This is where my mind went last night. I had no idea God felt so highly of me. Holy Spirit guided my thoughts.
God loves you.
God knows you.
God created you.
God designed you.
God chose you.
God still wants you.
You are God's treasure.
God cherishes you.
God holds you like a most beloved thing.
God feels happy with you.
God is pleased with you.
God is joyful that you are exactly perfect.
God values you.
You are worthy of God.
God sees you as being worth something.
God feels you are important and special to him.
God smiles upon you.
God wants you.
God is overjoyed that you can share with him.
God actually thinks you are highly valuable to him.
God knows you deserve to be loved.
You are worthy of receiving love from God.
You are worth loving.
You mean something to God.
You mean everything to God.
You are God's child.
God is very happy that you are like him.
God knows you are perfect.
God knows you are innocent.
God sparkles with delight at your beauty.
God wants you.
God welcomes you with open arms.
God desires for you to exist.
God wills to protect you always.
God wants to protect you because you are his treasure.
God treasures you and is enamored with you.
God adores you.
God loves to give you everything.
God loves being with you.
God is very close to you.
You are very intimate with God.
God protects you and surrounds you with himself.
God envelops you in his love and safety.
God knows he has created something very good in you.
You are a divine creation of God.
You are completely loved by God.
God deeply cares about you.
God sees you as permanently holy.
God recognizes you and knows you.
You belong to God.
You are God's personal property.
God maintains you with his power forever.
God shares all of himself with you.
God hides nothing from you.
God is open with you.
God wants you to be happy.
God wills that you be perfect and whole.
God has given you eternal life.
God depends on you.
God knows you are completely dependable.
God trusts you.
God is ecstatic at how lovely you are.
God created you with all his heart.
God loves you unconditionally.
God can never stop loving you.
God wants to love you forever.
You will never be alone.
You can never be out of his sight.
God will always be with you.
God wants to be with you always.
God enjoys you.
God is certain of your endless innocence.
God will never accuse you of anything.
God will never hold anything against you.
God is your family.
God is your creator.
God holds you like a perfect star, high in heaven.
God wants you to be surrounded with love.
God wants you to never be alone.
God has even created your brothers to enjoy being with you.
Everyone loves you like God loves you.
God finds you worthy of inheriting everything he has to give.
You have everything that God has.
God has opened himself up to you fully.
God himself shines upon you to light your way.
God goes with you everywhere.
God will never hurt you.
God will only heal you and support you.
God understands you perfectly.
God knows you completely.
God accepts you entirely.
God is very happy with you.
God sees you as deserving everything good.
God wants you to have everything.
God blesses you and harmonizes with you.
God wants to help you to create with him.
God is overjoyed to see you being yourself.
God loves you laugh with you.
God is your best friend.
God is completely benevolent toward you.
God beholds you as magnificent.
God finds you to be glorious and grand.
God could not have created anything better than you.
You are the absolute maximum of God's perfection.
God has pulled out all the stops for you.
God suspends you in his perfect love and adoration.
You can never offend God.
You can never make him stop loving you.
God will love you for eternity.
God loves you very much.
"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was."
"The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves WITH me, and, because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you."
"God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity, on whom God loves with perfect love?"
"Every brother God loves as He loves you; neither less nor more."
"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."
"God loves His Son."
"God wants us to be healed"
"God WANTS you to behold what He created, because it is HIS joy. Can your grandeur be arrogant, when God HIMSELF witnesses to it?"
"God wants only His Son, because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations, as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation."
"If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows his children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed."
"Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them, and in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change." "God knows what His Son needs before he asks."
"God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the appreciation of His Son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator, and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the love and the loveliness of God, as perfect as his Creator, and at peace with Him. Blessed is the Son of God, whose radiance is of His Father, and whose glory He wills to share as His Father shares it with Him."
"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God. When you awake in Him, you will know your magnitude by accepting HIS limitlessness as YOURS."
"Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of WHAT GOD KNOWS ABOUT YOU, and in this light, error of ANY kind becomes impossible."
"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence?" "And so is Heaven's Son prepared to be Himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him"
"If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?" "God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly."
"God knows you NOW. He remembers NOTHING, having ALWAYS known you exactly as He knows you now."
"God knows you are deserving of life"
"And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."
Most of the time, most of us are trying to perfect our persona-self, the self-image. This is part of the ego. This involves spiritualizing the world in some way, sectioning off the 'good bits' from the 'bad bits' and trying to only keep the good bits.
You try to build up this sort of spiritualized ego persona, which ultimately is the ego trying to attain some kind of 'image' of enlightened God-like status. But to do this, it has to keep only the special, valued, accepted, allowed, preferred parts and reject the rest.
So the main mode of functioning of this ego persona isn't so much to 'acquire' the good stuff, but to simultaneously weed out and get rid of as much of the bad stuff as possible. In other words, it is a function of denial and rejection, based on condemnation and judgement.
So once again the ego is contradictory, in that it *appears* to be seeking to include only the stuff it likes or wants, which it has selected from the big soup of life, but actually accomplishes it by rejecting and condemning and relegating the parts it doesn't want to some kind of waste basket. Fact is you can't select and section-off some part of your self or life without simultaneously rejecting and condemning some other part.
This waste basket lives in the ego as the rejected, suppressed, hidden, repressed, denied, shut-out, blocked out 'stuff', which is nevertheless still there and still functioning. This generally 'dark stuff', or at least, surrounded with beliefs and judgements of darkness, will seem to do the opposite of what the persona wants, and indeed attacks it from time to time.
When the shadow attacks (ie the pain body) you generally will want to get rid of it, of course. Just like any 'pain', even physical pain, it's generally the sensation of something you want to get rid of. But that's a major problem. Because how will you get rid of pain? You'll use the persona. The persona will then be selective and attempt to relegate, reject and condemn the pain, to make it go away. The persona doesn't want to accept the pain or integrate it so that the persona and shadow cancel each other out. The persona wants to maintain a separation.
So it seems I think, that most of us are traditionally fixated on loving the persona, building up the persona, reinforcing the persona, choosing to use the persona to manipulate and get what you want, using the persona to paint a picture of 'everything is great' when it's not, or generally repressing your real Self. And you would not SUSPECT that this alone is the entire problem with the ego, because it then directly produces a large body of repressed pain in the shadow.
The ego persona wants you to think of the persona as all sweetness and nice, so that you would not suspect IT is the big problem, yet alone suspect that it is the CAUSE of everything that is dark and unwanted. Instead it deflects all appearance of the dark icky stuff onto the shadow so that the shadow gets to look like IT is the bad guy, IT is the thing to get rid of, IT is the thing to weed out and destroy.
So on the one hand you have this picture of 'innocence' in the persona (like the innocent victim), which you would not suspect is causing any problems at all, and then you have the apparently 'guilty' shadow which looks like it is the sole location of all the pain and misery and guilt and sin. Are you fooled? Most of us are. I know I am. I am fooled all the time by this. I keep believing the persona and seeking out that innocent, denying self, and trying to get rid of all the nasty icky stuff that I think the shadow represents.
So now all the bad shit in the world seems to be blamed on the shadow, and all the 'good stuff' is credited to the persona. When in fact, all the bad stuff is CAUSED by the persona. We choose the persona first (or simultaneously), and then by choosing it, ie choosing to focus on including only a PART of what is, or a PART of ourselves, we automatically simultaneously are adding more stuff to the shadow part of ourselves. That shadow part, generally seeming to be that which we repress and deny and hate or don't want to feel etc, seemed to be generally held at bay in a sort of 'unconscious' state for the most part, until it rears up into awareness and seems to attack the persona.
But let's look at this. Does the pain body/shadow actually attack the persona? Or does it just seem to behave in the terms of what the persona has given it? If the persona chose 'i want cake not dog shit', and the shadow became 'you are dogshit', then the 'you are dogshit' comes up seeking... healing, and exposes itself to the persona, which generally reacts with its usual relegation and denial and hate and 'get rid of it' attitude, which makes it an UPSETTING experience for the persona, disrupting its facade of pretend specialness and fake innocence. But what if the persona weren't so resistant to the shadow, and instead the SELF (real self) stepped back from the persona and was simply AWARE of what's going on, observes it, and allows both the persona and the pain to basically... be seen to be the same thing, to cancel each other out, then perhaps there can then be HEALING and RELEASE.
Anyway. My main point is this. And you may have heard it before. Choosing to use the persona is a trap, which absolutely guarantees that you will experience pain and suffering, because the persona will create the perception that something is unwanted, painful, and in need of being denied/separated from. This happens the INSTANT that you put the persona mask on, because you can't wear the mask without condemning everything that the mask does not contain. ie the shadow is the 'negative space' of the persona - everything else - which the persona is made to reject. The persona can only 'focus' on what it wants to include by excluding everything else that exists, and that simply becomes the shadow rather than 'extra stuff that never has anything to do with me'.
Morale of the story then is.... you believe you have the ability to choose what you WANT, WITHOUT in any way being affected by or involved with what you DON'T want, but this is a complete 100% ego lie. When you partially included, you partially exclude. Basic fact of a dualistic mindset. Every time you partially include something you have to reject something else and that rejected stuff is. ... ultimately, what is ... which includes the whole you. So as you wear that mask, you are attacking your whole self, suggesting that only some portion of it is acceptable, and that the other portion is unacceptable.
That is like... simultaneous self-eggrandizement and self-attack. Simultaneous ego inflation and a diminishing of Self. It splits the mind in two, shows one half to the world and hides the other, and as it does so, the shown part seems to amplify into 'goodness' while the dark hidden part amplifies into 'darkness'. You cannot escape the presence of this darkness. Just because it is hidden, does not mean it's not there. And some day it's going to manifest as sickness and death. Each time you believe in good and bad, or right and wrong, or any other dualities other than true and false, you are making BOTH a persona and a shadow, and must accept the consequences of both. The persona is your special love, the shadow is your special hate. Both of them are special.
Use the ego persona, get attacked. Use the ego persona, suffer the consequences. Use the ego persona, to make yourself look good, to win, to get, to be successful, to appear to be innocent, to have this fake facade of a person that you aren't even really that, ... be prepared to die. And who will have caused you to die? Yourself. Your own choice did it to you. So it's a good idea not to play with 'fire'... don't play the ego's game, don't live a life where you are constantly trying to 'gain' in manipulative, ego-persona ways. Just be what you are. You're perfect already.
The world is unlovable, in its form and appearance, being a picture of crucifixion in a dream of death. It was made to be ugly and cruel and unlike the divine holy nature of the Kingdom. But if we do not love it, our only choice is to attack it, believing the temptation to regard its illusory appearance as reality or "the truth of it".
This presents us with a perplexing scenario, and ACIM actually does state that God loves the world. It isn't that the world is inherently love itself, or made of love, or having virtue and divinity or sacredness. But in spite of its seeming form or appearance, we are told that God does love it.
How do you reconcile that God could love the world, with the fact that the world is an illusion he did not create, made in an attempted attack upon him? Would this not give reality to the world or give it permanence? Somehow God does love the world, in spite of any way that we might find the world unlovable.
Looking at this issue was a turning point for me, because it tells us that just because the world "is hell", does not mean there isn't a way to regard it that overlooks its hellishness, or that you could even feel loving towards it. The forgiven world is seen as lovely and beautiful, in spite of its illusory nature. And somehow we have to find a way to love it in spite of itself.
This may seem wrong, or ego-supporting, or a spiritualization of the world. We might recoil at the thought of loving the body, or the world. We can easily develop an anti-world attitude when we correctly discern it is made of the idea of death and contains no truth.
After all, "the world holds nothing that I want", it "will spin into the nothingness from which it came", "it takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give", and "all its roads lead to death." As a world "made as an attack on God", it has nothing to offer in its nature that you could want. "You do not want the world."
But apparently God loves it, forgiving eyes look upon it without judgement, and true perception shows it in a new light. Even to the extent of it appearing to be a reflection of heaven, through an extraordinary reinterpretation or translation. We have to love it because we have to love, and true perception shows it to us without attack thoughts. Whatever it is, the world will be seen WITH love, through loving eyes.
What love sees IN it is a reflection of itself. And a world seen through forgiveness is no longer a world condemned or condemning. You can love it, but you cannot keep it. And you cannot love it based on its forms or shapes or colors, only because the love is coming through you from another world. To love it is not to be "in love" with it, or to want to keep it forever as a special idol.
You are not asked to have a special love relationship with it, or to conditionally love aspects of it. Only to unconditionally love always, which treats it all the same. Loving the world erases it, it does not possess it. You love it because of what you are, not because of what it is. And loving it translates it into a reflection of heaven to you.
You love the world because you forgive it and overlook the many ways that it sins and condemns and destroys. You love the world because you recognize it is not the cause of you, cannot attack you and has no power over you. You love the world because you come to trust that it is orchestrated by a higher power, with all events and encounters deliberately planned. You love the world because you know you are love and want to love all the time.
There is no world here to love. But we love it anyway, until perception ends and the world disappears, as we look upon the face of Christ and forget the world entirely. Because our aim here is not really to love the world, but to last PAST it, to Christ, which is our self, to rejoin with God, and to erase the gap of separation which was host to the pits of hell. Then God is not just in everything you see, it is ALL you see, and the world is gone.
"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."
"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts."
"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."
"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."
"The image of holiness that shines in YOUR mind is NOT obscure, and will NOT change. Its meaning, to those who look upon it, is not obscure, for everyone perceives it AS THE SAME. All bring their DIFFERENT problems to its healing light, but ALL their problems are met ONLY with healing there. The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it."
"This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect that every miracle-worker must have for true cause and effect."
When you're having emotions, typically they are reactions. You have a thought which produces a perception of the world. And in this thought you're seeing yourself as a victim or being affected in some way. And this produces a negative emotion.
These ego emotions seem to be changes in you, which you believe are the effect of causes outside of you. They cause you to change against your will, and so your "emotions" or "effects" go on a rollercoaster ride or constant shifts, seemingly chosen BY the world and enforced upon you.
But if you'll look you'll notice that all ego emotions have this backwards cause-effect quality to them. They all seem like they are telling YOU what you feel. They seem like they are happening to you. And the basis for these feelings always seems to be something you believe is happening to you outside of you.
How can it be that if you are the cause of everything you experience, per the secret of salvation, that you can be at the effect of emotions? How can it even be that you even HAVE emotions that have this affected quality to them? Emotions of fear and guilt, emotions of grief and loss, emotions of suffering?
If you are cause, and are owning up to being the cause, then you must realize your emotions are coming from you. You are causing them. Not the world, not the circumstances, not other people or the body. You must be choosing them. You must have made a wrong decision if your emotion is not peace.
Surely you have the ability to choose what you are going to feel? Or at least, you have the ability to choose whether to produce upset feelings or not. You can choose whether you feel guilty. You can choose whether to feel grief. You can choose whether to feel unhappy for any reason. It is always you that chooses what you are experiencing.
So this then means we have to get behind the feelings and stop regarding them as just "happening to us". And stop interacting with them as if they are telling US how we feel. We need to stop listening to them as if looking to them to guide us and inform us of what state we're in. WE PUT THEM THERE. We shouldn't be asking something WE PUT THERE to tell us how we feel, as if they know and we don't.
All ego emotions are "effects" which your mind puts in place, under the belief that the world puts them in place. If you believe the world has power over you then you will produce emotions, effects, symptoms, reactions, which all seem to try to TELL YOU what you are and how you feel and what you must experience. You have to stop listening to them. But even more you have to stop creating them.
This all goes back to the mind. It goes back to thought. If you look at thought you will notice that it is the CAUSE of all your suffering. You can be affected by nothing but your thoughts. It is your thoughts alone that bring you pain. Nothing in the world can bring oppression. Your thoughts literally cause all of your upset emotions.
The origin of upset feelings therefore is the nature of your thinking. You might be used to thinking and feeling like a victim, in which you seem to only have feelings if they happen "to you", and you only have thoughts as a kind of passive "commentary" on what is "happening to you." But this is really a destructive use of thought, which reverses cause and effect, and sees you as at the effect of the world.
You have to realize also then that your thoughts have been acting just like a victim, just like your ego emotions, pretending to be happening to you. They have been thoughts of suffering, thoughts of despair, thoughts of being victimized, thoughts of being attacked, thoughts of sickness and death. These thoughts have CAUSED what you have been experiencing, emotionally and physically.
Your thoughts, or rather your thinking, therefore has to go through a transformation in terms of how much destructiveness they contain. Thought has been used by the mind in its belief in death, to produce suffering. Thought can similarly be used far more constructively, positively, in a life affirming way, to uplift and heal and bring life. Thought can be used to give strength.
But you are not used to thinking like this. You are used to being a victim on a battlefield where everything happens to you. You even think that your thoughts are thinking you. This has to be reversed. You have to start using your POWER to think higher thoughts. To think well of yourself and others. To think of happiness. To elect light and love and life.
At first it will seem like you can't do this because you have been so used to just "having" thought and you don't realize you can control it and master it. This is why it takes some practice. But you need to learn that you can actively choose to have uplifting thoughts. You can just as easily have a thought that someone actually is doing well, as you can have a thought that they are suffering. And you have to realize your thoughts have a REAL POWER which can produce REAL EFFECTS.
Your thoughts can and do affect you AND other people. You are not alone in experiencing the EFFECTS of YOUR THINKING. Probably all your life you've been thinking in an egoic way, in a victimy way, which has actually contributed to the suffering of yourself and others. Now you are going to think deliberate, intentional, chosen, free-willed and higher thoughts. Purposeful thoughts of deciding that someone IS doing well, IS healthy, IS healed, IS happy, IS safe, IS innocent, IS resurrected.
You may have never even conceived that your thoughts even have any power. You might've only experienced thoughts like a mental chatter which seems to ramble on without seeming to affect anyone or anything. You might not have put two-and-two together to realize your thoughts have a causal power in them. That they are creative. And that you have been using them TO destroy.
Your mind can heal. Your mind can raise the dead. Your mind can think of miracles. Your mind can decide someone is not sick. Your mind can strengthen and reinforce the truth. Your mind can give life. And your mind can be filled with the power of God. Your thoughts are extremely powerful. The misuse of them has been the sole cause of all your suffering. And now you can turn your thoughts to God and to reality and truth and light and love and express the power of love through thought to others.
"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities."
"He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel"
"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say "don't give it a thought", you are implying that if you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. This is true enough."
"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."
The thing it realize about perception is this. The physical body itself has a form of sight. It can only see differences. Its sight is based on the reflection of photons of light, which seem to illuminate the surface of objects. This light enters the biological eyeballs and passes ”images” or sensory impressions on to the mind.
The physical body is actually permanently locked into FALSE perception. ”The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.” It CANNOT SEE reality. Which in turn means EVERYTHING IT CAN SEE IS NOT REAL! What it is looking at is therefore NOT reality. Physical objects, photonic images, differences of form, shapes and sizes, colors and brightnesses, is not reality. These is ALL a part of false perception. “The world is false perception.”
It is not really seeing. It is in fact blindness. “Nothing so blinding as perception of form.” Since the body cannot see through or beyond physical surfaces, its seeing is in fact BLOCKED by objects. Objects blind it from seeing what is beyond. And therefore physical sight pretends to be seeing, but is in fact a lack of seeing.
These messages which the body seems to receive from the outside world, transmit into the mind, and the mind is sitting there EVALUATING THE MEANING of the messages. The mind is flexible in its beliefs, and can choose. It can decide what is true, and therefore what something MEANS.
The mind takes the ”physical images” provided by the body senses, and decides what they MEAN. It has perceptions ”about” the images, or projected ONTO the images. In a sense you could say the mind projects stuff ONTO the world or has perceptions ABOUT the world. But it’s really about the sensory signals being interpreted internally, once the body has received them.
The mind can decide whether these images represent the truth, or whether they are false. It can decide whether to believe in them or deny them. It can choose whether to regard them as real or as illusions. It can project sin and guilt ONTO these images and USE these images to mean attack, just as it can also project innocence and love ONTO these images which re-frames them as harmless. “I have given everything all the meaning it has for me.”
In and of themselves, the images actually have NO MEANING. They come from a world which itself HAS NO MEANING. This is why the course describes it as “a meaningless world”, and one which God DID NOT CREATE. The physical world is not merely meaningless ONLY when viewed in false perception, as if meaningful when perceived truly. It is in fact NEVER inherently meaningful. Meaning can be PROJECTED ONTO it, but in and of itself it is literally nothing. “The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it.”
So what actually happens is, the physical body provides a FIXED state of FALSE perception. And everything it sees is what we typically refer to as “the world” or planet Earth. Bodies, trees, houses, buildings, streets, the sky etc. Differences, changes, transitions, growth, decay, etc. This is all false perception and CAN ONLY been seen IN and WITH false perception.
Then at the same time, the MIND is sitting there INTERPRETING the physical signals. So the mind can ALIGN or IDENTIFY with the body, with physicality, and make the world seem real to it. When it does this, the MIND is now having false perception OF a false world - a false interpretation of a false image, at the same time as the physical body having false perception. They are in seeming agreement.
So what the falsely perceiving mind sees as coming from the body, it regards as TOTALLY REAL, because it is tempted anad DECEIVED BY the illusion. It totally agrees with and accepts it as true. That is what false perception means - not recognizing that an illusion is unreal. Just as true perception recognizes the world IS an illusion and not reality.
The mind can also move into a totally opposite state of TRUE perception, which is accurate perception. In this state, the BODY is actually STILL insisting on sending signals of physical unreality to the mind for interpretation. But the mind is not DECEIVED BY their falseness or their forms and appearances. Instead, the mind puts ALL of these physical signals into ONE category - THEY ARE ALL UNREAL. This is because it RECOGNIZES WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE, and is not deceived into thinking the physical world is reality. It recognizes these images ARE ILLUSIONS.
It regards them as UN real because it does not AGREE with or align or identify with the physical. It has identified with spirit, which is NON-physical and OPPOSITE to the physical world. Being fulled on the side of reality, everything unreal is now clearly and obviously unreal. And that means everything FALSE is ”truly seen” as false. As it is. And since the body can ONLY see falsely, and everything it sees IS FALSE, the sane mind now recognizes that the physical world is NOT REAL. Or even really there at all.
The body is trying to tell the mind that there is a world of differences and forms and attack and death ”out there”, BUT the mind is not BUYING INTO it at all. It does not fall for THE ILLUSION. It is not tempted. It RECOGNIZES what the physical really IS, which is that it is NOT TRUE. “The one you made is false.” It’s a false world which ONLY exists WITHIN false perception.
So now you’ve got FALSE signals of FALSE perception coming in from the body, and you’ve got a mind looking AT and USING these signals for a certain purpose. And its goal is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the physical. So it does not believe in, accept, have faith in, nor is it deceived BY, anything the body is seeing. It’s a strange state, almost a paradox, where something UNREAL is recognized as an illusory physical world, while at the same time the mind is in a state of truth. “The world you see must be denied.”
True perception, christ vision, the spiritual eye, does not depend on, use, or rely upon, the physical sight mechanism. It is actually direct mind seeing. But this mind seeing does not SEE the physical world, because it regards it as FALSE, and what is false is shut out from awareness. This is why “It is impossible to see both worlds.” Either you see the false physical world AS IF it is real and true, or you see beyond it to reality. The mind’s eye also does not utilize physical photons for seeing, which is why in effect it cannot see the physical world. “Forgiveness sees it not.” It‘s sight is not based in space or time or distance or measure.
Truly, “To forgive is to OVERLOOK” and overlooking means ”forgetting to see”, or not seeing. You cannot look AT what you forgive. Looking AT it is unforgiveness. You look PAST it and fail to see it. That is what overlooking means. This is why “A world forgiven cannot last.” You cannot forgive the physical and still see the physical. When the mind is sane and healed, it categorizes ALL physical materials, worlds, energies, SPACE TIME, as entirely UNREAL. And this is the recognition of illusions which causes them to DISAPPEAR. And why “there is no world.”
The physical body is an illusion and sees ONLY illusions, in an agreein-with-illusions manner, which makes them seem real. “Only the body makes the world seem real.” All things physical are illusory and unreal. They are blindness. The blind body can only look upon the blind world, which was made to HIDE REALITY from your sight. “The world is drawn like a vail across the face of christ, but it can last no longer than an instant.” Only by recognizing that ALL body signals are FALSE AND UNREAL, can your spiritual eye rest upon the face of Christ, making you ready to return to God, ending perception forever.
If you're seeing bodies, your vision is blinded by sight of form.
Christ's vision LOOKS PAST bodies to the truth and does not see physical forms.
"The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
"Christ's vision has one law. 2 It DOES NOT LOOK UPON THE BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 It BEHOLDS A LIGHT BEYOND THE BODY; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
"THE OPPOSITE OF SEEING THROUGH THE BODY'S EYES IS THE VISION OF CHRIST, which reflects strength rather than weakness, unity rather than separation, and love rather than fear. The OPPOSITE OF HEARING THROUGH THE BODY'S EARS is communication through the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, which abides in each of us. His Voice seems distant and difficult to hear because the ego, which speaks for the little, separated self, seems to be much louder. This is actually reversed. The Holy Spirit speaks with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming appeal. No one who does not choose to identify with the body could possibly be deaf to His messages of release and hope, nor could he fail to accept joyously the vision of Christ in glad exchange for his MISERABLE PICTURE OF HIMSELF."
"Christ's vision is the HOLY SPIRIT'S GIFT, GOD'S ALTERNATIVE to the ILLUSION of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death (seeing the physical world which is made of sin and death). It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which THIS WORLD IS BASED. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable."
"Learning MUST LEAD BEYOND THE BODY to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it."
"The body cannot be looked upon EXCEPT THROUGH JUDGEMENT. 2 To SEE THE BODY is the sign that you LACK VISION, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose."
"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand."
"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
"BEYOND THE BODY, beyond the sun and stars, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light"
"The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent FAR BEYOND THE BODY, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace"
"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out BEYOND THE BODY, to let you and your brother be joined."
"Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship BEYOND THE BODY? 10 Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"
"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND what they were made to see. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT."
"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the DARKNESS, not the light."
"Here is a WORLD established THAT IS SICK, and this THE WORLD THE BODY'S EYES PERCEIVE."
"It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him AS A BODY. 2 Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of HOLINESS? 3 For holiness is merely the result of letting THE EFFECTS OF SIN BE LIFTED (body veil disappears), so what was always true is recognized. 4 ****TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE****, for HOLINESS IS POSITIVE AND THE BODY IS MERELY NEUTRAL. 5 It is not sinful, but NEITHER IS IT SINLESS. 6 AS NOTHING, WHICH IT IS, THE BODY CANNOT MEANINGFULLY BE INVESTED WITH ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST OR OF THE EGO. 7 Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. 8 And both must be undone for purposes of truth."
"WHO SEES A BROTHER'S BODY HAS LAID A JUDGEMENT ON HIM, AND SEES HIM NOT. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; HE DOES NOT SEE HIM AT ALL. 3 In the darkness of sin he is INVISIBLE. 4 He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. 5 Here are illusions and reality kept separated. 6 Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. 7 And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED AS A BODY, in unholy relationships with other bodies, SERVING THE CAUSE OF SIN an instant before he dies."
"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" 2 Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" 3 And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. 4 Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. 5 THE MEANS IS VISION. 6 For what the SEEING (with christ vision) look upon (overlooking bodies to something beyond) is sinless. 7 No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. 8 And WHAT HE SEES HE DID NOT MAKE (heaven), for it was GIVEN HIM TO SEE (by God), as was the vision that made his seeing possible."
"You believe that what your PHYSICAL EYES CANNOT SEE does not exist."
"Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK THE BODY, as it will surely do"
"For FAITHLESSNESS is the perception of a brother AS A BODY"
"IT DOES NOT LOOK UPON A BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created."
"Perception is a FUNCTION OF THE BODY, and therefore represents A LIMIT ON AWARENESS. Perception sees *THROUGH* THE BODY'S EYES and hears through the body's ears. It evokes the limited responses which the BODY makes."
"If you are SIN, YOU ARE A BODY, for the mind acts not."
"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the BODY'S EYES can see. Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS, ***AND OF HIS BODY***."
"(sin) The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet REASON SEES THROUGH IT easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes. "
"EVERYTHING that the BODY'S EYES can see is a MISTAKE, an ERROR in perception"
"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on ERROR, and NOT SEE PAST IT."
"See how the body's eyes REST ON EXTERNALS, and CANNOT GO BEYOND. Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, UNABLE TO GO BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. "
The whole problem with false perception is really just one of confusion about "what is the cause." Or more to the point, who is causing it. We could rephrase that as "I don't know what God (cause) is."
In the separation there was a disassociation from the role of "causer" or chooser (creator), and the ownership and responsibility of this causing was projected onto others. We then ended up in an extremely confused state of not being able to clearly discern, "who is doing what to whom?"
In the ego thought system, cause and effect are completely reversed, things which are true seem false, things which are false seem true. There is a breakdown of the Golden Rule, in which anything that's true is true of both of us.
It's replaced with the ego's idea that what is true for me is not true for you. Which really is another way of saying, cause and effect are separate. I can cause you without being affected. And you can cause me without being affected. I can accuse you of doing something I did not do, and thereby believe I am innocent while you're guilty.
This is the ego's idea of "getting away with murder", because it believes it can cause things to happen and escape the consequences. So when we get into "its you not me", or "you did this to me", any kind of blame or finger-pointing or scapegoating or believing that "cause" is outside of you, you will instantly go into a victim role. And victims are always confused about who is attacking them.
In that confused state of ego reactions, it always seems like it's someone else doing this to us, some external event happened, some unforseen circumstance, some unwanted happening
Usually you'll feel devoid of all responsibility for causing it. ie it'll seem like you didn't choose any of it, and you don't want it. But this is because you have no clue whatsoever what is really causing anything. And so random fingers point at random targets hoping some mud will stick.
As you apply forgiveness, ie you become more honest and less in denial about your contribution, you start to sort out exactly WHO is causing stuff to happen. At first it seems like it's everyone except you, but then gradually each time you see that YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, or was something you did in fact choose, or that it did have an effect on you, the picture starts to become clearer.
The more you can take responsibility for choosing the more you will discern clearly and recognize that you are the cause of your suffering. You will also start to notice that the ego's breaking of God's laws does not work, and in fact when you do attack or scapegoat another you do NOT escape the consequences. It makes you feel guilty, it frightens you, it upsets and stresses you out.
Eventually, there becomes a clear association between "being a victim" and "attacking yourself". A clear line of causation from what you are choosing and the effect YOU experience as a result. You'll see it's not possible to blame another without feeling blamed. It's not possible to judge without feeling judged. It's not possible to attack without feeling attacked. And it's not possible to accuse someone of being the cause of you without you feeling like a vulnerable victim.
And so then it becomes obvious, that you feel like a victim BECAUSE you positioned yourself as one, seeing yourself in that role, and wanting to do so in order to try and get a payoff of scapegoating. But you no longer can pretend that your attacks on another don't hurt yourself. You can't help but notice that the instant you try to shift guilt to someone else, you will immediately feel that familiar weakness, threat and lack of safety that accompanies a victim mentality.
It then becomes an unavoidable no-brainer. That is, you clearly recognize and distinguish, whenever I attack, I feel attacked. Whenever I want to make someone out to be guilty, I feel like a victim. Whenever I try to be unforgiving, I feel unforgiven. It has a direct correlation, because I AM the cause of everything I experience, NOT the other person.
It then becomes harder to pretend to yourself that your attempted attacks on others have no effect on you. You are affected every time. You simply cannot maintain peace and happiness at the same time as being angry with someone. You can't truly honestly justify anger in any situation because you know that it's bullshit. And it'll become increasingly noticeable that you're bullshitting yourself as you sort out exactly who is causing everything you feel.
So then it becomes quicker and easier to catch yourself. You can see, well, as soon as I went to point a finger at someone and use them as a scapegoat, I felt like a victim under attack. Funny that. I made that happen. I gave myself that experience. And so I can choose again and withdraw that self-attack, that self-positioning of "I'm the victim here!". That demand that I be weak and vulnerable and recognized as a suffering frightened liar.
Since I then see that I do this to myself and it was very obvious that I did this, the entire "appeal" of playing the victim role withers away. There's no point to it when you can more accurately discern that it very much does hurt you. There are consequences. And so the challenge then is to no longer see yourself unfairly treated or as a victim of anyone or anything, recognizing that it's only when you do that you feel that way at all. And you no longer want to feel that way.
Fortunately since it's an inside job where you're the only one causing, and other people are never the cause of you AT ALL, it really boils down to your own willingness to admit to what you're doing to yourself and to want a better way. To prefer not suffering over suffering. To recognize that hurting hurts and attack attacks, rather than believing it does something else. Because in our confusion we don't even realize what the fuck we're doing to ourselves, and we end up killing ourselves in the name of self preservation.
True perception is accurate perception. It is recognition. It is awareness and discernment. It is the ability to SEE, clearly, what the truth of this situation is. What is really going on. Who is really causing and choosing. Where things really originate and what their effects actually are. It's the willingness and ability to not be blinded or confused by the ego temptation to think its one-sidedness can work. It's simply honesty and openness to the truth.
Who would hurt themselves unless they thought they weren't hurting themselves in doing so?
Who would hurt themelves once they recognized that they cannot be hurt unless they do so?
Who would hurt themselves if they recognized that even the slightest attempt to hurt others diminishes your own happiness?
Who would hurt themselves when joy and peace and love are the price?
"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."
"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no-one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."
""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."
“The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same.”
Jesus says all miracles are the same. There is no order among them in terms of difficulty, or size, or adjusting proportions in relation to “what the problem is”. Miracle mindedness is a state of equality and evenness. It is flat.
All expressions of love are maximal, which means EVERY miracle expression is at the same level of maximal love. Not wavering or varying in degrees of application. Almost like there is one “button” that you push and it puts out a miracle and this same miracle has the power to do anything, every time. So there is no need for varying degrees of expression.
Similarly there is a hierarchy of illusions, in which all illusions APPEAR to have a total LACK of sameness. That everything is different, all forms are different, there are different degrees and amounts and importance and severity. Different amounts of hardness. “In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur.”
So the scenario we are presented with is a world which seems to show us “there are varying levels of difficulty”. And this is based on form. The form that something takes, is taken to be what it MEANS. We look at the form, the state, the shape, the texture, the color, the composition, the seeming evidence of what’s happened, the “proof of sin”, and we use that to come up with a JUDGEMENT of what “it is”. And this gives rise to what we think it MEANS, or implies. And that results in an entire hierarchy of degrees of difficulty, not to mention varying levels of reaction.
In LESSON 1 of the workbook, Jesus introduces us to this powerful idea, hitting the ground running. That everything in the world, all things we see, all objects, all FORMS, do not MEAN anything. That the form of things is NOT its meaning. And this is based on the simple yet deep idea of “there is no world”. The world is NOTHING, and therefore the things you see are NOT anything, and therefore do NOT MEAN anything.
“Lesson 1 "Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything.”
If you can realize how this is basically saying that NOTHING in the world means anything, it is telling you that the forms, physical states, conditions, amounts of stuff, it does not HAVE any meaning. One thing is not bigger than another. One thing is not harder to deal with than another. Even a certain form of body state, whether the body seems alive and healthy, or on its death bed, it is NO DIFFERENT in its meaning.
“They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful.”
We have INVENTED all the meanings we’ve given to everything in the world, including dead bodies. We have DECIDED that a body in a certain state MEANS death, and a body in another state “is better”. This is totally arbitrary, based loosely on the form of what we see, which is an illusion. A body seemingly in a state of death is NOT more dead than any other body.
So what we have to learn is that the physical state of things, regardless of its form, no matter its severity, even if a person is dead, even if they are severely sick, even if there’s a car crash, it should not MEAN that this is a very big serious terrible thing. It should not MEAN that this is more serious or more important or more severe, OR harder to recover from, OR really in any way a more DIFFICULT thing to deal with. It is all equally NOTHING.
“Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing.”
Nothing I see means ANYTHING. A person seeming to be severely sick, is a judgement based on believing that their FORM is telling us its meaning. That certain states of the body are proof of certain degrees of death. That some things are worse than others. What we have to learn to be miracle minded is that the FORM that something takes, its appearance, no matter what that appearance is, is NOTHING AT ALL, and therefore it does not MEAN anything at all. One form is NOT different to another.
A serious ”bad situation” IS NOT a serious bad situation. It’s an illusion of one, taking the form of one, while simultaneously being absolutely nothing at all. And because it is nothing, it cannot mean anything. It cannot MEAN that it is a horrible nightmare Of awfulness. Because it is nothing, it cannot REALLY be a sickness. Because it is nothing, it is NOT really death, disaster, terror or hell. We can’t look to the form to tell us what anything means. Form is a lie. All physical states and shapes and conditions mean nothing whatsoever.
So the miracle has to overlook the appearance of the situation, completely disregard the evidence, turn away from what every physicality-believing person says, disregard the opinion of everyone who looks upon bodies and consider their states to be real, and do not GIVE any power to death. To not differentiate BETWEEN illusions. “There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. ”
We are to not believe that a certain “state” is any kind of proof of anything. That it MEANS anything, indicates anything, implies anything, will lead to anything, or tells you a prognosis of even the potential of what might be possible. The form of the world cannot TELL YOU what is real or what anything means. You cannot look to IT to tell you what is true. You should ASK the physical to tell you what is spiritual fact.
We are to DEFY the world of illusions by bringing a power and a light from another world, a power which ignores form and completely overlooks the hierarchy of illusions. That flattens the hierarchy and renders all physical things EQUAL. Which sees all situations as THE SAME. And therefore having ONE response of love and power which deals with this ONE state of illusions, this ONE substrate of deception, and does ONE thing to bringing about a change.
Lesson 5 “Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same.”
lesson 79 “Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted.”
“Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different, by making it ALL THE SAME.”
When all things in the world are recognized as nothing, they do not MEAN what you thought they meant. You have a clean slate. You have taken away from the world all the meanings it has, which you gave to it, under the belief that IT gave them to you based on its forms.
Its form are deceptions, they do NOT mean what they appear to mean. They ARE not what they seem to be. Do not listen to people telling you that something MEANS something because of its current “state”. This is just feedback from an illusory world where nothing is true.
“Nothing that the world believes is true.” “No one has been sure of anything since.”
ALL illusory forms, all physical objects, all bodies, all states are illusions of differences and appearances of conflicts. As if that means something. As if that’s proof of what is happening. Some things seem terrible and awful while other things seem harmless and nice. But none of this is true. All the things in the world are ONE thing, one equal sameness of nothing. And it is their nothingness that guarantees their healing. Because now if it is nothing, you are not dealing with a “big bad problem”, you’re dealing with an illusion, and illusions recognized as nothing must disappear.
It is the fact that this is all NOTHING, that gives you the power to be free from it, to not fear it, to not endow it with attributes it does not have, to not use it to prove sin is real, and have no effects from it. What is nothing can do nothing and is nothing. There is no world. There is no death. The son of God is free.
“Think how this SEEMS to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and EQUALLY untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to ALL of them. Errors of ANY kind can be corrected, BECAUSE they are untrue.”
"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."
“The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear.”
To believe God created Earth or that Earth is worth keeping, is clearly in contradiction to what the course says about the earth, frequently contrasting it as being the OPPOSITE of heaven and not something worthy of the Son of God. The world seen with forgiving eyes might well be "lovely", but it’s still not heaven.
Here is how the Course speaks of the "Earth"... (with my emphasis and minor comments)...
"Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in HEAVEN, so on EARTH (does not mean heaven=earth, it means you have the power to create here). Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil HEAVEN of Your Love, where EARTH WILL DISAPPEAR, and separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God"
"His little life on EARTH was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the HELL YOU MADE (earth) to God."
"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in HEAVEN AND EARTH (separate places). My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision."
"God has one Son, and He is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH (separate places)."
"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is NO PARALLEL in your experience of the world (earth) to help you understand it. There is NOTHING ON EARTH with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly."
"It is our function to remember Him (God) ON EARTH as it is given us to be His own completion IN REALITY (not on earth). So let us not forget our goal is shared. For it is that remembrance which contains the memory of God, and points the way to Him and TO THE HEAVEN (pointed to away from the Earth) of His peace"
"Father, IN HEAVEN it is different, for there, there are no needs. But HERE ON EARTH (which is not heaven) the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."
"Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? (references to earth) Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts BEYOND the worth of ANYTHING ON EARTH. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with HEAVEN’S treasures, WHICH ALONE ARE REAL (earth’s treasure are dreams and illusions). Thus is the law of love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You (reference to ascension!)."
"Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while HEAVEN’s Son is born. Let EARTHLY sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed DISAPPEAR."
"(speaking of true perception/real world...)EARTH is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world (earth) that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, ETERNITY HAS SHINED AWAY THE WORLD (illusion of earth), and only HEAVEN now exists at all."
"(talking about Holy Spirit) His Words will work. His Words will save. His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this EARTH (cus otherwise it sucks). His Words are born in God, and come to you with HEAVEN’S love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of HEAVEN, for these are the words which all merge as one at last"
"Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to HEAVEN’s GATE; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God (to take you home to heaven). How far are we progressing now from EARTH (something you do not want!)! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!"
""I will forgive and this will DISAPPEAR." To every apprehension, every care, every form of suffering repeat these selfsame words. And then you hold the key that opens HEAVEN’s GATE, and brings the Love of God the Father down to EARTH at last (extending Holy Spirit temporarily), to raise it up to HEAVEN. God will take this final step Himself. Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him."
"Forgiveness represents your function here (on earth). It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon HEAVEN (opposite to earth where forgiveness is needed)? Yet on EARTH you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your RETURN (to heaven) to be acknowledged, not to be complete. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the WORLD (definitely talking about earth here). It has no meaning here (earth is meaningless). Forgiveness is the closest it (heaven) can come to EARTH. For being HEAVEN-BORNE, it has no form at all. (Earth, place of forms, is not heaven)"
"All power is given you in EARTH and HEAVEN (two distinct places apparently). There is nothing that you cannot do."
"Repeat the Name of God and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name and all the tiny, nameless things on EARTH slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."
"There is one major difference in the role of HEAVEN’s messengers which sets them off from those the world (earth) appoints. The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like EARTHLY messengers (but only like, not the same as), they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give."
"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of HEAVEN’s CHILDREN and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game UPON THIS EARTH And then we GO (to heaven) to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."
"HEAVEN remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to THIS STRANGE WORLD YOU MADE 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."
"You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines IN HEAVEN so your joy ON EARTH calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you (in heaven) in God’s plan"
"How could there be a meeting place at all where EARTH AND HEAVEN can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? (Clearly they cannot both exist) The mind that sees illusions (earth) thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God."
"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down UPON THE EARTH after HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is ETERNAL and has never changed. He was "called down upon the EARTH" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."
"There IS no change in immortality, and HEAVEN knows it not. Yet here on EARTH (place that changes), it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things"
"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into HEAVEN, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes HOME. The incomplete is made complete again, and HEAVEN’s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it."
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I pulled the quotes from a searchable urtext version. There are MANY MORE references to being "in heaven" versus "on earth", making it clear and obvious they are both distinct and OPPOSITE, and that only heaven is real, only heaven is what you want, and only heaven is befitting the Son of God.
God did not create the earth. This world is not our home. There is no life outside of heaven! The world - earth - holds nothing that we want. There is no world (earth). A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world (earth) (beacuse Heaven is FAR BETTER!) :-) Heaven is EVERYTHING, Earth is NOTHING.