When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.

In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.

Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.

However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?

It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?

If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?

Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."

You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.

Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.

Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.

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

True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.

So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?

The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.

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

1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."

2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.

3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.

This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.

So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.

"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."

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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

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Jesus says in the course several times that we have a "sole responsibility". This responsibility is to accept the atonement. And this is usually attached to "for ourselves."

I think this has become one of the most selfishly misinterpreted teachings.

When Jesus mentions this, he ALSO mentions afterwards that once you have accepted atonement, you will now GIVE IT TO OTHERS. Which is not a selfish act. Nor is it exclusive. Nor does it mean you sitting there in isolation having accepted atonement CUT OFF from others, or unable to share it, or unwilling to heal others.

I also think that when he speaks of it being our sole responsibility, he is saying that because we have FREE WILL. Therefore, as the owner of the free will, I have to personally WILL to accept the atonement, and no-one can do this for me. So the responsibility lies SOLELY with me. I have to be willing. That's why it is the ONLY responsibility that lands squarely and solely on MY shoulders and not others. Because I have to exercise my free will. As Jesus says, "no one comes to the atonement except willingly."

Similarly, we have to realize that you cannot RECEIVE atonement WITHOUT giving it, because "atonement is a lesson in sharing." It means that you are aligning yourself with the golden rule and are now identify with your brothers and sharing with them. That in turn means that their interests are now shared with yours and it is your DUTY to fulfill the great crusade to HELP THEM AND HEAL THEM.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

I think Jesus is pretty clear that he never intended these statements about "sole responsibility" to be interpreted in such a selfish manner, where people THINK it means "I just accept it for myself in isolation and to hell with everyone else." The reason we accept it is SO THAT we become PART OF the atonement (plan) and now have a PROFESSION of atonement, which we do all the time, which involves GIVING TO OTHERS. Solely accept the atonement for yourself SO THAT you can share it!

Jesus's intention was NEVER to suggest that people are to accept atonement for themselves and then HOARD IT and NOT SHARE IT and NOT HELP ANYONE ELSE. In fact, we can interpret it to mean.... I accept atonement for myself because it is my sole responsibility to put myself into a position WHERE I can help others through a service of miracles!

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition."

"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."

"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned FOR CANNOT be yours."

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." ... "Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

The ego MADE the body and its eyes, in order to shut out reality, fixate on illusions, make illusory FORMS in an illusory world SEEM real, and shut out vision of your brother's holiness.

The eyes, WILL NEVER, be able to look at reality. Regardless of HOW you perceive or interpret what your body's eyes SHOW YOU of the world, the body CAN ONLY look at the physical LIES that physical objects WILL ALWAYS present, and which were MADE to deceive.

This is why we have to learn to forgive, ie OVERLOOK, ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS, if we are regain vision of Heaven. This is a powerful teaching in the course. It renders the physical world UNREAL.

Some people here are believing that you will hang out in your body and see WITH the body some kind of reality. That is TOTALLY false. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. The body WILL NEVER see reality. Bodies, and the world the body LOOKS AT, ARE COMPLETELY FALSE. They are illusions. Not reality. And not created by God.

"The PURPOSE OF THE WORLD you see IS TO OBSCURE your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. 3 It is the TEMPTATION TO ABANDON GOD and His Son BY TAKING ON A PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. 4 It is THIS THE BODY'S EYES LOOK UPON."

"Only the FORM OF ERROR attracts the ego. 2 Meaning it DOES NOT RECOGNIZE, and DOES NOT SEE if it is there or not. 3 EVERYTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE IS A MISTAKE, AN ERROR IN PERCEPTION, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give."

"NOTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE CAN BE ANYTHING BUT A FORM OF TEMPTATION, since this was THE PURPOSE OF THE BODY itself."

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND WHAT THEY WERE MADE TO SEE. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they CAN SEE ONLY ILLUSIONS, UNABLE TO LOOK beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of NOTHING. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, THE WALL (physical matter) THAT STANDS BETWEEN YOU AND THE TRUTH, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at NOTHINGNESS, AS IF IT WERE A SOLID WALL, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to GUARANTEE that NOTHING ELSE BUT FORM WILL BE PERCEIVED."

"These eyes, MADE NOT TO SEE, **WILL NEVER SEE**. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but NOT TO SEE? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but NOT FOR SEEING. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and CANNOT GO BEYOND. 6 Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, unable to go BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. 7 **NOTHING SO BLINDING AS PERCEPTION OF FORM** 8 For sight of form means UNDERSTANDING HAS BEEN OBSCURED."

"Sin is a BLOCK, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who LOOKS ON IT without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 The BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT easily, ***BECAUSE IT IS AN ERROR***. 6 The FORM it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS from reason's eyes."

"You can SEE REASON. 5 This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. 6 Vision is sense, quite literally. 7 If it is NOT the body's sight, it must be understood. 8 For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. 9 It can be understood. 10 And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways."

"Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS AND OF HIS BODY. 4 What is there in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body, which you believe can sin? 5 BEYOND HIS ERRORS (and body) is his holiness and your salvation."

"The world IS perception." "The world you made."

Some people believe that they are just a little mind inside a little body. And based on this premise, they think they peer out onto an outside world, and "perceive it" or interpret it. They think perception is entirely this act of looking out upon the world that's there. As if false perception is a misinterpretation of what's there and true perception regards it as "God intended", all seen from "within" a body.

But this position is entirely fictional, because in truth your mind contains the world ("heaven and earth are both in you rmind") and you are therefore "bigger than" the universe. Even the "physical planet" Earth, the solar system,and the galaxy, are inside your mind.

Therefore the self that seems to be solely "inside a body and not outside it" is an illusion of playing small. And therefore perception is not merely your peering out through the body, perception is a universe-sized mind dreaming of a PLANET, including the making of countless bodies. You are dreaming of an entire world. ALL of it is your perceiving from that unlimited vantage point. You thinking of yourself as just "little and in a body" is a decoy, a piece of a dream inside a larger dream. You are making the entire environment from the outside in.

This is why the world, Earth, the planet, is itself your mechanism of perceiving, a visualization and hallucination of a world. "The world is false perception." Earth is your misperceiving, from a universe-sized mind. It is a dream you are having, as a universe-sized dreamer. Correcting perception and shifting from false perception to true, does not entail seeing the world's truth, but recognizing the world is always false perception and that you must OVERLOOK IT in order to see the truth BEYOND it, beyond this universe, shining from God's world - Heaven - which is another universe entirely.

"Your mind has the power to create worlds."

When you dream at night, you invent not only a body, but an entire environment. You make building and streets and trees and people and various happenings. Sometimes entire landscapes. And within this dream, which you are making ALL of in fine detail, you make a body which you place a portion of your awareness into, and peer out through, upon this dream world that YOU ARE MAKING, pretending to see it AS IF it is just "there on its own" and has nothing to do with your dreaming it. That you don't believe you are putting it there AT ALL. And so you think "I am only this body, in this objective world." This is entirely an illusion, because your mind is literally MAKING THE WHOLE WORLD that you are roaming around in, and that makes you are PRETENDING not to be its maker by hiding in a body.

The same is true of this world, Earth, this universe, this realm. It is an entire landscape you are MAKING WITH YOUR MIND. It is a dream, that your mind is actually literally putting there, on a MASSIVE SCALE. Your mind is MAKING PLANETS. This is "the world you made." And in this world, like in your night dreams, you are putting yourself inside a tiny body and pretending to be so small and insignificant and powerless and mindless that you couldn't possibly be making the planet, or even making your own body. You then think someone else more powerful must make it and it's not you, ie it's God. Not true. YOUR MIND IS MAKING THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT. And is then hiding in a body to pretend to disown the entire making of it, so that you can pretend you did not make the world, and rather that IT MAKES YOU, and thus you suffer by its hand.

This is all self deception. The ENTIRE WORLD IS YOUR PERCEPTION. Your mind is larger than the universe. Its PERCEPTION makes PLANETS. And so the correction of illusions in your mind, and the end of false perception (the world is false perception), literally means, the end of the world. The disappearance of the universe. You have to think really, really, really big to get this.

Light is truth. You can see what really is, when there is light. You cannot see in the dark. Darkness appears to hide the light, as though blocking it, removing it, or affecting it. But light cannot be affected by darkness. Darkness is always affected by light, because light dispels it. Even in the dream world, light dispels the darkness.

In awareness, in your mind, the light of truth reveals to you what the truth is. In awareness of the truth, everything is revealed. Whatever the illusions were, they are seen clearly and understood to be only what they are and nothing that they appeared to be. They are nothing.

The light itself is enough to clarify the matter of whether the ego exists or not. The light shows you that there is no real ego. The light clearly reveals to your awareness, that all of the things which you thought really happened because of separation, actually have not happened.

The light also shows you something very important. And it's simply that, in the light of truth, nothing has really gone wrong, so there is nothing that you need to do "extra" to deal with the wrong stuff. You don't need defenses against it, you don't need special skills to deal with it, you don't need a special technique or a meditation or a set or rules. Your behavior doesn't matter, you don't have to effort to interpret things differently.

There simply has not been anything that has gone wrong. There is no ego, no world, no death. They were just illusions and tricks all along, pretending to be real but being nothing but fantasy. This is all *recognized* in the light. The light shows you that this is true. So it's not like, you suddenly realize that there's all this shit going on and now you have to deal with it. Its a recognition that there is not really any shit at all! None. Zero.

And then instead of having to constantly be at war, to defend yourself against the ego, you instead have cause for celebration, because you suddenly see that every single form of suffering was pretend, make-believe, illusory and fake. There was not a real separation. There was not sickness or suffering or death. It was all made up. And all you needed to do was to RECOGNIZE it for what it is - literally nothing.

The light is not concerned about the ego. The light is not upset about separation. The light does not fear the consequences that separation seems to cause. The light is just full of joy and celebration, in the recognition and knowledge, that God's Kingdom is completely intact, safe, unharmed, filled with eternal life, and absolutely nothing has ever gone wrong.

The light shows you this. It's a perspective. It's a correct way of looking. Its True Perception. Vision. The ability to see "what is" and, in that light alone, see that everything of the ego is simply false, untrue and not real at all.

Isn't it great news to know that absolutely nothing has ever really gone wrong, and all the stuff that seemed to have gone wrong was just a bad dream? That in reality, there is only the light and the joy and the peace? And that's all that there is? :-)

Its the big secret that all illusions attempt to hide. That there really has not been a separation at all, God is unchanged, You are still your True Self, you are still absolutely worthy of and welcome by God's love, and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be upset or afraid? This is the truth. This is the atonement of God. Reality is a HAPPY reality. All else is just a nightmarish illusion that isn't even real at all.

There is no true or valid reason to be upset or unhappy, ever. There is only justification for eternal life in joy and peace.

If you didn’t believe that God is innocent, you wouldn’t feel guilty as a result of believing that you’ve attacked him. You feel guilty precisely because deep down somewhere inside you know that God is innocent. If you didn’t believe God is innocent, you wouldn’t feel anything at all when you try to attack him. If you believed he truly is guilty and deserves to die, you would interpret it as justice, and would have no remorse or guilt at all.

Similarly in all states of suffering and pain and misery, you feel bad and unhappy precisely because there is fundamentally some part of you that knows it belongs with God, a part of you that is absolutely anchored and centred in being with God, and knows that it cannot be happy if it is away from God.

This is why trying to be separate feels horrible, trying to deny life turns into sickness and suffering, and why trying to deny God completely produces death and destruction.

These are effectively natural reactions to what you’re trying to do based on the fact that in your core you know these things are wrong, you know the God is love, you know that you want to be with him, and you know that when you’re not one with God, you can only be unhappy and miserable about it.

Being away from God makes you suffer, and this suffering implies and validates the fact that deep down you do not want to be away from God. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel anything about it at all. Guilt when correctly interpreted implies innocence, just as denial of something implies that it still exists.

But anyone who tries to live without God induces suffering and cannot be happy. All forms of suffering and sickness and death, all unhappy feelings, directly imply that you know you belong in God’s love, and these things feel awful because of that, in a knowing of what is right for your soul.

This is why eventually we come to recognise that being away from God is painful, we can’t stand it anymore, It’s not working for us, and we want to seek a better way. Then we begin to give up our attempt to be away from God, because we start to recognise that it hurts really badly, and no longer willing to tolerate being in pain.

This represents a massive crisis, a spiritual emergency, and a vital turning point in awakening, and questioning the unreality of the world, and returning to spirit. It requires beginning to realise that your strategy isn’t working, that what you’re getting into actually is not good for you, the pain actually is painful and not tolerable, and that you no longer want to be evil.

Until this point you did not recognise what you were doing and you thought you were doing the exact opposite. You thought the death was life and punishment was salvation and hell was heaven. You thought death was attractive and hell was justified and there was no reason to change anything. Except that it nearly killed you.

There has to be a massive change of heart, a total reversal of the thought system, an awakening to a completely opposite truth than what you believed in, willingness to be completely mistaken. Death must be questioned and no longer confused for life. And real reality must be approached with an open mind and a willingness to be saved from hell. This invites the Holy Spirit to help you, guide you, comfort you, and heal you. A little wellness is all it takes to open up to another world.

So often I believe I know. I think that I have the facts or the information. Or that I have experiene. Or that my assumptions are true. Or that I know better than someone else. Or that they are wrong so I must be right.

But I am reminded to ask myself, do I really, REALLY know? I mean, do I actually have direct knowlege that this thing is true, or even an ability to do so, or am I just making shit up as I go along?

The other day I was worrying about an outcome in a situation which I felt "sure" was going to go only one possible way. Holy Spirit said, "you don’t know".

At first I could not accept that I did not know. I thought I DID know. I thought I had a very good story or reason to explain what was obviously going to occur. But... I allowed myself to question that. Did I REALLY know, or was this just my best educated guess? Did I REALLY know, or was I just relying on my ego intellect or my past or my judgements to assume I know?

And gradually over the course of a few minutes, as I allowed myself to question this... to consider,... maybe I do not actually KNOW.... maybe I am just making a strong guess and passing it off as knowledge, gradually what at first seemed like a fact "orbiting" off in the distance poking fun at my convictions, became much more centrally accepted within.

I had to admit. I actually do not know. I do not know what is going to happen. There was, along with that, a kind of peace, because now the whole drama story of doom and gloom of what was "sure to happen" no longer had a basis. Without the assumed outcome I was trying to control and avoid to prevent its awfulness, maybe I didn’t need to do anything at all. Maybe I simply was mistaken and maybe there is in fact a possibility and a hope that I had not considered.

While I am busy focusing on depending on my own self and my own knowing and my own figuring out, I am not being open to the facts or reality. I am being closed off and not listening. Nor am I leaving room open for a miracle, for healing, or for completely unexpected outcomes. Possibilities that I had not even thought were possible.

While it’s important to recognize that I do not know "anything", the key here is identifying that I do not know anything *independently* from God. So if I am trusting my own know-how and pride, then I am not knowing the truth. If I put that aside and admit that the stuff I thought I knew, was not real knowledge, I actually become open TO real knowledge.

We are to give up fake knowing. We are to surrender trying to think we know things which are not really truth. We are to let go of false beliefs which masquerade as very certain convictions and definite consequences. But as we give these up, this fake knowledge, this fake certainty, this fear which pretends not to be fear, this prediction which is simply imagined and unreal, it makes way for revealing TRUE knowledge.

True knowledge is the ability to know God, to trust God, to not need to control things, to allow and accept reality, rather than trying to interpret it change it or form false beliefs about it. Be willing to admit you know nothing, and it will open the doorway to knowing everything there really is to know.

There is some small part in the course where Jesus talks about how, at a very high level, in the transition between ego and spirit, more or less upon entering heaven, that it becomes possible to literally directly know everything, experientially, rather than having to rely on your own "accumulated" scraps and memories and learning. We have taught ourselves a lot of bullshit which we have to become willing to give up, recognizing that it is just "made up". Stuff that we make up is not truth. We do not really *know*, when we are trusting these beliefs.

Beliefs are not truth. Beliefs are not knowledge. I do not know what anything is for. I do not know what anything including this means.

While you have an ego, you will actually defend it and protect it. You will be afraid of the truth because the truth shows that the ego is not real, and if you believe you are the ego, that means you are not real. That would of course be frightening.

It's not so much that our ego resists waking up. It can't wake up. It's just a machine, a structure made of illusions. But WE resist waking up because we're identified with the ego. We interpret the truth through it, ask it what its interpretation of the truth is, and take the truth's "attack" on it personally.

If for example you are identified with the ego and the truth tells you that the world is an illusion, or that your body is an illusion, you - identified with ego - will take that personally. You'll think that it means you are an illusion. Obviously that's confused but you also think it's real, so you'll see the truth as an attack on your very existence.

This is why it can be so difficult to accept the truth and wake up. Our ties to the ego make us believe the illusion is real and that we are the illusion. IF that were true, it's totally understandable that you wouldn't want to let go of your self.

This can be why, when you open up to some truth, letting the light in, you will on the one hand welcome courageously but on the other hand react to it like it's come to destroy you. You will have an ego rebound and feel upset and angry and scared, as though you're being threatened.

Often when I am in a flow or a upswing of inspiration, teaching, writing etc... I am opening up to new truths and expanding my awareness, but at the same time, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I start to have a lot of emotions come up for release. And if I push too hard, I will actually start to feel afraid and guilty. This is the parts of me still attached to the ego which do not understand or accept the truth, and perceive it as meaning all kinds of wrong conclusions. I've found particularly that when I talk about unconscious guilt it can produce a lot of fear because my ego interprets it to mean the guilt is real and therefore I should be afraid.

Exposing yourself to the truth can therefore produce all kinds of reactions, including sickness. Sickness defends against the truth, because you think the truth has come to attack the ego. So basically if you're closely attached to and identified with the ego, the truth will seem very threatening and you will likely produce a lot of sickness in an attempt to protect your sense of "self". It's just self-preservation. The only distortion is that your sense of identity is misplaced so you're taking things personally that do not really apply to who you really are. They apply to the ego, but not you.

Sometimes then I have to take a break from "too much input" and from pushing myself into so much truth at once. But I think over time my rebounds have in general become less intense now. I can talk about the truth for longer before my sense of reality feels the pressure and starts to retaliate. I guess that's good, it means that I am not as ego-identified as I used to be, or that I've woken up some.

Jesus also talks about how when we are at first taking responsibility for everything, we may take it to be a major attack, because to the ego-identified self it implies we must be very guilty. But over time, as we dis-identify with the false self, we don't take it as personally, or to mean that we are guilty as much. Over time it becomes easier to take responsibility knowing that it does not imply you are guilty, as you start to "separate" yourself from the ego's interpretation of it.

Starting to grasp how I have chosen everything I am experiencing, has been blowing my mind and expanding my awareness, but also scaring my ego identification some. Time to relax a bit.

I think I made a major mistake when starting out with the course. It was fuelled by a rather "negative" view of the world, which was part mine, and part that of certain teachers I listened to. In that view, I thought that references to a meaningless world, were references to a the world being inherently bleak and dark and depressing. I also combined various aspects of ego and false perception with the world, binding them together, and then sought to get rid of the whole thing.

This was based largely on teachings by well-meaning people that the world has no redeeming qualities, that it is inherently somewhat negative and pointless, and that the only thing to do is leave it behind. While there is some basis for this, in that the world is nothing, it kind of skipped over the forgiven world/real world and didn't put enough attention on how to reinterpret or repurpose it. And it definitely didn't make much mention of doing anything to improve or heal or save it.

This was an incorrect framing of the world, because I realize now that the world itself has NO meaning, not a negative meaning. Its meaningless is simply a lack of ANY meaning, positive OR negative, and is not inherently anything. And my egoic association of the world with my ego's negativity didn't allow me to "separate out" the world from my projections onto it.

But the course isn't asking us to condemn the world and run away from it. It's asking us to realize the world is nothing at all, but that we've projected false meanings onto it. And when these false meanings are lifted off from it, the world resumes being meaningless. Not negative, or positive. And then we are free to project positive meaning onto it, in which we now see the reflection of God.

This obviously makes far more sense, interpreting the world as a neutral mirror with no meaning of its own. It also changes my focus, from one where I just wanted to escape from "the negative world" and throw it in the trash, to where I can now look at the very same world - its guts, recognizing it as nothing, but project love onto it. That's a profoundly different relationship to it, properly regarding it as nothing but a mirror with no meaning of its own, rather than as bound to ideas of hell.

It changes quite a lot of my perspectives about the course and what it's saying. It also relieves pressure and resistance and negative connotations to things which didn't seem to fit. I can accept then that I can see this world through forgiving eyes because of itself it is nothing. And it also makes it easier to accept that it can be used differently, and can reflect heaven. Obviously keeping it around long enough to allow it to do that can't entail attacking it with misinterpretations of the course.

Eventually when seen as the nothingness it is, with the reflection of God seen upon it, its re-purposing is complete and it is no longer needed as a device to bring us home. We can now wave farewell to the forgiven world and thank it for its temporary usefulness, as we watch it disappear and give way to the gates of heaven.

The key part I think is that a lot of people have completely missed the somewhat subtle teaching in the course that the world ITSELF has no meaning. That it was a projection out, from an idea of nothingness, BEFORE we projected onto it. The whole "projection makes perception" thing came later.

And the world doesn't have to be objectively real or a creation of God for it to act like a neutral mirror and still be a world of illusions. This two-layered projection is completely missed by a lot of people. And some interpret the world as having to be God's creation in order for the "project onto" part to make sense. Which is yet another mistake. So many of us are so confused about this whole thing. But I'm glad now it's becoming ever clearer.

Here is Jesus talking about how as you enter the real world (not heaven), the physical world is now seen as SHADOWS, which SEEMED SOLID, which now appear TRANSPARENT AND FAINT, at times FORGOT.

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds. And in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. ****Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there; transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them.**** Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see."

And he goes on elsewhere to speak of how the body is diminisihed in your sight...

"Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, ****the value of the body is so diminished in your sight**** that you will see no need at all to magnify it."

And again, the world is regarded as nothing but a thin veil, an illusion of smoke and mirrors, hanging before the face of christ, which can be easily brushed aside.

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

"By focusing upon the good in him, ***the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight***, and will at length be seen as ***little more than just a shadow circling round the good.*** And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there is another world."

And the veil is brushed aside...

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted (fear of death) hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, ****peace will lightly brush the veil aside**** and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself like to a leper's, and the bright Rays of His Father's Love that light His face with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone."

nb: "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" Attracted by what is beyond the veil... YOU WILL LEAVE THE WORLD FOREVER!

"It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your eyes. ****Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.**** This is the re-establishment of your will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming death can stand against your will. For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparated from it and completely one."