In A Course in Miracles, there is a sequence of workbook lessons which clarify this point, and which specifically contrasts Heaven and Earth, even using the term "Earth".
The lessons are:
128: "The world I see holds nothing that I want"
129: "Beyond this world there is a word I want"
130: "It is impossible to see two worlds"
131: "No-one can fail who seeks to reach the truth"
128: Refers to what you see with false perception, a distorted view of the Earth, which shows you what seems to be "hell" due to your misinterpretation.
129: Refers to the possibility of seeing the Earth in a different way. It refers to true perception. It suggests you would want to see the forgiven world rather than hell. It ALSO touches upon there being ANOTHER experience even beyond true perception, a third kind of world, which you will at some point go to... a place which is difficult to describe, but this basically is a reference to Heaven.
130: Tells us that we will either see the world of false perception or true perception - hell, or the "real world" (which is not real). This lesson helps you to get into the swing of practicing distinguishing between the world you don’t want (false perception) and the one you do (true perception).
131: This is the clincher. Jesus now speaks of the contrast between BOTH of these worlds, and Heaven. It literally makes statements about "Earth" using that word, and how this place YOU MADE, is not the likes of which God would create, nor can there be an opposite to the "Heaven" which was introduced in Lesson 129. It contrasts Heaven vs Earth in black and white terms, to teach you that even beyond the Earth that you see with true perception, there is ANOTHER PLACE - Heaven - which is the ONLY PLACE that GOD CREATED.
Let’s look at 131 closer.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (Earth) and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***EARTH*** the other's sorry outcome which is HEAVEN’S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."
This clearly is telling us, that Earth (the physical planet) is the TOTAL OPPOSITE to Heaven. Not your perception of Earth. Not false perception or true perception. EARTH. Planet Earth. Solid matter. God did not make two minds, whereby Heaven is one of those minds, and Earth is the other. God ONLY CREATED HEAVEN.
This is what is BEYOND the world of perception, beyond true perception (forgiven/real world) and beyond false perception (hell). Heaven is NOT the Earth. Heaven is NOT hell. Heaven is NOT the real world. Heaven is BEYOND ALL OF THIS.
He continues:
"How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find."
He (the Son) thinks he made the Earth, which Jesus just told us is the OPPOSITE of Heaven and opposite to God’s creation. He abides in it (planet Earth) and cannot find Heaven (because Heaven is beyond the dream). Here Jesus also tells us that the hell we made DOES NOT EXIST, refering to the entire EARTH as not existing. And it is exactly this that "there is no world" means!
Jesus also goes on in this lesson to tell us how to practice finding the door to heaven and to go there, where Angels will, light the way and that we cannot fail if we seek to find the truth.
These lessons also correlate directly to Jesus teaching us that God could NOT have created a cruel world where children are born and lose love and wither and suffer and die, which is another reference to EARTH, not perception.
In so many ways, the course tells us that God did not create this world, this planet, or this universe, and that heaven is the ONLY HOME He created, which is beyond all form and beyond this world. Beyond Earth.
Earth, the strange world you made, is simply going to fall away into the nothingness from which it sprang. It is not going to be converted into Heaven, or kept in any way, because it is a world YOU DO NOT WANT, is an opposite to Heaven, and Love HAS NO OPPOSITE. Therefore, Earth does not exist. Hence, "THERE IS NO WORLD" is the she thing as "THERE IS NO EARTH".
You do not want this world. Heaven is EVERYTHING compared to this nothingness.
"He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM
Meaning, forgiveness is a fixation on the truth that Christ is real and nothing of the ego is real. It fore-gives by having a purely forgiving attitude so that there are no errors introduced into your own perception, so that you do not see sin as real. This means you are overlooking the ego and not believing in it. You are not supposed to believe the ego even really exists!
If you fail to do this, if you are not truly purely forgiving, which occurs in the Atonement and the acceptance that nothing "real" has happened, therefore innocence prevails, then you will enter into a psychological condition which Jesus has named "judgement".
Judgement becomes your attempt to evaluate or justify WHY you did not forgive, by explaining using various other reasons what the cause is of what you're now seeing. Since you're making a perceptual error and are hallucinating errors, you will see sin as real and will attempt to explain why it is real by judging, ie evaluating, fake reasons.
Also judgement means that you are attacking, are condemning, are attempting to give reality to illusions, and are seeing someone as less than holy. This then takes on and accounts for all forms of what you think of as judgement, which is a judgemental attitude, but really encompasses the ENTIRE ego thought system. Every part of egoic perception is judgemental because it's a split-mind thought system of self-attack and condemnation. It points a finger of blame to scapegoat and enter denial, and finds someone guilty.
The belief that sin is real is judgementalism and is the opposite of forgiveness.
A major mistake all egoic minds make is believing that one part of the ego mind is holier than another, and then pits that one part against the other. One part is called holy and the other part is called evil. And then there is judgement against those that are considered sinful, even though the entirety of that attitude is judgemental. You see people in Christianity doing this where they become very polarized and anti-sin, waging a "spiritual war" against the devil, because they believe it is REAL. But it's not just Christians that do this, everyone with an ego does this.
You WILL be judgemental if you are not forgiving, and the only sign of true sanity is One who has absolutely no belief in "real sin" whatsoever. That mind, Holy Spirit's thought system of real truth, demonstrates and proves that there is no real ego at all. Nothing has happened. The atonement.
People will then say, if you want to do the Course correctly, you need to not be judgemental. So then people repress their ego and hide their judgements. If they believe sin is real they will continue to judge on some level even if they don't express it. And it will be an unconscious self attack. You can't just "stop judging" in expectation that this will solve everything, because the only reason you're judging is because you believe the world/body/ego/sin is reality or truth. You could take that path IF it would lead you to the insight that NONE of that is real, but I don't generally think that's happening for most people.
Instead, focus on forgiveness which is the true undoing of judgement, which must lead all the way to the Atonement if it is to completely uproot the core belief about the separation really happening. Only then will judgement cease, because judgement is really an EFFECT of non-forgiveness, not a cause in its own right.
P.S. I don't mean this post to be a "judgement" about judgemental Christians. Not all Christians are judgemental by any means. But they do often present a good example of this happening due to their belief in real sin and can't help but be "against" sinners. Some of the most intensely judgemental people I've met claim to believe in Jesus with the most gusto and passion, yet were horrible to be around and so incredibly righteous. Their personas were huge and they were in such denial. This doesn't mean Christians can't be truly forgiving and not believe in sin, just that many don't get that far. This is the lower level of expressing Christ's truth and is an attempt to express it within the context of the ego being real, so is really a major "level confusion". Christians can become Christ if they can let go of a belief in real sin and the entire package of evil/hell/sickness/death/vengeful God that accompanies it.
Seeking for perfection in this world is an ego pursuit, but everyone's doing it. It stems from the separation from God.
The idea of separation introduced a mental state of conflict and war, of attack and destruction. It also gave rise to a fragmenting of everything, putting things in separate boxes with separate meanings.
As soon as we did this, competition arose, in which everything is different and at odds with everything else. No two objects are alike, and everywhere you look there is a seeming drive to stand out and be unique.
Separation literally gives rise to competition. In that competitiveness, all egos are trying to gain more, outdo others, usurp God's will, become something, win against the opposition, and generally inflate themselves.
This whole drive is towards trying to find the properties of God in the physical world at the physical level. It can never work because God is not the physical world, but egos don't believe that because they made the world and want it to be reality.
So then within this "war zone" battlefield of constant competing, everyone keeps trying to one-up everyone else. To stand out from the crowd. To have that career success, to become famous or an instagram influencer, or to get noticed. All the egos start screaming in unison "look at me, I'm the chosen one."
This realm of competition makes everyone a perfectionist. Everyone regards themselves as lacking (God) and in need (false needs) of finding something outside of themselves. Rooted in the belief that what they lost cannot be found within - leading to the ego's mantra of "seek and do not find."
So then there is a constant external push, a drive toward going out of your mind, into the world, to gain the world, and to become one with the world and the body. Or in other words, to become more perfect, based on the deeply held belief in being imperfect.
All perfectionists believe they are not good enough (an attempt to stop God loving them), leading to a compulsion to seek for a "better way" toward the world rather than away from it. To find the ultimate this that or the other in the world itself, the golden calf, the fame and fortune, the special other, the perfect house and car, the perfect hairdo, the perfect body.
But all this driving for perfection, which is an attempt to find answers in the world where they don't exist, just makes us more insane. The more you seek to emphasize how perfect something eternal is, which is idol worship, the more you believe in imperfection. The search itself undermines perfection, causing you to lose more in the name of gaining more.
Then enters the fear of not being good enough, fear of rejection, fear of not being perfect, fear of failure, fear of poverty and lack, fear of loss, etc, all various disguises for an underlying belief that no matter how much you become perfect it will never be enough.
Expecting anything in the world to be perfect is a total waste of time. The world was not made with perfection or to be perfect. It was made from an idea of rejecting perfection and entering into chaos, lack, finite limits, faults, damage, a potential for attack and breakage, things being misplaced, stuff breaking down and all manner of disappointments.
You will not ever find perfection outside of you in the world.
Trying to expect a fundamentally broken limited system to become perfect and limitless is insane. It's part of a drive to try to swap the attributes of God for the attributes of nothingness. The true and the false. Trying to make out that this world is heaven, or that it is eternal, or that it is perfect, or whole, or holy, or permanent, or wanted, or meaningful.
The world is nothing at all. It has no properties of its own because it is nothing more than a mirage in the mind. A dream of exile from heaven. We have been trying to give the world the properties of God since we made it, and we have never succeeded. And even as soon as we made it it was ready to die.
Wanting it to last is part of wanting it to have God's permanence. Wanting nothing to go wrong or to break or to be lost or damaged is a wish that it possess God's immortality. Wanting the bodies to stop dying is a wish that they were actually creations in God's Kingdom. All the resistance around things going to hell is an attempt to make it into heaven.
The only place you will ever find true perfection is in the Kingdom of God, heaven, which is not of this world. And you will find this Kingdom within yourself, not out there, or in the clothing cupboard, or in the bank, or on the streets, or at your job. Only that which is shared with and created by God is truly and permanently perfect. And thankfully, that means you already are.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it." UrT12G2
"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it." UrT11G1
Ego is a narrowing and an excluding of wholeness. We began in wholeness, into which a tiny mad idea of "not whole" was thought. An idea of limitation or something less than whole - as if lacking something.
In order to be not whole, some part of the whole has to be excluded. This introduced the idea of exclusion or exclusivity into what was originally entirely inclusive. And this also means a sense of being excluded from or separate from God and each other.
This is the idea that something can apply to you alone, and not apply to others equally. And so was the beginning of inequality. When things are not equal, unconditionality is lost and we now have conflict, and ideas of better than or less than.
It was actually a request to God that you be treated differently and in a special way, compared to others. As though having special favour with God, being more important than your brothers.
"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son." UrT12C11
Entering into this idea of "not whole" is entirely ego. It's a whole different kind of "thought system" or way or thinking, seemingly excluded from God's system of wholeness and oneness.
Everything about this system is egoic in some way, and while it persists the "ego", or egotism, persists. Another way to describe this is selfishnesss - something which applies only to you, and something which you do not share with others.
The separation from God was thus an entry into egotism, selfishness, and not sharing. It was an attempt to hoard, to have something that belonged solely to yourself, and to defend it against others so that they would lack it. As though exclaiming, "mine."
As mind progresses into this ego idea, a whole dynamic of relationship and identity and meaning unfolds. A sense of self shifts from being one with others, to being "only myself". What you have shifts from "shared with God and everyone" to "mine alone."
We begin to take credit for what God created, claiming God did not create it. We decided God is not our father and we try to be father (cause) to him, going against his will forcefully. We try to be more than God, usurp his will, overthrow heaven and exist excluded from infinity.
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. " UrT29I6
Egotism depends on exclusion. It depends on being less than whole. It depends on having enemies, lacking something, gaining something, and being always unfulfilled. It requires ongoing attack and guilt to maintain a sense of separation. And without this it cannot be there.
Egotism then turns to self interest. Our egos are only concerned with ourselves because we see ourselves as existing stranded on an island separate from everyone. We think of everyone else as outside of us beyond the perimeter, and therefore cannot possibly need to consider their interests.
It is very natural therefore that as mind narrows down from wholeness, seeing the boundary of infinity shrink down to the body, or even less, that its scope of interest shrinks also. And so it becomes concerned only with itself in isolation, trapped in a body, confined to a self-made prison.
As egotistical people we then have concern only for ourselves. We need constant recognition from others, wanting them to worship us and adore us for our artificial sense of power and pride. We need constant validation because the ego is unreal, have no real sense of worth because we've thrown infinite worth away, and are permanently insecure.
As egos we can't escape from some fundamental experiences which come as part of the package of being exclusive. Anxiety and depression, loneliness and fear, threat and attack, vulnerability and suffering, it's all part of the dynamic of being less than whole.
"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss." UrW41L1
The return to God very simply entails the expansion of the boundaries of Self to be wholly inclusive of the whole of the Kingdom. To share everything with everyone and to be one with everything. To have no concern for exclusive rights or self importance or specialness. And to recognize that we have nothing other than what God has shared with us, which is equally shared with all.
"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace." UrT18G16
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you." UrT1B40Y
"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." UrT9C6
'In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration of your release. 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." UrT4D21
"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?" UrU3A6
Communication means sharing. Not sharing where one person hands over something to someone else, who now possesses that thing, but the first person doesn't. It means, you both have access to the same state at the same time concurrently. In other words, communication means Oneness.
When there is a breakdown in Oneness, where separations are introduced, it' like erecting walls that come between. Separate parts of mind - or individuals - now seem to be on either side of the wall, like the Berlin wall. This wall breaks communication. It makes it hard to share and join and connect.
Once communication has broken down, i.e. sharing has broken down, we get into a state where there is barely any real sharing. Separate individuals now seem cut off from each other with various forms of distance between them.
The physical world with all its illusions arises out of this breakdown in communication, resulting from separation and illusions of fragmentation and distance. "Spacetime" really means "distance from here."
When communication is diminished, it degrades and devolves into what we commonly think of as forms of communication. These forms of communication are severely strained because there is so much separation involved.
While you can write or speak to others, across a gap of separation there must be misinterpretation. Information will be lost, mis-perceived, and disagreed upon. When two people seem to be a little more eye-to-eye, communication may be elevated, or they may seem to share more.
But there is also an illusion of sharing. Prowess at using the ego's forms of communication doesn't necessarily mean there is openness to true sharing. There are excellent "communicators" in the world but they are not necessarily One with God, or experiencing the same exact identity and state of being as the One Son of God.
The body limits communication, and every way that we use it to express through its forms, are breakdowns in communication. Once in the body this way, unless you are so awakened that you are communicating from pure love, you will feel this urge to try to, or to have to, force others to see things the way you see them.
This happens because you know that there is a major difference between the way you perceive separately and the way they perceive separately. You have to make egoic efforts to force them to listen, and the ego then produces this fictional idea that ... if you could just get people to "get" what you are saying, if you could just get them to "see" your point of view, or if you could just shake the denial out of them to get them to agree with you wholeheartedly, THEN this would be communication. However, this is impossible to achieve.
This automatic compulsion to coerce others to see things your way, is simply because you are not both sharing the same direct experience and there is no Oneness. This means the other person will have to be changed in order for them to seem to share what you are experiencing, and this change can only be brought about through force, in defense of what you perceive as being the whole truth.
While there is a separation, there cannot be perfect communication. The ego will attempt to claim it is possible to KEEP the separation between you and others, to communicate only through its approved channels, and to nevertheless perfectly transfer what is in you to others, or to precisely get from others what is in them. This is impossible and will never work. The separation distorts the message and will always inhibit it.
True communication in ACIM means Oneness. When there is a revelation, God is communicating fully to you. When there is full awakening, you are then able to share in full communication. The Course speaks of how we are to use miracles to help us to "raise the level of communication". What this means is decreasing separation so that there can truly be real sharing - oneness.
"To be with a body is not communication."
"The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication."
"11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."
"Like any communication medium, the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver."
This also means that, in fact, the ego does not facilitate communication - it blocks it. It spins illusions of communication to try to bridge the gap of separation which it itself put in place, which is "special communication" (that's not an official course term but it could be). Illusions of successful communication, or the ways that you improve the ego's forms of communication, covers up and distorts real communication.
In truth then, nothing that the ego attempts to "share" goes anywhere. It's ultimate form of communication is attempted death, whereby the body is used as the ultimate weapon to try to prove that oneself is dead and therefore so are others. And yet, this has no effect on others. The more you enter into the ego the more cut off from others you become, and the effects of what you attempt to bring about cease all the more.
This is also why nothing real can be threatened. The ego cannot attack God. The more it attempts to attack God the less effective it is. The ego's attacks are withdrawals from God. The more it tries to bring about death, the more confined and separated it becomes, and this keeps all of its effects securely at a distance from God. The Kingdom of God cannot be assailed because the ego's forms of communication - "attack" - is actually an act of failing to will anything real.
"Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself and you are not whole."
"The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing."
"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace."
"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."
"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love."
Every question contains fear. Knowledge is a state of total certainty, in which there is nothing to ask, no questions, no doubts, no fear. When you have knowledge, there is no basis for needing to ask anything.
When you don't have knowledge, due to a denial of knowledge, you enter into a state of lack. Here, knowledge is missing, so you now have a basis of "needing" to ask questions. The questions are part of seeking for what seems to be missing, trying to make sense of what is now confusing.
This means you have gone into fear. Fear is uncertainty. Knowledge is certainty. Without knowledge you must be afraid. Something becomes "unknown", leaving an open door for possibilities, imagined monsters, unexpected threats and things you cannot predict. Instantly you are in fear because you are uncertain.
There is a spiritual self-help idea of "questioning everything". Now, what's important to realize is NOT everything should be questioned. What should be questioned is anything to do with questions. Because questions are fear, and that is ego. So you should be questioning whether the fear is true, whether you really need to ask the question, and why you have blocked knowledge.
But if you are asking any other kind of question, which is based on the assumption that knowledge is denied, an entire world has arisen from ignorance, a universe of fear is in front of your eyes, and now you are asking questions about it... those kind of questions are not helpful. "What is it?" "What is happening?" "What is causing it" etc are all based in the assumption that a world of doubt is happening, inspiring questions.
You could continue being in a state of fear and questioning for a very long time, asking a billion questions, and not becoming any more certain. In fact many ego questions are designed merely to maintain fear, keep you searching, distract you from knowledge, and send you on a very long wild goose chase "not finding" any real sense of answer, certainty, clarity or knowledge. Questions that take you away from the TRUE answer, are not really helpful.
The only answer to all questions is God. Only the truth is true. The true answer is there is no question. In knowledge of the Kingdom nothing is missing or lacking or unknown or absent. All is known. And so there is no fear, because there is no uncertainty. There is also nothing to learn, so no questions to ask in an attempt to learn. When you are learning, you are really moving away from the truth, UNLESS you are learning the Unreality of your doubts and fears.
If you use questioning to unravel false questions, then this is helpful. If you are being radically honest for example, going within and finding out the deeper truth through a kind of inquiry, that's great. If it's moving you out of fear into certainty, great. If it's moving you away from ignorance toward knowledge, great. But if it's moving you outward away from yourself, away from peace and certainty, and you're becoming lost in doubt and not knowing and worry and fear and terror, which turns into stress and desperation, then you're asking ego-affirming questions instead of ego-dissolving questions.
"I have no question, I forgot what to decide".
"I know nothing"
These are important elements of the course's approach. It's not that you must know nothing. In fact, you must become reunited with knowledge and know everything! But the stuff that you THINK you know, but which is NOT really knowledge, has to be identified as NOT real knowledge. It's fake ego knowledge. It's great to recognize you don't REALLY know that things are going to work out badly - you are just speculating. It's good to drop your past learning, your self-taught lies, your false beliefs, your made-up rules, your justifications and so on... to make room for ACTUAL knowledge.
Ego knowledge always goes hand in hand with not knowing, and so always entails uncertainty, and therefore fear.
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
Even true perception is not knowledge. Nor is it wholly certain. It is fundamentally unstable. It can be stabilized to seem to align with certainty but it is not fundamentally certain. All perception is a separated state, and anyone still perceiving still needs healing. Only when perception is gone can there be knowledge. And that means the body must go as well, because the body is the device you made to perceiving with. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."
The world you made is a world of fear, a world of lies, and a world of uncertainty. Nothing in it can really be known. It's all made up bullshit. Questioning its reality is useful, but asking questions about what, why, how, when, where such and such is happening IN it, is just the ego going down the rabbit hole. The form of a question seeming to be a question, but really being a desire to fear and NOT KNOW the answer. The answer is in the Holy Spirit. Ask Him the truth.
"The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you."
The truth about you is simply that you are STILL EXACTLY as you were created by God. Absolutely perfect, immortal, permanent, changeless, eternal, powerful, innocent, holy, happy, loving, joyful, peaceful. There has not been even a slight change in what you are.
This you that is altogether perfect in every way, is still "in you", buried under layers of bullshit lies which you have placed sort of "between yourself and yourself" to try to pretend that you are NOT the perfect holy immortal innocent being that God created.
The fact that you don't seem to experience yourself AS a perfect immortal innocent spiritual being is simply because your mind has chosen to believe in a whole bunch of things which are DISTORTING your view of yourself. So much so that it makes you believe that your perfect self doesn't even exist, that deep down in your core you are corrupt and evil, and that there is something very wrong with you - as if you have literally transformed into a guilty mother#($*#)(.
These are ALL LIES. They are lies that we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Lies which attempt to slander and accuse God's perfectly innocent children and make out that they are faulty, flawed, malfunctioning, corrupt, damaged, evil, and have been changed into something totally unrecognisable. And recognition really is a huge part of this because if you COULD recognize precisely what is REALLY true of you, you wouldn't doubt for a second that you are EXACTLY as God created you, and not some hideous creature that you made up.
The issue then is that God has established the truth about you, which is ALWAYS true and is STILL true right now. But then you have attempted to throw away this truth - which is a matter of dishonesty and not accepting/admitting the truth - a matter of denial, in which you are trying to be something you are not, are claiming things are true of you which are not, and are generally trying to make yourself into a "false self" - or an ego as we call it.
Ego then is nothing but a cloud of lies that swirls around the perfect undefiled perfection of your being like vultures waiting to feast upon your corpse, swarming such that their numbers seem to blot out the light and make it seem like you are not even in there anymore. And yet at the core of this scene you ARE STILL exactly the perfect loving light-filled being that God created, shining away without the slightest dimming of your perfection.
So the ego lies are all designed to basically HIDE THE TRUTH, not that they have any power to actually cause the truth to go away or change or stop existing, but to simply COVER IT UP to make it SEEM like it's not there. And this then leads to believing that you HAVE literally changed into something corrupt and full of sin, because you have lost sight of yourself. But YOU ARE STILL IN THERE!
Believing things that are not true of you is madness, and is the insanity of what we call the ego thought system. A kind of delusional twisting of the truth, a mis-perception of your reality. YOU REMAIN exactly perfect as God created you right now and forever, you are just DENYING that you are perfect. You are a perfect immortal being PRETENDING to be mortal and imperfect. Trying to convince yourself that there is something horrendously wrong with you WHEN THERE ISN'T.
Listening to the ego means nothing more than simply listening to your own lies. The ego is nothing more than a part of YOUR BELIEF ABOUT YOURSELF, which means a FALSE belief about what is true of you. IF you could just stop lying to yourself about yourself, you would rediscover the truth about you and melt into a state of being much more calm, relaxed, happy and peaceful. Simply because all the lies ever do is stir up shit, create drama, intensify contrasts, enforce separations, magnify tensions, amplify war, and make out that some kind of nightmare is happening to scare the living daylights out of you.
The ego is the idea of the anti-christ. It is anti - christ ... ie AGAINST Christ. You are christ. It is AGAINST YOU. It is the idea of being something opposite to what you are. It is A LIE. The ego is a lie, the body is a lie, the world is a lie, space and time are a lie. This is why we call them an illusion - a claim to be something they are not. And all the ego can ever do is LIE ABOUT YOU, while trying to pass it off as truth. A lie which is has been confused with truth is a sin. A lie which is recognized as false is merely an error.
You are unmoved, you are peace itself, you are permanence, you are fixed and eternal, you cannot change in any way, nothing in the world HAS EVER changed you, nothing the world believes or says about you is true, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS A LIE, and YOU are the living truth of God expressed forever. It is only ever then a matter of, when will you be willing to accept that there is nothing wrong with you whatsoever?
"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."
"Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
"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
God created you by using his infinite power, and you therefore inherited his infinite power. And that means you are infinitely powerful. You have the power of God in you, and there is nothing the power of God cannot do.
Having power means that you can CAUSE things to happen. You can create life. It means there's an expression of a kind of "force" that comes out of you which is so strong that it can cause anything to occur.
This in turn means that you are not something that is just passive. You are not some observer or some fence-sitting person that just watches stuff. The idea of the mind being passive was the state of consciousness produces by the first split in the mind at the separation from God. It made the mind a perceiver, as though things happen to it and tell it what exists, rather than as a creator which simply chooses and causes what to exist and puts it in place. What you say goes, and no thing else goes.
"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."
The truth though is that you are not a perceiver, you are a knower. And knowledge is power. You do not need senses to sense the world and report back what they find, as though you do not know anything at all and have to wait to be told. Instead, you are the cause of what exists, you put it in place, you will it with your mind, with the power of God that you share.
You should think of yourself as an extremely powerful, causal, creative force, which has the power to create entire worlds through will alone. You mis-created space and time, and the planets, and the bodies.
There are no neutral thoughts. Your thoughts have power to produce effects. You are not alone in experiencing the effects of your thoughts. Your mind has the power of God in it that can part oceans, raise the dead, heal the sick, convert objects, move planets, without limit.
The course is geared towards you learning to take back your power, and to reclaim your inheritance from God, which includes the power of God. This means regaining the ability to do anything through your holiness. You should think of yourself as a powerful causal being, so strong (God is your strength) such that things only come out of you, they do not come into you from the outside. You are cause, not effect.
"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."
"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
"My Self is ruler of the universe. --- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. 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."
"The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and FROM God, and therefore God-like."
"Therefore, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled."
"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF."
"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."
"God is my strength."
"Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE."
"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."
"I am not weak, but strong."
"I am not helpless, but all powerful."
"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."
"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."
"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself"
You are in your brother's mind, and he is in yours. You share minds and are joined in holy relationship.
When you believe in separation, using the ego weapons of attack, judgement, sin, guilt, fear, etc, you split off a part of yourself from your brother and isolate it into a body. You become body identified. The part of you in his mind is hidden from your awareness, and you see yourself as being only in your body.
In this state you are in a state of sickness, because you have introduced a split into your mind. The split isn't happening inside your body. The split is between the part of you that is in your body, and the part of you that is in your brother. The body, as a wall, is the separation device that is coming between you and the rest of yourself. Between the you that is in your body, and the you that is in your brother.
The body is then emphasized and focused on, made real, given artificial powers, and made to serve purposes of attack. The body now symbolizes attack and death in an effort to prove or enforce the idea that you are separate from others (and yourself).
The body takes on forms of sickness to both accuse your brother of sin, and to attack both of you in both directions. The body becomes an image of sickness and suffering to depict the belief you have that you are not one with others or yourself. It depicts death in all its forms, because the mind is using it to separate. And so the body faithfully reports death as the message being shared between you and others, and yourself.
When you join with others, reconnecting to the part of you that is in their mind and body, beyond the body of yourself and theirs also, you are returning to a state of whole mindedness. This erases the split in the mind, closes the gap of separation between you and others, and restores you to union with your brothers.
This "heals" or erases the separation that was coming between you and yourself, thus healing your split mind. Your mind no longer pays any attention at all to the body, using it solely to extend through and beyond. It's purpose is only to get out of the way to allow the mind to extend past its limitations and to join with others.
It no longer is forming a solid barrier and is no long needed to depict images of attack. Thus the body "heals", its sign and symptoms of death vanish, and all of its sicknesses are reversed. It now symbolizes only eternal life because now there is no attack upon it from the mind attacking itself. A mind that does not attack can only heal and so it heals the body.
This healing of the body is the only sane thing to do, and is unavoidable, because now the body is communicating a message of innocence, joining, wholeness and harmlessness. It must depict and symbolize love and life, so all signs of error and sin and attack are removed from it. This allows the body to physically and symbolically communicate innocence, and to exonerate your brother from any accusation of sin.
Anything you think he did to you, which you depicted in your body to prove his sinfulness, is removed by your mind's willingness to join and be wholly united. Any symptoms or effects which he seemed to put there are reversed. All symbols of pain and suffering and sickness and distortion are corrected. The mind heals the body so that he body is only communicating love and wholeness on all levels.
The body has no choice in this. It can only symbolize what its user is transmitting through it. It either depicts pain and death or it depict health and life. The mind makes this decision as to how to use the body, and the body responds by demonstrating and depicting the mind's intentions. Either the body relays images of death or images of life, depending on the mind's attitude. A living mind can only heal, a sick mind can only destroy.
Your brother can now see, hear, feel, touch, taste, no signs of death upon your body, proving that any sin he thinks he might have committed against it cannot have happened. His mind cannot maintain the belief that he really did sin or attack, because there is no proof. And so he must be mistaken and his innocence is revealed to him through your demonstration of a body symbolizing eternal life.
As minds join, bodies raise from the dead. Your health becomes his health, and together you are healed.
"Forgiveness lets me know that minds are joined."
"Minds that are joined, AND RECOGNIZE THEY ARE, can feel no guilt. For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact. Their joy is in the INNOCENCE they see."
"Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its Guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity."
"Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined."
"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."
"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."