feet in two canoes". One canoe seems to pull us one way, the other pulls us another. We want to wake up, but we sure as fuck don't. We want more truth, but we sure as fuck don't. We want to keep doing the Course, but we sure as fuck wish we would just stop the fucking thing. It's always like two steps forward, one step back, and we kind of can't help it.

If we could fully step out of the ego and stay out of it, we wouldn't have this problem. But the problem is we are very attached to it and still believe a lot of what it says. Push me, pull you. We yearn for truth in one direction, then the 'rest of us' pulls us in the other direction.

The ego interprets the truth as an attack. The ego sees the Holy Spirit as an enemy. It absolutely does not want to wake up, and the part of us aligned with it does not want to either. I mean, that's just honestly the case with most of us. We want it, but we don't. And every time we are exposed to some truth, part of us is like - oooo, ahhhh, I love this, I feel so light and happy, and then the other part of us which is holding on to ego is like. .. What the fuck are you doing man, that's totally bullshit, it's offensive, it's hurtful, there is no way you can accept that, you should get away from it.

This is the entire foundation for the 'ego rebound'. It is not just a simple backlash or retaliation. It is the parts of YOU that do not yet want to let go of the ego, even though there seem to be parts of you that do. It's the part of you that still believes you are a body. It's the part of you that truly believes that the ego is telling the truth and is your friend and savior. People DEFEND who they believe is their true savior with great vigor. The viciousness of the ego is entirely justified given how much it believes God is NOT the truth.

So as we take these steps toward awakening, we will continually experience that it is NOT what we want, and that exposing ourselves to light is literally killing us. And everything in us that believes the truth is NOT true, and that God is evil, and that Holy Spirit will destroy us (which can be a huge thing), will kick and scream and resist and run away and try to hide. It does this by RESISTING THE TRUTH. It is a resistance against awakening, but the ego sees it as a resistance against annihilation. To it, it is just self-preservation. It sees its motive as PROTECTION. It thinks it is completely justified and that stupid Holy Spirit should shut the hell up.

This resistance produces defenses, and its main defense is to try to make you even less awake by forcing extra unconsciousness onto you. It wants to dumb you down and numb you to the truth and pull you back into hell. It figures you are SAFER there. So the ego literally applies a kind of 'arrest' on the mind, a restraint, a contraction, a limitation, a blockage, as if you are literally trying to 'get away from' the truth and to withdraw from it into the body. These 'defenses' are what WE call 'sickness'. They are barricades against the truth. We think we NEED them because they are protecting us. We are just scared and confused and think that they serve us and that if we didn't have them, we'd be in danger. So there is no need to think of yourself as guilty for having sickness, it just means that you are confused about what the truth is and you currently are perceiving it as something you don't want. You could ONLY experience it as something you don't want if you are mistaken - ie still believing the ego's interpretation.

As the course says (quoted in earlier post) all sickness is the result of resisting awakening. We want to wake up, but we don't. And if we push ourselves to try to be awake too fast, i.e. before we are truly ready and willing (i.e. we can see clearly enough), we will dig in our heels and try to stop it from happening. That just means we need to take a break and go slower. It's ok to do so.

But the fact remains, trying to wake up is a minefield. We do not understand what it means, we resist it naturally, we think we need protection from it, we attack ourselves to defend ourselves from it, and we come to all kinds of misunderstandings which inflict pain and suffering in our lives. Waking up is therefore not exactly EASY, because we keep ping-ponging all over the place trying to settle on what the truth really is. It's a struggle. It's upsetting. It's painful. And we are bound to make a LOT of mistakes. But we will get there eventually.

I used to attack myself pretty severely through the fear of being judged by others. I was painfully shy and perceived a need to withdraw in an effort to protect myself, but all this did was hurt myself deeply.

My shyness was a coping mechanism for protecting my sensitivity. I had failed to learn how to express myself fully, and it didn't help that I was an introvert. I had trouble learning social skills and asserting myself. Every social interaction was literally painful.

I did not realize what I was doing to myself. My perception was that other people were perceiving me in a certain way, which I was simply trying to get away from.

After a social encounter, particularly one with strangers or where I had to go into someone else's home or be surrounded by a crowd, I would feel deeply, deeply hurt. I would become strongly embarrassed in the midst of the situation, would tense up, become very quiet (paralyzed) and experience things as though everyone was judging me.

I would return home with a very very deep inner emotional pain, a feeling of "hurt", that was so strong I had no choice but to have a deep cry in order to deal with it. Every social encounter seemed like a total failure and something I did not want to be a part of, making me avoid them even more. It was deeper and stronger than any other emotional upset about any other situation in life. It felt absolutely horrible.

When strangers would even walk past I would immediately cringe and feel attacked. I suspected they were a threat, and saw them as enemies or someone I did not want to be around. They seemed to have power over me and I hid away and withdrew in an effort to avoid people.

I had no idea what was happening in my perception or what I was doing to myself. I only thought that other people were hurting me and causing me to feel like shit. It seemed to all be their fault, and they were the ones who we being judgmental.

But over time I have gradually, slowly learned, that this is not the case. It was difficult to come to realize this.

I saw that I was in fact judging everyone else. I saw them as judged in some way, although this seemed to be subtler and concealed behind my reaction to this perception. Seeing them as judgers automatically meant I was judged by them and therefore at their effect. The effects this produced in my own self was the deep hurt.

I had to realize that in order to see them as judgers, I had to believe they were the ones being judgmental, which was in fact my own belief. I was making them out to be judgers. And that meant, I was simultaneously judging my own self by seeing myself in the role of "judged" by them.

It never really had anything to do with other people judging me either. In fact, probably in 99% of cases they were not being judgmental at all. They were not even interested. They weren't saying anything about me or pointing a finger or anything. But I had this "mental illness" of strongly believing that I couldn't go anywhere without being under attack. And it wouldn't matter if someone pointed out that no-one really cared to judge me because they were too busy with their own selfish interests, I couldn't see it.

What I was really doing was seeing myself as judge-worthy, disassociating a part of my mind and projecting it onto others, seeing them as the judger rather than myself, and then creating the effects within myself that correspond to how I perceived others to be perceiving me. I literally was hurting myself. The hurt I did to myself was far worse than anything anyone else ever did, and it was all because of how I was mis-perceiving.

Underneath this fear of judgement there was a belief that I deserved to be judged, because I believed I had sinned and was guilty. I didn't see myself as worthy of love and therefore perceived that others agreed with me. My direct self-attack turned into indirect self-attack that appeared to be coming at me from other people, but was really coming at me from within a part of my mind that I did not recognize as myself.

I was being both the judger of myself, and the one who was judged. Or in other words, a victimizer and a victim. I played both roles but only saw myself as playing the victim role, and unfairly so. The mere act of perceiving oneself in a victim role automatically creates effects in yourself, typically emotional reactions which try to correspond to the causes that you see as outside of yourself. Because I saw others as judging me severely, I felt severely hurt. Truth is, both the perception that others were judging and the hurtful effects of the judgement were both put in place simultaneously by myself.

I needed to forgive myself. And this has taken a very long time and it's been a very gradual slow process. Over the years, a sense of being separate from others has diminished. A sense of being trapped in myself has diminished. A sense of frustration at not being able to fully express has diminished. A sense of it not being okay to simply be the way I am has diminished. In fact, recently there has been a growing, wonderful freedom, of finally not giving a fuck.

This funnily enough manifested in recent hairstyles. It suddenly became fun to play with looking ugly, rather than trying to look pleasing. And I don't mean this ugliness is another judgement, just that, I've found myself being really "ok" with looking whatever way I look without it meaning anything or causing a judgement.

This is so freeing. It now becomes more of a "playful" experience, where it doesn't matter one way or another, and where I'm growing stronger in my willingness to present myself in whatever way I like without caring (worrying) about what people will think of it.

You may have noticed over time that in my writing I now swear a lot more often. I used to be so repressed that I would never swear, and thought I was more special or holier than others by not doing so. It's now more of a pleasure to swear. To some this may seem like I'm turning 'evil' but that's not the case. I'm becoming more authentic and more myself, censoring myself less and recognizing that I am free.

Taking responsibility for everything I am experiencing shows me that I can only be upset if I hurt myself, no-one else is the cause of what I feel, and therefore I am set free of concern for massive people pleasing or not showing up fully as myself. I was trying to be everyone but myself, to be something I am not, and to disown myself. There is nothing but pain and suffering there when we do that.

There are some people out there especially those who are painfully shy, who appear on the surface to be sweet and nice but have a strong persona, a facade of everything being alright all the time when underneath there is a searing self hatred and repression and sense of unworthiness and of not being "allowed" to do anything. It's a state of self imprisonment. I still at times struggle with limiting myself and Holy Spirit having to remind me "you are allowed". I often thought I was imprisoned by someone else in life, but really it was my own doing.

Some of these people who are suffering from self-inflicted unworthiness and quiet suffering, turn to suicide as an escape. My own life became one of depression and despearation and a growing feeling that I was approaching some kind of "end". If I had not met my wife at about that time I probably wouldn't be here.

A sense of an "end" was a sense of intense separation, isolation and being cut off from everyone. I was ostracized "by society" for an earlier "accident", but really it was a way for me to do this to myself, to give me a good reason why I should suffer in silence and be unhappy. I have had to crawl out of my own self-inflicted hell-hole. Some people are not able to do this. There was a guy at my workplace who was similarly shy who no one would suspect was suffering painfully every day through false perceptions, and he shot himself.

I am thankful for the Holy Spirit and Jesus who have helped me immensely to come out of my nightmares and into a happier place. I still have work to do but everything keeps heading in the direction of heaven. A Course in Miracles has been a God-send in terms of correcting my perceptual distortions and helping me to undo the grossly self-inflicted false beliefs that torture and condemn from the inside out. I am so different to how I used to be now that I don't recognize myself in photos.

Freedom and relief from suffering comes from the recognition of what we are doing to ourselves. We are the ones who need to forgive ourselves and undo our own self attack. There is a way out of hell, because we are the only ones keeping us in hell. No-one is keeping us here but ourselves. Fear of judgement is secretly the fear of being judged by God, which is an attempt not to go Home by justifying self attack. But there is a better way. And that means, if we will become willing, we can go Home to God and be happy. Thank God for that!

Continuing with the "it's bullshit" theme, let's look at how guilt is also bullshit.

Guilt is not atonement. It is not compensation. It does not make up for doing something wrong. It does not help the person who you hurt. It does not undo what happened. It does absolutely nothing to correct sin. It does not give a gift to the person you attacked. Guilt does not heal anyone.

It doesn't pay for or correlate to the amount of sin that you caused. It does not prove that you did not want to sin. It does not demonstrate that you have "repented". It does not equate to atonement or forgiveness. It does not indicate that you really did not want to do what you did. And it does not raise the overall level of happiness in the world.

Guilt is justified self-attack, resulting from a failure to forgive. But guilt has an even deeper motive.

When you sin, or believe in sin, it is very deliberate. Whatever act it is that you "did", you did it by choosing to do it. Make no mistake that in your ego belief, you wanted to attack, intended to attack, wanted to destroy God, desired to be opposed to God, were being murderous and hateful, wanted the consequences of your attack to be real, desired to overthrow God's will and power, wanted to affect God and make Him dead, and wanted to really believe strongly in sin being "reality" - that you really did bring about real "success" in your attempted separation. Sin is a belief that death is real.

Realize also that at every stage of separation from God, denial is used to try to make whatever is present go unconscious. It is an act of trying to get rid of yourself, because the whole purpose for the dream of death is to destroy yourself. You tried to get rid of yourself by getting rid of God, shutting Him out of awareness, making him unconscious to you. Then you are left staring sin in the face.

But this wasn't enough for you. Just "sinning" did not completely destroy you. So you had to keep on denying yourself, keep on making stuff go unconscious, and keep progressing towards a state of TOTAL DEATH. Sin demands death and will stop at nothing until it is enacted, because only when it is completely implemented will the belief in the permanence and non-reversibility of sin be completed.

So what you did next was make sin go unconscious, denied that sin had happened, and covered it over with another layer of illusion. On purpose. The purpose was to KEEP the sin real, not heal or reverse it, and to add another layer of denial to take you closer to death. You implemented this by INVENTING GUILT.

Guilt, then, is this state of mind in which you start to claim, and make illusions which appear to show, that you DID NOT WANT TO SIN. OOoo.... so ok, first you are believing in murder and death and killing God, and then.... you start to pretend that you did not want to do it, even though you did. Guilt therefore is your attempt to FAKE that you really felt remorseful, guilty, ashamed, that you somehow RECOGNIZED that you did something that you should not have done, and that now you somehow want to "take it back" or "wish that it had no consequences" or "yearn for re-uinion" or whatever else bullshit.

Guilt will position you as APPEARING to claim that you didn't want to sin and "wish" that it hadn't happened, BUT a WISH is not a WILL. The guilt will not actually *do anything* whatsoever to undo the sin. The guilt merely establishes that you believe heavily in the sin, because you think it has reality and truth to it, and you have NO intention whatsoever of undoing that or challenging it. The guilt is a total facade to try to make out that you feel sorry about it or didn't mean it, in a completely powerless, non-active, non-consequence-producing way, which has absolutely no effect on the sin itself or its consequences.

Realize also then that guilt or shame is completely self-serving, and also contains a component of feeling sorry for YOURSELF that, because you sinned, you now are going to lose out or be punished. Guilt is a reaction to sin, the opposite of forgiveness. Forgiveness will say you did not really sin and nothing was hurt and there's no reason to be upset. But guilt goes the other way, and says the sin was so real that you don't deserve forgiveness.

This lack of deserving or worthiness of being forgiven, then starts to establish your belief that you are "not good enough" or you don't deserve to be loved or you are unworthy of God or forgiveness. And this will create a belief in you that God couldn't love you, SHOULD NOT love you, and that you REFUSE to accept that He DOES love you, because really you have NO interest at that point in retracing your steps. The positioning of yourself as unworthy and unlovable, which comes across even to yourself as a kind of sorrowful, pityful, unfairly-treated sort of experience, is actually the total opposite in its purpose. IT IS FAKE. It's nothing less than an attempt to KEEP sin and guilt and do *NOTHING* about them to actually change them in any way.

Just as there is no such thing as real sin, there is no such thing as real guilt. All guilt is fake. A "guilty conscience" is a bullshit conscience. Guilt has been put on a pedestal by the ego to celebrate its success at murdering God, and to pretend that it is innocent. It wants someone else to be *responsible* for it, to accuse someone else of sin (even if that means they kill you), but only so that the "evidence" that YOU were the one who chose to make sin real is completely hidden. No-one would suspect you of murder if you APPEAR to be innocent.

No-one would accuse you of being the one who sins if you come across as having a facade of sweetness and niceness, guiltlessness, weakness, powerlessness, hopelessness, unworthiness, fearfulness, vulnerability, littleness, or ignorance. The ego's entire strategy for IMPLEMENTING DEATH is to first of all set up the belief in death by believing in sin, then enacting every step necessary to bring about death. It does this by attempting to strip you of all responsibility, all power, all will, all mind, and to portray you as a weak helpless VICTIM, who can't POSSIBLY have chosen to sin and who is now being completely unfairly accused by external sources. Those external sources will then come to be the pretend jduge and jury who deal a death sentence and inflict the final blow on your now completely helpless, victim-ridden self, to prove that YOU DID NOT SIN.

Who could suspect you of sin if you were just innocently, inevitably, unfairly attacked and mistreated, in such a way that is destroys you and APPEARS to be against your will? It is a fake death. You are faking your own death by pretending to not believe in sin when you still believe in deep down. People who APPEAR innocent are NOT INNOCENT. They are very filled with sin and guilt. The fake innocence facade is a perfect disguise. Guilt is the 2nd step in implementing it, and the belief in deserving punishment which comes from guilt lays the groundwork for implementing the 3rd step - fear of punishment, which is also 100% bullshit.

So you see, guilt is not genuine. It does not help anyone or correct anything or atone for anything to be guilty. It just keeps all of the consequences of what you did and protects them behind layers of denial. If you were really, really interested in "atoning" for sin, you would actually take action steps which would UNDO THE SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. You wouldn't be like, oh I guess you have to live with the consequences now, nothing I can do about it. Instead, you'd be choosing MIRACLES to correct and undo all of the side-effects of your wrong decision, with Holy Spirit. And that means lifting all of the signs of attack off of yourself and anyone who was involved.

Going into guilt also is usually SUPPORTED by the person that you attacked, whereby they feel justified in proving you are guilty, leaping at the opportunity to condemn you, and failing to forgive entirely. To hold you condemned in guilt for your sin, the other person thinks they are righteous and justified but they are just as much enacting bullshit. It does not help anyone to be guilty. What the attacked person should be doing is finding you INNOCENT, forgiving you, overlooking the belief in sin, PROVING that they cannot be hurt by you by disallowing any effects in their mind or emotions or body, and therefore teaching you that YOU DID NOT attack them and are innocent.

Only when there is "redemption", ie both parties are lifted UP closer to the light, closer to forgiveness, closer to truth, closer to the undoing of sin and guilt, that is the ONLY real form of atonement. If you're not approaching the atonement then you're going into the ego, no matter who you are or what side the victim/victimizer drama you fall on.

Guilt is a lie. A big fat stinking lie. It's just another ego ILLUSION designed to LOOK LIKE you gave a crap about sinning, while doing nothing about it, using it as JUSTIFICATION to attack yourself even more and put yourself down and destroy yourself as a SACRIFICIAL OFFERING to the person you supposedly did this to. Dying is not atonement. Self destruction is not atonement. Guilt is not atonement.

Another way many people fall into this is by believing that if they hurt a loved one, they should be GUILTY in order to show that they are LOVING. They will go into guilt-ridden justifications and compulsions to try to "make it up" to the person. They will do housework out of guilt. They will buy make-up gifts out of guilt. They will "owe" the person something. They will try to do stuff to compensate and "balance out" the offense, to try to win back favor. This is not love! It is so often believed to be what it means to give a shit or to love someone. IT IS ATTACK. It's like rubbing salt in the wound.

All guilt is bullshit. We need to look at this and admit to it and stop using this EGO WEAPON as a disguise to pretend that we didn't want to sin. We did want to sin. Every death celebrates that fact. If we truly give a shit, we will undo guilt, undo sin, undo death, undo ILLUSIONS of consequences that we think we caused, recognize our PERMANENT INNOCENCE, and return to God. Guilt is arrogant. You ARE worthy of love and forgiveness.

This may not be popular.

True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.

By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.

Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.

Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.

You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.

This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.

All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.

More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.

"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.

Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.

Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.

For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.

Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.

Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.

And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.

You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.

In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?

The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.

Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.

Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.

Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.

In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.

Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.

This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.

At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.

In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.

Your true self in God is a beautiful soul, who is whole and holy. Your wholeness is shared with the wholeness of all other souls, forming the sonship, and sharing everything with God. The rejection of sharing began the ego's selfishness - your attempt to be exclusive and excluded.

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

In the separation, a PART of your mind attempted to believe it could attack the whole - to attack God and your real self and the union of the sonship, which is also the Son of God. This part of mind believes in sin because it believes it can and has attacked the whole, in order to set itself apart.

"The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division. But how can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is attacking Him?"

"The ego is the questioning (fearing/attacking) compartment in the post-Separation psyche which man created for himself."

"The ego does NOT regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system."

A PART of the mind therefore formed a PART of your belief about yourself and others. It results in a split mind, whereby a larger portion of your mind is allegiant to your soul, while this small split-off part of mind sees itself as what's left of you. In effect you then seem to have two selves, living TWO lives.

"From an idea of self AS TWO, there comes a NECESSARY view of function split BETWEEN the two."

"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not."

This part of the mind which sees itself as separate, believes that it is completely alone. That it has divorced from God and from the rest of you and others. It sees itself as autonomous, a God of its own Kingdom, and dependent on no-one. It has no relationships and does not want to share anything.

"The ego IS the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own."

"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. And they have NO relationships, for no-one else is welcome there."

"This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return." - "The unholy relationship is NO relationship." "The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

The ego, being a kind of symbol in the mind representing the idea of a "self who is separated off", is completely selfish. It has only self interest. It is not interested in you as a soul, or the rest of your mind. It is almost like a kind of cancer in the mind, an unnatural growth which is not supposed to be there.

"The ego is the symbol of the Separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace."

"If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt."

The ego is NOT your real self, or your real identity. It is an artificial sense of identity, mistaken and untrue, whereby this small part of your mind is at war with the rest of you, and with God.

"Your will is NOT the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"The ego is afraid of the Soul's joy, because once you have experienced this, you will withdraw all protection from your ego and become totally without investment in fear. Your investment is great now, because fear is a witness to the Separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it."

"When you feel guilty, KNOW that your ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but YOU have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me. That is what the Atonement is for."

The ego is like the anti-christ. It is the idea of a complete opposite to christ, to sharing, to love, to unity and peace. It sits in the dark recesses of your mind, plotting your death and finding ways to see itself as a victim. It uses the body as its chosen home, as a weapon through which to attack others and keep them separate.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

"not because the EGO is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that YOU are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only YOUR willingness to use the device that enables it to endure."

You have an ego in you, in your mind. Much of the time it may seem to be hidden, and you might regard youself as relatively friendly. But when the gloves come off the ego comes out to play.

If you'll notice, the ego is the idea of both victims and victimizers. It attacks and sees itself as heinously attacked. It sees itself as overpowering others with tyranny, while also seeing itself as terrorized and weak.

Whenever you are playing a victim role, you are being extremely selfish. This of course sounds like some kind of vicious accusation, to the ego in people, but it's true. Being a victim, you see yourself as lacking and in need, deprived and weakened, threatened and undermined. And these are all hallmarks of making yourself small and limited. They're all actually attempts to put ALL of the focus on you as a separate self.

In victimhood you yourself as separated off, alone, threatened, vulnerable, confused, insane, afraid, vicious, attacking, vengeful, angry, hurt, justified, unfairly treated, sick and suffering. The whole bag of ego tricks comes flying out. Precicely when you think OTHERS are being selfish in their neglect of your needs, it's because YOU are being selfish.

The ego is all about selfishness because it's totally the idea of rejecting sharing. Of confining and limiting and hoarding and possessing, owning and getting and being exclusive. Whenever the focus shifts to "only me", like "poor me I"m the only victim", you are contracting into a ball of fear to try to separate yourself off. And the reason you want to be separted off is always beacause you don't want to share with anyone. Your own interests become your ONLY interests.

The thing to realize is, that YOU, who and what you are, is in fact a WHOLE self, your SOUL, as created by God, sharing everything with everyone. The ego is a PARTIAL self, not even a full self, and resides only in part of your mind. YOU get to decide whether or not to side with the ego, to identify with it, to think of it as your whole self, and whether to see out through its insane eyes.

What YOU are, is distinct from what the ego is. The ego is a fictional framework of make-believe wishful-thinking confused nonsense, jumbled up together and screwed tightly into a ball of hatred. It wants to keep guilt, maintain fear, suffer, and induce death. It actually wants the REST of you to die, for your soul to be exterminated, and for ITSELF to perpetuate. "The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT itself."

When you feel stressed out and upset and overwhelmed and in need, and others are trying to take from you, and you are thinking of them as selfish assholes, YOU are in fact being selfish. You're seeing yourself in an egoic way, as a self in pain, a suffering victimy weak self, who has nothing to give and is lacking everything. The ego sees this way because it is deprived of God. And this means you are aligning and associating yourself with it.v You do have the freedom still to choose WHETHER to align with the ego in the mind, or to deny it and align with the Holy Spirit, or the wholeness of your soul. Moving towards wholeness, the ego in you will remain vicious and backwards, and will likely try to attack you more, or to tempt you away from the truth with its lies and slander. But what it cannot do is decide for you, or take your power away against your will. YOU can withdraw your power from it at any time. "If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

Ultimately in truth the ego does not really exist. The Holy Spirit knows it is nothing at all, nothing but a collection of mistaken beliefs which can be undone. The atonement IS the undoing of the ego, because in the light there is no sin and no separation. The ego in - the SELFISHNESS in you - must be completely recognized and undone.

"For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not."

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly."

"The ego is totally confused about reality"

"The ego is the "proof" that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true."

"So it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life."

"of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception"

"The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that IT can offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES."

"GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

"The ego is the self-appointed mediator of ALL relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and INTERPOSING them BETWEEN those who would meet, to keep them separate and PREVENT their union."

"The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay."

"The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"The full appreciation of its (the soul's) self-fullness (wholeness) makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest."

"The essential thing to remember always is that the ego DOES NOT RECOGNIZE the real source of its perceived threat. And if YOU associate yourself WITH the ego, YOU do not perceive the whole situation as it really is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego ANY power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and MUST realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed." "The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness."

"This is the Voice for God, reminding you of your Father and of your Self. This is the Voice of truth, replacing everything that the ego tells you about yourself with the simple truth about the Son of God. You were created by Love like Itself."

"Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature."

"God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond."

You can say that death is bad, and everything should be moved towards life. That includes healing the body and mind. There should be resurrection happening, a reversal of aging, an undoing of the effects of space and time. A return to life from death.

But this can also be mixed in with an active avoidance of death, a fear of it happening, and a wish to stop a suffering that seems real. If a person's body is real, and it is sick, you'll be motivated to "perform miracles" to heal and rescue them from death. You just want it to all go away.

This attitude of death avoidance can seem like it is in support of miracles, and even can compel and entail attempts at healing. But it's still the behaviour of an unhealed healer - a mixture of trying to resurrect the dead while still believing death is real. If bodies are real, then fixing them becomes a priority.

I went through this whole phase over the course of many years, presented with an endless supply of pictures of my wife being sick and disabled. It was practically an embarrassment to a budding ACIM miracle-worker, the amount of assistive devices we had to use - lifts and wheelchairs and special beds and medicines.

Here I was, trying to stave off death at all costs, keep the body going, undo the sickness, reverse the symptoms, resurrect the dying and make it all better. But this too was driven by a belief that my wife was a body, constantly mixing her spirit and mind with the physical form, where references to "her" always included the body.

I resisted the sickness and the death. I didn't want it to happen. I wanted to keep the body-person around for as long as possible, and couldn't even conceive of any other way of living. Keeping her ticking over was a constant struggle and a daily effort, thwarting wrong diagnoses and fending off stupid medical staff. Trying to keep the death-mongers at bay.

But eventually it got to a point where it was all exhausted, and it occurred to me that I really should just let her die. And that seemed totally against everything I believed. Not that it was up to me anyway, but I had to stop fighting it. I realised I should stop trying to keep her here, and stop trying to prevent all hell breaking loose. She didn't want to really be here any more and we were both quite done with the daily drudgery of bodily upkeep.

It was within a week of that surrendering that she died. Well, I should say, she went to heaven. Her body for sure died, and she for sure did not. Which presented its own confusing challenges to get my head around. But a few things became super clear to me.

My entire attitude about death being "a really bad thing" was totally bullshit. It was fuelled by a belief that the body was the person and must be kept alive. My fear of it and avoidance of it just attracted it. My belief in the sickness just fuelled it. But all of a sudden she was in a state of extreme freedom and happiness, relieved and grateful, totally stunned yet overjoyed.

All the suffering simply switched off. All the daily grind came to an end. All the resistance to it happening was blown out of the water. And it seemed nothing but wonderful for her. I was really thrilled for her to be free at last, which she exclaimed to me "I'm free!" and "I'm happy".

So death really wasn't that bad, after all. In fact, it appeared like a kind of liberation and mercy, given how much she'd suffered for years. I wouldn't wish her for a second to return to that body, and her joy just made me realise more how cruel the world was in not allowing her to leave sooner. The whole idea of keeping someone in a body for as long as possible was shown to be utter bullshit. A multi-lifetime soul doesn't give a shit about it.

It taught me many things all at once. The bullshit of my anti-death pro-miracle deception. My demonising of death and making it out to be a terrible thing. My resistance to the fact that everything in the world dies. It all just popped the bubble. I stopped fighting against it, and that was liberating in its own right. If you try to stop it happening, you make it happen more. But if you stop resisting it, life can take over.

It's another one of those kind of paradoxes. If you make death out to be a bad thing you will choose it. If you don't make it out to be a bad thing, people will think you're anti-miraculous and a death worshipper. But giving it any reality, importance, meaning or value, even if its negative meanings, is just more ego. Death is supposed to be nothing, nothing whatsoever. Meaningless. It's not supposed to be the opposite end of some spiritual warfare between good and evil.

I still recognize and fully believe that death in any form is not supposed to happen. It is not God's nature. Nothing real ever dies. And pretty much everything in the world does. But we also can use the mind to reverse the world's laws and perform miracles, which does still include raising the dead and healing the sick, even to the extent of bodies recovering. In fact Jesus would like for us to demonstrate bodies so healthy and lovely and filled with life that they become symbols of immortality in the dream.

Still, you're not going to get there by opposing death. And when you decide to stop opposing death, that doesn't mean you condone it. It just means you stop fueling it and stop believing in it. Avoiding it just keeps it around. And believing in it while trying not to resist it just condones it. You have to stop believing in it entirely if you want to raise the dead, and believe only in life.

I have perhaps become more truly miracle-minded now that I am no longer fighting against sickness and death. I've stopped making them my enemies. I've stopped resisting them. Well, at least to some extent. My attitude is kind of, "let it all just die", but that too could sound like some murderous idea. The world is hell-bent on dying anyway, so fighting that is bullshit. But at the same time, in that same attitude of letting it go, we can also step into a power that's able to reverse those laws and undo death.

In effect, you bring an end to death by not making it out to be an ending. You withdraw your belief in it being some terrible tragic thing that everyone must avoid at all costs. So shit dies, so what. Fuck it. Who cares. Souls don't care. They just move on and have more lifetimes with fresh healthy new bodies. And being out of the body is fantastic in comparison to coming into one.

This is not in any way to glorify death or sickness, or to suggest to let people keep suffering and not be helpful. But make it real and you die alone with it. Only the living can raise the dead. We are still called to be miracle workers, to raise the dead and heal the sick where possible. To be truly helpful to everyone, to choose not to die ourselves, and to be an example of resurrection. Even to the extent of having our bodies become incapable of death.

But we don't get there by first believing in death and then trying to forgive or undo it. We're the ones that make death have power over us by believing in it. And having made it out to be a power that we can't prevent, which is a projection and disowning of our own power, all we do is end up fighting with ourselves in turmoil. I'm not interested in trying to come off as having some kind of saviour complex, wanting to heal and save everyone from dying.

Most people are going to snuff it in this lifetime because they'r not ready to go all the way. I spent decades trying to heal my wife and reverse her amputations and paralysis and heart disease and brain damage, but bullshit to that because, as it turns out, that was not the plan anyway. The plan was to use the opportunity to learn that making sickness and death real and then resisting it is not the way to be miraculous. To use the sickness as a way to learn to stop believing in it. The plan was never to radically zap her body into a state of perfection. Not in this life.

I totally failed to raise the dead, and it was a great lesson. It almost couldn't have gone any better. In the big picture, this is what I was ready to learn, not that I was some hero that could just zap away death with miracles all over the place. That heroic rescuer bullshit had to die as well. You're far better off letting shit go sometimes. Just as Jesus kept saying to me, "let her."

So some people are not meant to be resurrected in this life. The bigger plan might not call for it and they might not be willing. The Holy Spirit knows what's best and what's possible or appropriate. Some people don't want healing. Some are not ready for an "undiluted miracle." Some want to die too much and aren't ready to forgive themselves. Some are there to play a role for a while and then leave, perhaps to rejoin at a later encounter and carry on. It doesn't all have to happen in one lifetime, and most of the time doesn't.

So I have a much looser attitude now. I recognise the world is just full of disappointment and death so I get much less attached to the bullshit of temptation. I am no longer so mistaken to get all wound up if someone is sick. I'm not feeling like trying to fix and save and stop it happening out of some inability to let it be. Jesus was forever telling me "it's fine" even as my wife's leg was getting chopped off, even as she had a stroke, even as she was in the ICU twice and on her death bed. "It's fine" he said, because ultimately it doesn't matter whatsoever. Nothing real can be threatened. No-one ever dies. Just the body.

This has shown me that from the soul's perspective this world is just here for us to use temporarily. To repurpose. We go through bodies like water. We take on roles and challenges, lessons to learn and people to meet, and we move on. Probably across countless lifetimes. None of the physical shit really matters. It's not important at all. If people are to come and go and die off and leave, so what, you'll see them again. They were never a body in the first place, and the body is worthless anyway. This whole world will be thrown down the toilet and flushed away eventually "as the world spins into the nothingness from which it came."

So yeah. Be miraculous and overcome death by not believing in death and not resisting it. Gotta not resist it if you want there to be any freedom there. If you want to replace it with life you can't be dimming your light with death-believing thoughts of resistances rooted in a fear of loss. This is why we let the dead (in mind/heart) bury the dead (in body). It doesn't matter. Graveyards aren't even real. All of us are spiritual immortal beings who will live forever, and we will never ever be separate or alone.

When we're ready to surmount death and stop dying entirely, we'll resurrect the body and make it disappear. The body then becomes incapable of being sick or dying, so it can only leave by vanishing. The mind overlooks the illusion of death and recognises it as nothing, and away it goes. Then the body is no more, and never was, and you will never again go through death, or birth for that matter. I'm no longer an anti-death spokesperson. Death doesn't exist.

"There is no death. The Son of God is free."

"We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own."