Jesus seems to be trying to tell us that the past and future do not really exist. That only now exists.

If you were completely centered in the present instant, you might think of the past and future as entirely conceptual. Regardless of all the things you've been told about them, all the ways you seem to use memory, how you imagine and predict the future, you don't ever actually go into them. You are always here now. Even when you remember "the past" you are remembering it in the present.

You could be seeming to dwell on the past, or "living in the past", or remembering past events, or pulling up feelings and traumas that seemed to happen long ago, or reflect on how your body is the result of changes that happened years ago, but all of this is kind of a make-believe idea of some "place" other than here, as if it still exists, as if the past has influence on and causation of what's in the present - which it DOES NOT.

And the future is just kind of an idea of a jumble of possibilities, predicted outcomes, plans, things you dream of happening next, goals to work toward, but none of it ever really takes you into an actual "future" - like you can literally skip into tomorrow and come back again. You are always still here in the present imagining some far off place that isn't here. Only when the future "arrives" in the present now does it seem to have come to pass.

The holy instant is the idea of you recognizing that you're totally in the present moment, in a mere narrow instant, in which you realize there is no past or future. Just because you have seeming memory of configurations of objects as they "used to be" some time ago, doesn't mean there is such a thing as a real past. These are images and snapshots of states which have changed, and they are no longer in those old configurations. All that is "left" from the past is what is here NOW.

The idea of the past is really an ego concept, an attempt to suggest that what is always and forever isn't the same as it always was or always will be. It's the idea of death, and it is the idea of change - the ability to change the changelessness of eternity, and thus suggest that something that was created has been uncreated. That things that "used to exist" don't exist anymore. That has to be a lie.

The idea of the future is another ego concept, an attempt to avoid what is here now by yearning for some alternate configuration, some plan of control, some expectation, some desire that things become different, all forms of ego attack on the present moment. Even the physical body doesn't exist in a single instant of now, it's an illusion that shows up as an anticipation of what might be here next, or a remembering of what used to be here. Matter itself doesn't even exist "now".

It is only when the mind gives credit to the idea of past and future that it starts to become lost in some kind of mental state which is denying the present. And in that state the mind seems to be "living in the past" or "living in the future" but it isn't actually living in either of them. It is daydreaming unconsciously of places and times and events that aren't actually happening. To think of the past or future doesn't put you INTO them, and if you believe it does you are lost in a fiction.

The past is gone, there is no past at all. The future does not exist. You can seem to steer the present toward a given future by making changes IN THE PRESENT ONLY, which reconfigures what is here now and alters it in order to seem to move toward what was a "future goal", but that still does not take you out of the present.

When your mind believes it is in the past or future it is having a delusion, it is trying to escape from God, it is believing in spacetime and separation, it is denying reality, it is avoiding identity, and it is trying to die. God only ever exists in the present instant. Reality is here now, not off somewhere else.

And essentially even spacetime itself is nothing more than an infinitely small "blip" - a tiny instant, without a long history behind it and without a long future in front of it. Just a tiny slither in which things shift and transform. Just because it seems like the Earth is the result of millions of years of "evolution", and seem to have "evidence" of that fact, that doesn't mean that the Earth NOW is IN the past or made of it. It is only its current state.

There is really no past, and there is no future. This is why sanity restores you to a state of PRESENCE.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

"Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question. The only aspect of time which is really eternal is NOW. That is what we REALLY mean when we say that now is the only time."

"There is no past nor future, and the idea of birth into a body has no meaning either once or many times."

"When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present."

"The Holy Spirit's use of memory is quite APART from time. He does NOT seek to use it as a means to KEEP the past, but rather as a way TO LET IT GO."

"Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you, to take the place of what God GAVE in your creation."

"The Christ revealed to you NOW has no past, for He is changeless."

"It is impossible to accept the holy instant WITHOUT RESERVATION unless, JUST FOR AN INSTANT, you are willing to see no past or future."

"There IS no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace."

"You HAVE "sinned" IN THE PAST, but there IS no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end, it will roll up like a long carpet that has spread along the past behind you, and will disappear."

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds."

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

The body is not alive, and the body is not dead.

Life is eternal permanent life which sees no death.

The body seems to symbolise life by seeming to be what we call alive, for a while.

Then the body seems to symbolise what we call death.

But at no time is the body really alive, or dead. It is not permanent and does not last forever.

When it comes into being it is not really life or a life form. And while it seems to live it is not really alive. And when it seems to die it is not really dead.

But by not being really dead this does not mean that it is actually alive either. The body is not either alive, or dead.

The body is actually nothing, because it is an illusion in a dream. It sometimes seems like life, and sometimes it seems like death, but these are both made up meanings and labels given to something which is not really anything.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death."

A person (body) who is dead was not alive prior to the death. The death is not the end of life, because the body was not really life to begin with.

A body in a dead state is actually not really any different to a body in a living state. Even when the body was seeming to be alive it was not really alive, and it was not really the person.

"As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

The coming and going of a body says nothing whatsoever about the immortal spirit beings who temporarily use them from time to time. A person is no more alive or dead at any time because a person - a spirit being - can only be alive forever, and never dies.

"I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing"

In a world of bodies in which we are deceived and believe that bodies are people and bodies are alive and bodies must avoid death at all costs, we fear the end of the body. But we only fear its end when we are identified with the body and think we are the body.

Anyone who believes they are a body will be afraid because the body can be attacked, the body is always in a state of change and instability, and the body eventually will likely die. Or at least, will transform its form into a state that we have decided to arbitrarily call death. A death that we make out to be an enemy to be avoided at all costs.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams."

There is then a resistance against the "death state" happening, because it's in the interests of body-identified people to stay in their bodies for as long as possible. And to keep others in their bodies for as long as possible. Leaving the body or the world is seen as a "very bad thing".

There is then a fear of the death state and a resistance against it happening and an attempt to avoid it at all costs. This entails digging in heels, pulling all the strings, being in denial, living in fear, and trying not to "die".

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

But all this really does is increase a sense of separation between the state of the seemingly living body and the state of the dead body, which increases the belief that an illusory world is real. It comes from body identification and an unwillingness to recognize that bodies were never alive in the first place.

When you are constantly trying to avoid "the end", you're doing so to preserve you "being in a body", and the deadly ending is seen as the termination of your self. If bodies are real then a person dying is seen as their extinction, beyond which they stop existing. They go down with the ship. There is no hope there. And if you see a person AS a body that dies, you MUST experience loss.

But by identifying a person as a spiritual immortal being who can never die, and who lives forever in life, and never really was a body, and never could be "alive" as one or dead as one, your mind is lifted out of the hellish nightmare of fearing death.

To fear death is really also to fear life, because you can't do one without the other. And if you are fearing life you are not really living. And living doesn't mean being a body as much as possible. It means being a body as little as possible, and eventually not at all.

No one who appears to be a body has ever really died, or lived. Bodies are not alive. They are illusions of life. Your mindset should not be catering to the social norm of trying to preserve body incarnation for as long as possible.

It should be recognising that souls use bodies only so long as they are useful for serving the soul's long-term multi-lifetime goal of reunion with God. When the body is no longer serving that purpose, the soul should leave, and this should not be seen as a tragedy.

Bodies are not the central core or heart of a person nor should everything revolve around whether they are there or not. They are temporarily vehicles to be used as tools for a while and then put aside while the soul moves on to something else.

When a person leaves the body they absolutely do not end or die or stop in any way. They are immortal timeless endless beings who live forever, and were never really the encounter suits that they appeared to animate while they showed up here. Bodies are not real, they are dream figures in a dream world. People are not bodies. Bodies do not really exist at all.

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all."

"I am not a body I am free."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth CAN be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits."

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus gives a new definition for what is life, and what is death. He does not mean that life is "the stuff in this world" and that death is "when bodies are totally dead and lie on the ground decaying." He has a totally different view of life and death because he recognizes what things ARE, not what we think they are.

"Life" is equated ONLY with eternal life. That which lives forever, cannot be attacked, never becomes sick, does not age or grow old and cannot die. Life which extends forever and produces more life through miraculous creation in the extension of God's being, which is the ONLY function of Spirit. That is real life. And such a life is only possible in what Jesus refers to as HEAVEN. And Heaven is considered to be completely OPPOSITE to Earth and a totally different place to exist. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Death" is equated with anything that is NOT that or which opposes it in any way, which includes dreams, and includes this world (Earth). It includes any state of separation, any dream world, any dream body, any thought of attack, any even minor upset, even a slight grievance, all forms of sickness ("all sickness is but a little death"), all levels of suffering, and the "final" death itself. In other words, everything in this world and universe is considered to be DEATH. It is a dream of death. The entire thing is made of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world."

This is why "there is no life outside of Heaven". There is nothing ETERNAL in this world, because all things visible will end and all things that perish are illusions. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for everything He creates MUST be eternal as Himself." And let's face it, without denial, nothing in this world lasts forever. This world is the idea of being outside of Heaven, it is founded on separation, and it is founded on denial of life. Which is death.

Jesus states, this world is "at best an ILLUSION OF LIFE, at worst, death". Even if this world is seen with forgiving eyes, even if it is seen through true perception, even if it is supposedly loved, it is STILL an illusion of an opposite to Heaven and it STILL entails the idea of death, without which it CANNOT seem to exist at all.

This is what Jesus means by life and death. Life is Heaven, Earth is death. Life is eternal. Anything limited is an illusion of life and is made of the idea of death. Anyone who has perception still needs healing because they're still inside a separated state and are inside the idea of death. Anyone who is a teacher of God, using the body for a holy purpose, is still inside a dream of death.

Until you GO HOME TO HEAVEN, you do not have access to eternal life. Even though it is permanent, and hiding behind this world's illusions. Until you are IN HEAVEN, and have forgotten this world Earth, you have not CLAIMED eternal life or gone beyond that which perishes and ends. Earth IS NOT HEAVEN. It cannot be heaven. Its laws and the spacetime belief that it is based on a TOTALLY OPPOSED TO LIFE. The things you see in this world which you THINK are life, are NOT. They are illusions of life.

Even the "real world" is an ILLUSION OF LIFE. It may reflect or seem SIMILAR to or like Heaven but it is NOT the same thing. And nor is LOVE, in this world, the same thing as LOVE in Heaven. Because love means LIFE and CREATION and that is ONLY POSSIBLE in Eternity. Outside of Heaven, LOVE IS AN ILLUSION OF LOVE, a REFLECTION, which appears like a picture, an image, symbolizing love. It falls short of the full love of God which can ONLY be experienced beyond this universe, beyond the world, beyond the body, beyond ALL illusions of life.

This is why RESURRECTION HAS MEANING. When you get to the end of the curriculum, it ENDS IN THE RESURRECTION. It ends there because resurrection means LIFE. And that means, that every state you were in BEFORE the resurrection, WAS NOT LIFE. Resurrection is the RETURN TO eternal life. Before that, you did not have awareness of eternal life. You only had awareness of dreams of life. The body has absolutely nothing to do with LIFE.

"The body does not live or die, it is nothing at all." To think that EVEN the human body is alive, is a mistake. It does not live, because if it lived it would have a mind and a will and a soul and THAT is the level confusion that produces sickness. The body does not CREATE. Believing it creates is SICKNESS. It does not CAUSE anything. It has no ability to EXTEND LIFE. Its production of other bodies is an ILLUSION of the extension of life. Baby bodies are no more "life" than adult bodies. They are all illusions in a dream world.

"The body is the central figure in dreaming." It depends on the dream, without the dream it does not exist, and the dream cannot happen without it. Dreams are not REALITY. They are not REAL LIFE. If you endow the body with the properties of Christ, ie eternal life, mind, spirit, extension, etc.... you are making an illusion real and you have false perception. It IS FALSE PERCEPTION to believe that this world is ALIVE. It is false perception to believe that physical objects EXIST. It is false perception to SEE BODIES. It is false perception to look with the body's eyes and senses and believe that what they show you EXISTS AT ALL OR IS EVEN HAPPENING. These are illusions. "To sense is not to know."

This is an imaginary universe designed to block your awareness of LIFE. It is a dream state. And ALL dreams are based on the one central dream from which all illusions stem - death. It may seem to entail a spectrum, ranging from what what seems like life, to what seems like death, and it may seem to you that a living body is "more alive" than a dead one, but they are ALL THE SAME ILLUSION. NONE of them have eternal life, and they are all ILLUSIONS of life and death. They are not real. They do not exist.

ONLY the creations of light are real. ONLY the extension of God's spirit/being is real. ONLY unlimited infinite love is really love. ONLY Heaven is ALIVE. It is the LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT. It is absolutely nothing like this illusory world of darkness and death. And if you think that death is ONLY the state where things are do decayed that they are laying on the ground "lifeless", think again. That is merely the extreme end of a spectrum ranging from death to death.

You, RIGHT NOW, in your body, imagining you are living, are NOT REALLY ALIVE. You are NOT RESURRECTED. You are half dead. Asleep. That is what UNCONSCIOUSNESS means. Until you are FULLY CONSCIOUS, fully awake and aware of Heaven, you are unconscious and asleep and dreaming, and in your dream you imagine a world that you think is alive, even though it is being manufactured by a mind that is RESISTING LIFE and AVOIDING BEING ALIVE. We are all just zombies, "the living dead", walking around a world made of death, without which there is no world.

Heaven is life. Earth is death. Heaven is heaven. Earth is hell. Heaven is eternal. Earth will end. Heaven is reality. Earth is a dream. Heaven is immortality. Earth is mortality. Illusions of life do not turn into life. They disappear and reveal the life that they were trying to hide. Heaven on Earth is "heaven on an illusion". Not going to happen. Illusions recognized disappear. "A forgiven world cannot last." You will not find even ONE example of eternal life IN THIS WORLD, YET ALONE being able to say that ALL THINGS in this world have eternal life. Not even ONE LITTLE THING lives forever here, and anyone who thinks that's not true, is clearly in denial.

"Where God created life, there life must be". IN Heaven.

Your life can seem blissful and happy. It can seem like nothing will go wrong. And then something fucks up big-time. It comes out of nowhere to destroy your life. "Shit happens".

You will be quite shocked when this happens because you did not see it coming. You weren't aware that such a terrible event was being orchestrated to make you unhappy.

So then it happens and what seemed like a perfect life is dismantled and destroyed. This seems like a great loss and can be very painful.

You'll wonder why the heck your life was messed up in this way - who sent this horrible thing to attack your beautiful special relationships.

The thing is, you can live with this belief that your relationships are special and holy and perfect and that nothing is going wrong and it's all just wonderful, believing that you are fully aware of everything and that you see no plot against you.

But what you are not aware of, is precisely the problem. You have a mind which has been made partly unconscious. There is a whole portion of your mind which is buried behind walls of denial, and you are probably not even aware that it exists at all.

So your life seem idyllic and lovely, and if this were the truth, nothing would prevail against it. But then something prevails against it, and this is horrifying. Something is coming out of your unconscious awareness, coming into your conscious awareness, seemingly to attack and destroy you.

You will be shocked at how your perfect life was torn apart by this horrible event. It seems completely unfair and un-called-for. You didn't seem to have asked for it at all, and it definitely didn't seem to be your own choice or done by you. But it came from your mind, from the deep recesses of unawareness - from your own self attacking sin which has not been healed.

Initially you will see this eruption of hate and viciousness as an attack. Unwanted and something to be hated. But it is really something coming from your unconscious mind to re-mind you that your "special life" is not whole. It is inauthentic. It comprises the ego's illusion of bliss and love. This must be pointed out, and your unconscious self attack will be the thing to topple it.

Your own unconscious self attack comes back into your life as if out of hurt, to say, why did you do this to me? It was you who attacked this part of yourself, and this part of yourself is now hurting and guilty. It retaliates towards the remaining conscious self as if crying out for an explanation. You, having made your own self into a sinner, has come back to haunt you.

You will take these breaks in special reality as attacks and intrusions, come to destroy your peace of mind, come to take your loved ones away or destroy your happiness. But if seen in a different light they bring into question whether the life you were living was real.

Similar to miracles, these eruptions reveal that you're living in a bubble, thinking that you are everything when in fact you are only living a fictional life. They show you the depth of what you really think of yourself. They reveal what you don't want to look at, your secret sins and hidden hates. They challenge you to question whether what seemed special was really valuable to begin within. In its destruction, your specialness may no longer seem quite so important.

It is vital then that we learn to realize that we have this veneer of denial and specialness and false values and fake innocence glossing over our real self. We've blocked awareness of how we've attacked ourselves, which was the whole reason we incarnated to begin with. There is stuff we're doing to ourselves that we're not even aware of. We need to heal and reunite with the rest of ourselves so that we can be whole and undivided in how we treat ourselves.

And then we will come to a place of peace and acceptance, recognizing that what seemed to happen was just what needed to happen to wake you up to the truth.

This world is part of death.

Heaven, in which there is eternal life, is the only "place" where there is life. Everything this side of the separation idea, which includes this entire universe, this planet, and all bodies, is part of the idea of an opposite to life, thus death. This is why it's a "dream of death".

Everything in this world is dead. The course calls it "a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son".

You need to realize that only at the very, very highest level, squarely centered in Heaven, is there "life", because life must be eternal life and eternity is not outside of Heaven. That means that anything "outside" heaven, which is this universe and everything in it, is not life. It's an idea or picture of death.

So even while you are "living" your life and seem to be in relative health or having a body or "half dead" or totally dead and buried, all of that spectrum of "death and dying" is death. Not just the climax. The final moment of death is just a symbol of death WITHIN a dream of death.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" literally means that every form in this world is not life. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in every way". Earth is nothing like Heaven.

When we say, that we see God in the world because God is in my mind, this is a helpful idea and can be an experience but it is not well-worded considering how many people use it. It should say, this world is an idea WITHIN God, or at least more accurately we could say, I see God IN SPITE of the world because the world is in my mind and so is God.

We must be careful not to equate this world with heaven or with God. This world is an illusion. It does NOT EXIST and it is not heaven. There is at best a reflection of heaven here in this dream, which is not the same thing as being in heaven.

This world, a picture of death, must disappear, because death is an illusion, and all illusions must disappear. This is why this world holds nothing that you want. Who could want death to be real? It is not God's creation and it is nothing like the nature of God at all.

As the course teaches, you cannot see both worlds. The body's eyes behold a world which the ego made from death, and the "spiritual eye" (the one mind) sees only heaven. The bridge, in-between the two states, or the "forgiven world", is just a transitionary state in which the world of heaven is reflected and glimpsed.

Jesus refers to Heaven as a "living world". Earth, and this universe, is not a living world. It is a dead world. It is an idea of being dead. This is why Jesus says the idea of death is the last to go, and that when the idea of death goes, the entire world goes, because the entire world is founded on the idea of death, and everything in it is an idea of death.

If you were not dead already, you would not need to achieve resurrection, and resurrection would be meaningless. But resurrection is your goal because it means you have accepted atonement and returned to life. Returned to heaven, and left the world of illusory death behind.

There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach. Only God's creation, God's world of Heaven, the Kingdom, which is the extension of Himself, his holy creative thoughts, as the One Son, the many sons, and the sonship, sharing love IN HEAVEN.

Where is Jesus? He is in heaven. Why isn't he in the world? Because the world is not heaven. Where will Jesus be when his body disappears? Not in this world. Where will this world be when death is fully undone? Nowhere. What will REMAIN when a world of death has been undone and disappeared, recognized as having not existed at all? The only thing that will remain is God's Kingdom, which is HEAVEN, and you are part of it and all of it. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with this universe or this planet.

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."

Some people say the course is about changing your mind, as though changing the body is a separate thing or not what you are supposed to do.

This is the belief that mind and body are separate.

So if you then have to choose one version of MIRACLES vs another, you'll either decide miracles are supernatural and physically transformative, or that they are only changes in mind.

The important thing is, this idea that mind and body are separate, is a mistake.

Body is not separate from mind. Body is an illusion that the mind is dreaming, WITHIN ITSELF, and is made of mind-stuff. It is idea and thought. That's all. Just an image in the imagination.

So this is where the two camps JOIN, because now if the body is an aspect of what the mind is thinking, perceiving, doing, then as the mind changes that means the body MUST change.

The two camps of "separate mind" and "separate body" are now joined by this one piece of information - that the body and mind are NOT two things. There is ONLY mind, and it encompasses the body and the world and the universe.

That now means that not only is it true that the Course is about changing your mind/perception, it ALSO means that the Course is about changing the world through supernatural means. ie, mind over matter, or the power of the mind, to demonstrate and reflect the mind's state.

So we are not living in a physical world as such, we're living inside a giant MIND. And all the objects you see are IMAGES in the mind - just ideas, imagination. And nothing else. There is no such thing as physical matter or a "separate body".

And so as the mind changes, so too do the images in the mind change, thus the world changes. This is why the supernatural aspect of miracles is actually perfectly in harmony with the Course's ideas of changes in perception.

As you look at someone's body you are looking at content within their MIND.

"The world IS perception"

This also leads us to realize that when the course talks about "the world you see" in relation to perception, we most likely have grossly misunderstood its meaning, given that we interpreted it to mean the perceptual content of our inner mind, rather than recognizing that it was describing the world AS part of our perception. This has led to all manner of misunderstandings about what the course means by correction of perception.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

"***The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind.***" (and nothing else).

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order."

The "world" God created, is a synonym for Heaven, which is a synonym for Creation or Sonship or Kingdom. As in the statement above, what God created is "man" (a synonym for souls/spirits) - the Sonship of souls. The Sons of God. These are all inside or are the Kingdom of Heaven. That is God's world. There is nothing else to it.

Notice also that it states NO LEVEL INVOLVEMENT, meaning no "level 2", no "dream", no "earth", nothing except ONE level of reality. All ASPECTS (parts of God, sons) are of the same order (same order of reality).

"The Kingdom of God contains all his Children and their creations."

The Holy Spirit is also technically a Child of God since God created Him.

The Kingdom of God DOES NOT contain ANYTHING ELSE.

And.... guess what folks. THAT'S ALL HE CREATED.

So in simple terms, God created the sonship, and then extends his creation through the sonship. He adds the Holy Spirit. AND THAT IS ALL.

Nowhere in this equation is God in the business of creating planets and galaxies. Nowhere does he get into making bodies or food or animals or television.

If you understand this, it is very simple and obvious.

ONLY THE HOLY TRINITY EXISTS.

This is what is means by "Only the creations of light are real". The creations of light are the Holy Spirit, the Sonship and the Sonship's extended creations (children of your will - living beings). The living world of light. That is all that exists.

God, the Sonship (and their creations), and the Holy Spirit.

That's all. And these creations (Sonship and HS) are perfect EXTENSIONS of God's nature. They are not bodies. They are not planets. They are not fish or ice-creams or digestive tracts or poop.

God only creates spirit beings.

Period.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

Extension means... it transfers ONLY what was in the source, extending it outward, reproducing it perfectly. Nowhere in extension is anything happening that was not ALREADY God's nature. God is not a donut. God is not a hamster. God is not the Eiffel Tower. God can only extend absolute perfection of Spirit.