Would you trust life or death decisions to the Holy Spirit? And if not, why not?

We are ego-identified idiots here. We don't know what we're doing, what's right, what's in anyone's best interests, or how to judge anything. And we're not as expert as we think we are.

We have in this world people who become highly educated, experts in their field, professionals, authorities, experienced individuals. But even these people usually trust their own world-based learning, their own egos, their own judgement.

I have personally experienced many many times over how such exalted persons can be incredibly blind, totally unaware of God or anything spiritual, completely indoctrinated into institutions, and yet proud of their prowess and achievements in highly advanced fields. And they can be VERY mistaken and lost. This includes highly advanced doctors, specialists, scientists, gurus of all kinds.

For me I've had to go through some seriously difficult situations, life-or-death decisions, medical body-health decisions. I've had a partner who was in intensive care twice, in hospitals for over 6 months, and multiple serious health concerns. It was stressful and difficult and filled with very important and serious life choices. Decisions to be made, does she live or die?

Who do you turn to? You might ask family and friends and those you trust. People will give their opinions. But ultimately for me I knew that I could not really "handle" the severity of situations, and had to surrender and get humble. I had to make room for the Holy Spirit and God.

Sometimes when life gets really shit it really pushes you towards God because you can reach some really dark hellish places filled with fear where you just start reaching out and asking God for help. And you then find that the Help he has provided through the Holy Spirit, Jesus, etc, is not only effective and correct it is highly trustworthy.

Their guidance and support and healing has a power and accuracy and rightness far above and beyond all humans and all institutions and all educated fields and professions. Their expertise and knowledge and insight is absolutely unparalleled. Their access to all information, all outcomes, all scenarios all futures etc is absolutely beyond the reach of anyone on the planet.

So when you get into situations like that, and you need help and you reach out for spiritual help, and it comes, and you trust it, and you learn that it works and is right, you trust it more and more. And so you listen and you turn to it, it's like a compass in your back pocked. You whip it out whenever there's something important to deal with. Or even for little things.

Would I trust life or death decisions to the Holy Spirit? Absolutely! If they told me to do or not do something, I would very likely go with that even if it flew in the face of whatever everyone else said or suggested. I would place his truth and rightness above everyone, because he has proven to me over and over again how trustworthy he is, how helpful and healing he is, and how his wisdom is always right.

I cannot pretend to know everything, or to judge anything correctly, or to be educated enough, or professional enough, or experienced enough, or to have accumulated enough facts and information, or done enough research, or any other such way that our little egos go wild with trying to play God. I don't want to play God.

I want God to be God, and me to do his will. That is all it's about. Knowing your place as second to God, dismantling the authority problem, not trusting artificial external authorities, and turning to God for EVERYTHING.

Many people would think that doing this is totally irresponsible, that trusting "spiritual guidance" would be insane and not good enough and not accurate and who knows where it's coming from. They would say you have to listen to the experts and believe the science and follow the rules and laws and all that shit. It's all made up bullshit. You have to trust someone that TRULY KNOWS which is the Holy Spirit. His credentials are massively above and beyond anything any person on this planet can offer you.

It is in fact irresponsible and arrogant to put ourselves into a position where we think we know enough to be able to decide ANYTHING important on our own. ACIM tells us to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS. For all decisions. Even the risky ones. Even the ones to do with the body and health. Even things to do with serious life scenarios and problems and stuff that no-one can see to solve. Even things which defy all possibilities and seem hopeless. He is there to HELP, so that you are NOT ALONE EVER.

It does take time and willingness to develop this TRUST. And it can be a long process especially if there is fear, trusting in your own strength and the abilities of yourself and others. If you trust in egos and external saviours. If you trust in magic and traditions and regimented groups of people who think they know everything and decide everything for you. It can take time to wean off all that and be spirit-driven. But it is absolutely the best thing you could ever do, guaranteed!

And the good thing is that when you TRUST spirit and RECEIVE the help and can SEE that it is right, you absolve yourself of guilt because you're allowing God to decide FOR you. You don't have to do this all on your own, alone, trusting in your petty arrogant weakness, or that of others who masquerade as unquestionable authorities. Put your life into the hands of God and your way will be made straight. Follow his word and his advice and his path and your life will become much more manageable. Who wants to carry the whole weight of the world on their shoulders? Not me.

"What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving hands of God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain, or bring experience of loss to him? What can he fear? And what can he regard except with love? For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten." UrW194L7

"Place, then, your future in the hands of God." UrW194L8

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father." UrT3C13

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2

"Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is NOT the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized ITS emptiness has left YOURS empty and unoccupied? Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his." UrT26G3

"That is why we suggested before that there was help in reminding yourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for YOU." UrT6G9 "Forget HIM not, and He will make EVERY decision for you, for YOUR Salvation and the peace of God in you." UrT13H13

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it." UrT13I6

It's a deadly trap to believe that you need to get that person to love you in order to prove you are lovable.

You can feel very sorry for yourself because of how other people seem to mistreat you or how they don't love you enough.

You can get into a state where you see yourself as unworthy and unlovable purely because other people don't seem to love you.

Then you will be yearning for them to love you, will try to manipulate them into loving you, will secretly want to take love from the, and will try to steal it from them, in order to get some love for yourself.

You think that if they will love you, you will feel better about yourself.

Well here's some news. It doesn't work this way.

Love has to come from God and come through you and be shared. Love is sharing. You have to share in it in order to have it, and by sharing in it you must also share it, meaning you must extend it and give it.

Now, this also leads people to another mistake which is the belief that you should always give give give in an attempt to give everyone what they want, so that you might be able to get them to give some love back to you.

This is a deadly trap as well. If you're waiting for or are dependent on other people to be the source of love for you, or to approve of you, or to give you attention, or make you be okay, or accept you, then you're going to be waiting a very long time and suffer the consequences.

Other people are not supposed to be the source of love for you. Other people are not supposed to approve of you. Other people are not supposed to accept you. Other people are not supposed to give you attention. Other people are not supposed to love you more than others. Other people are not supposed to save you. Other people are not supposed to be your savior or your idol or your hero. Other people are not where you should be receiving love from.

You can't experience love unless you are in it. You can't be in it unless you are sharing it with God because God is the only source of love. You can't share in it unless you are willing to receive it from God. You can't get it into you unless you are willing to remove all of your false beliefs which say that you don't deserve it, can't receive it, aren't good enough, or that you are in need of it. You can't share it unless you're willing to let others also receive it just as much as you. And you can't have it unless you are willing to give it away.

To your ego, giving away love means losing it, which means you are sacrificing it, which means if you give give give you will end up with none for yourself. This won't coerce others into loving you, nor will it make them love you in return in order to have an equal or fair relationship. That's bullshit. That's not a relationship, it's a bargain. Your ego needs to get out of the way if you are going to experience love.

You need to realize that God's love is infinitely abundant and always available and is unconditional and freely given to all equally, all the time. That includes you. You must be included in the love and having the love, even when you give it. If you are overflowing with God's love, from WITHIN, having received it inside of yourself directly from the source (God), then you will be so happy to share it and spread it around.

And here's the little secret. When you share and receive God's love and are open to an unlimited supply of it coming into you from Him, which He has already put there, you will have so much that even if you give it away, it will not decrease whatsoever. The secret is, that as you give real love, unconditional love, you not only get to keep that love, but the love INCREASES.

You don't need, and cannot get, love from someone else. It must come from God to you to others, in that order. If you don't feel lovable or loved, YOU are not loving yourself and YOU are not letting God love you. It's an inside job.

You will not EVER find love outside of you, and you will not EVER be loved from outside of you. "Outside of you" means separate from you, and anything separate from you is impossible to experience. You can only experience love when it is NOT separate from you, meaning it's INSIDE you, meaning God put it there and you're experiencing it where it IS.

You already have it. You just have blocks to awareness which is preventing you from accepting and allowing it. Your ego is getting in the way. It's making you believe, falsely, that you do not have love in you, cannot have love in you, don't deserve love in you, and that you are not love. YOU ARE LOVE ITSELF. You are an extension of love. How can you not be love, when Love (God) created you like Itself? You aren't going to get this love by force-feeding it from the outside in. You aren't really lacking it! You just need to UNCOVER IT, because it's already been given.

God has already given you 100% of all the love in existence. If you are blocking it, you're going to go seeking for it outside of yourself, and it will stay outside of yourself, and you will never have it that way. It's not anyone's job to love you. It's only God's function to love you, and He already has. The only part left now is your WILLINGNESS to accept and allow it and RECOGNIZE it where it is, within you, where God already put it. You are already loved, unconditionally and eternally, so if that's not what you are experiencing, YOU are blocking yourself from being loved.

It doesn't even matter if other people love you or not. Other people could be loving you 100% unconditionally and totally all the time, but you could still be shutting it out, ignoring it, rejecting it, and not believing you deserve it. How are you going to get that love into you if your entire reason for trying to find it out there is because you don't really believe you deserve it? No-one can give it to you if you don't allow it to be in you, and to allow it to be in you is to accept it from God.

Love has already been shared with you. Love is already available permanently. Love is what you are really made of. You can't not be loved or lovable or loving. But you can pretend, and you can cover it up, and you can be in denial. That simply means you need to uncover all these ways that you keep love from yourself. It's not because other people are keeping love from you, it's YOU that does not really want it. You say you do, but evidently you don't, or you would accept it from God right now.

God loves you. Just so you know.

When we all love each other, it means that we have love within us, because we are love, and are sharing that love, NOT BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE NEED IT, because they also have the love coming from God within themselves. To love everyone is not to substitute for their belief in lack, or to love them FOR them, or to force love upon them. We all are responsible for and naturally function as extenders of GOD'S LOVE, because God is the only source of love that's real. Access your own unique connection to Him, your own relationship, and heal it, so that you can experience love again.

I've seen recently a new perspective on the healing of self and others.

I noticed that as I was helping a person to realise that they had been hurting themselves, that they were making themselves guilty, and that they deserved love, I also felt a greater love within myself. I was becoming healed as I conveyed to the other person how much they deserved to be healed.

I hadn't experienced this much before, probably because I hadn't focused on how someone else needed help with their own self-attack. The more it became clear to me that they were hurting themselves, and that they deserved better, I felt better myself.

This kind of turned a key in my mind and is now causing me to see people differently. I recognise now that we are all created equal and perfect in Christ, we have temporarily fallen into self destruction, and now we are attempting to return. This means that it can appear someone is evil, sinful, guilty, wrong etc, but this is only a kind of self-denial, a sickness they have in which they are attacking themselves. And it has nothing to do with anyone else, or the world.

I think that to see this clearly you have to not be confused about who is attacking who. When we're in ego and filled with our own guilt, an unhealed healer, we keep getting lost in the projections of others, taking things personally, and don't perceive that they're doing something to themselves. It takes the removal of enough self destruction within oneself, to be able to then recognise that someone else deserves what you've given to yourself. As the course says, you can only give the miracles you have received.

Once we take responsibility for what we're doing to ourselves, as in the secret of salvation, and cease to project guilt, and cease to make ourselves guilty in the first place, it becomes a lot clearer that other people's attacks are not against you but against themselves. Everyone's trying to destroy themselves, and only attack others in an attempt to shift the guilt and pain away from themselves. People can't stand the agony of their self inflicted wounds, so they try to give them to others as a coping strategy.

When you can see that someone's main problem isn't other people, being a victim, or anything outside of them - just as it isn't for you, it becomes more obvious that their whole problem is their own self-attitude. They are crucifying and condemning themselves, making themselves out to be sinful and guilty, believing they deserve punishment, fearing that punishment, and trying to kill themselves off.

The key though is the fact that they don't deserve this guilt anymore than you do. The fact that they are christ, temporarily at war with themselves, and are actually in need of healing. To recognise that their true nature is the healed son of God, an immortal being, correctly frames their suffering or projections as self inflicted lies. They've done this to themselves, they don't love themselves, they want to die.

As a healer, who might be perhaps more healed than the patient, you are then in a position to help them. This has to entail not regarding the surface appearance of their projected guilt as true, looking past it to finding an innocent person inside, a person who deserves love, a person who is their own worst enemy. If you are more healed, you are able to look past the appearance and illusion of their ego and see them as in need of healing. The course calls it "calling out for love". Certainly they are in need of love because they don't love themselves.

Helping someone to recognise that they are doing this to themselves, that they are making themselves guilty, that they are accusing themselves of things they have not done, and assisting them to learn to recognise their innocence and worth, is an act of healing. It moves your mind closer to the lovable being that is inside of them, a lovable being who temporarily denies its value. And as you help point them toward their lovability, you can't help but find that you are pointing yourself toward your own. As such the healing of your brother becomes the healing of yourself, and both of you are healed at the same time.

I think the main difference or shift for me has been to not see people as their surface appearance, their ego, their body, their sickness, and instead to regard them as immortal christ beings who are not loving themselves enough. Their mind is split because they are denying the truth about themselves. They project because they've put themselves into pain. They need to be resurrected and restored to their natural condition of wholeness.

A person's ego condition is nothing more than self attack, and all attack is self attack. The only remedy needed is to stop them from attacking themselves. Helping them to love themselves helps you to love yourself. Shining a light of love into their minds heals your own.

This enlightens me to realise also that people who might on the surface appear to have ego, be evil, sinful, criminal, hateful, murderous etc, are just as much victims of themselves and in need of love. It doesn't even matter how far gone someone is, how twisted and aggressive, how abusive and dark, everyone is deserving of God's love and is in need of healing. Everyone has the potential to transform into a fully integrated christ being, fully loving and fully loved, fully alive and never again to die.

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."

"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. 2 It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. 3 Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. 4 Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." 5 This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep"

The ego is simply an attempt to deny the existence of love. Using it, you deny the existence of love within you. This means you put in place a belief, that you do not have love in you. That you are not made of love or are inherently love.

Since love is the absolute core essence of what you are, your soul, to suggest there is no love in you is an attempt to say "love is not your identity." Your very "self" is brought into question.

This creates the belief in a LACK of love within you, and also the belief you are NOT love and cannot BE loved. This is brought about by the idea of sin, which suggests you are separate from Love - from yourself, and from God.

Since you believe it’s not in you, and you feel empty and lacking, you have now become "needy". You’ve invented a fake need - an absence of love. This compels you to SEEK FOR LOVE. You reason it is not in you, so it must be ANYWHERE else other than in you.

The problem is, it is not ANYWHERE ELSE other than in you, shared with God. So as soon as you start to seek for it, you move AWAY from where it is, and TOWARDS where it is not. It is not "out there", outside of you.

This compulsion to address the "hole" in your heart by finding what’s "missing", sends you on an extraordinary journey away from yourself. You are literally trying to "find yourself" anywhere other than where you are, within. You are also therefore trying to find love, anywhere other than where it is, within.

This then means you don’t believe the love is going to come from yourself. Someone or something OTHER than you has to provide it. So now, whether or not you have love, or even your self, depends on someone or something outside of you providing it. If they fail to provide it, it’s their fault. I they provide it, you worship them. Anything other than seeing it in yourself.

This also means therefore, you now believe that someone else has taken posession or responsibility for your love, and your self, as if having stolen it from you. You now see your self and your love, in other people, locked up inside them, as though it’s stuck in them. And now it’s your job to steal it back from them. You believe it belongs to you, and that you’ve lost it.

What you are looking for in them, however, is not real love. You already believed that there is no real love in you. You already chose not to have real love. You saw yourself as unworthy of it when you believed in sin (separation from love). This made you perceive that there is no love outside you either, because you will perceive externally what is within your beliefs. A lack of love in you will show you its absence outside of you. So real love is nowhere to be found.

Instead, what you seek for is a replacement for love, a substitute for love, and for yourself. You are seeking for specialness, some sense of "value" that you want and think is worth having - or which will save you from your emptiness. And you are also trying to find a substitute identity, something which can stand in for who you really are. Something which seems special and can somehow be similar to the love you lost sight of. You want to become spiritual and special and the best you can be.

This is all described in the laws of chaos.

Law #1) The truth is different for everyone - this results from everyone failing to see an equivalent love in themselves. What they see themselves as they believe is truth. If they are not all the same love, their own selves are different and conflicting, so now the truth is different because identities are different.

Law #2) Everyone must sin and deserves attack and death - comes about from having attacked yourself and believing that someone else did it to you. Disowning your own love and your own self was an act of becoming irresponsible, through disassociation, and therefore someone else is responsible for what you are. That means it seems like they took this love from you, so you are justified in attacking back to re-acquire what they stole, or to force them to give it to you.

3) God is believed to agree with your lack of love - since you yourself believe it is true, see love/God as separate, and as having attacked, you believe the truth is that love is no longer love. That means God is not love, so God agrees you are not love, which means God cannot help you to get your love or self back. If neither of you are love, you have to get it somewhere else.

4) You can get from others what you lack - since they stole it you feel justified in getting it from them. In the least, to have them willingly shower you with specialness. In the worst, to rip it from their dying limbs in a murderous attack. What is it that you are trying to get from them? A replacement for the love you lost - specialness and a replacement identity.

In addition to this process, the absence of love compels you to find a substitute in specialness. A lack of love makes the illusory world seem real to you. You are blind to its fantasy because your lack of love makes you feel imprisoned by it, like a needy inmate. Your mind now is in a split state, because you’ve introduced a separation between you and love. Between you and yourself. This has split your mind and you are now split minded, in two minds.

When the mind is split, it sees one half of the split as different to the other in some way. Typically this skews the mind‘s associations where one part of the mind seems to contain illusions of innocence, and the other part illusions of attack/guilt. One part is thought to be your self, the other not yourself. This is disassociation.

The mind associates more with the part which seems innocent as a way to avoid the pain of "no love", ie sin, and relegates the rest of the belief in sin to unconsciousness. This later is projected out and is not associated with as "my self". It is considered "other than me", even though it is inside the same mind. "Ideas leave not their source", so your "enemy" is now inside your own mind, making it able to attack you. It is you attacking you. All attack is self attack. (The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself).

The part of mind that tries to focus only on an ILLUSION of love, an illusion of innocence, an illusion of spirituality, an illusion of peace and happiness, remains in conscious awareness. It is what has been "permitted" into awareness. "You" then think that this self is ALL of yourself. You do not see the rest, yet alone see it as yourself. You think it is "outside you", because it is external to your persona, but is not outside your mind.

This special part of the mind, the persona, makes the world seem real and then attempts to section it off into "good and bad", "right and wrong", "spiritual and ego". This is because the mind has done the same thing to itself, labeling some parts as innocent and some as guilty. It separates the world and labels some parts or behaviors or diets or clothes or actions as "spiritual" and some parts as "evil". Then it pits them against each other.

The shift towards trying to include and accept only the parts which seem spiritual, and to reject the parts which seem evil, reinforces the artificial sense of sef which your mind is trying to build. It is trying to assemble a fake self, a replacement self, to replace the one you hid from yourself.

Since this all takes place within one "realm", whether your mind or in the world, it means you’ll create an ILLUSION of spirituality, and will try to change the ego into a "more spiritual" self. You’ll surround it with all kinds of things which look and sound spiritual, based on judgement and selecting between illusions.

The problem is that this fake self which is trying to only accept the most spiritual illusions as a sign of awakening, is also attacking the rest of the world, and yourself, to try to get rid of any trace of evil/sin.

In the name of "perfecting your self" - your fake self - you’ll attack your real self constantly to pick it apart and find any little thing wrong with it (which you judged/condemned as true of you), to get rid of that and keep only the best parts. This gradually rips you apart piece by piece. It is actually an act of self destruction, because eventually there will be nothing less. It is self attack in the name of self improvement or "self help".

The more that you try to develop a replacement self, and to make it spiritual, the less there will be of you. It will create a facade of niceness, seeming spiritual, trying to love everyone, being positive, people pleasing, idol worship, wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, getting dressed up for the lord on sundays to asuage guilt, having all the special books and charms and magical things. All to create an illusion of spirituality.

The problem is this spirituality is constantly under attack by the very parts of Self which that same fake self has judged as evil. Having made sin real, the "sinful others" - your own unconscious self, is now your constant enemy. You’ll try to hide from it and avoid it. You’ll try to keep it "in others" or "other than yourself". You’ll see it outside of you and attack it and condemn it to disassociate from it. And yet it will haunt you and keep coming back into your awareness, back into your life, to remind you of what you think of yourself. Because it is in your mind and you can’t make it go away without healing the split.

This fake spirituality takes constant defense. It is exhausting. It also does not work - to undo sin or guilt. Yet it is filled with promise and hope and yearning and striving and trying and being passionate about all these magical illusions of wonderfulness. And it still leads to death, be sure of that.

The more you seek for love the less love you have, the less life you have, the more you will become sick and die. "All sickness is a form of seeking outside of yourself." When this fakeness is pointed out, it is taken as a terrible attack. A horrifying truth. In particular when the special relationship is undermined, or shown to be fake, it can be very upsetting. And so wages the supposed spiritual war between good an evil. Between yourself and yourself.

The ego is simply a device you made to show you a distorted version of the truth. It only has one function, to block love. To shut out spirit. It will never have another function. But a person with fake spirituality will try to change the ego into something spiritual. To take it into the light. To make it be closer to God. This will threaten its destruction, and the "you" who is identified with it, will take this as an attack. This is the source of all ego rebounds, and much sickness, which implements defenses against truth to "protect" the ego.

The problem here is, your sense of identity has become associated with the ego. You are then trying to convert yourself from emptiness into "having love" or "being spiritual", but while still holding onto the ego. This makes you try to change the ego into something spiritual. It cannot change. It cannot become spiritual. It has a fixed function and a one-track mind focused on death. You’ll have a constant bouncing back and forth between fictional spirituality and despair and fear. Identifying with it automatically keeps it. Keeping it and trying to change it into the truth does not work. Ever. It has to be dis-identified from, to reclaim who you are.

But because we have identified with the ego, and we’re tired of suffering, and want to become more spiritual, we try to change "our self", which now is the ego. All this will do is transform the form that the ego is showing up as. It means changing up your life to "look" more spiritual. To do the spiritual things and not the non-spiritual things. To emphasize how evil the evil stuff is, and how spiritual the spiritual stuff is. To create a special little corner of the world safe from the bad stuff. For a while.

You can see many Christians doing this. Not all, but many. Some, in fundamentalist extremes of ego, heavily believe in "good and evil" and will do anything they can in a war against evil to judge it and make it very wrong, while also trying to cultivate an "image" of being more spiritual. This then entails wearing the "Sunday best", being "good", condemning "evil", adjusting behavior, avoiding sinful behavior, and generally creating an illusion of spirituality. It is very judgemental because there is so much separation in it.

You can also see this in most of the world’s religions. People with their false Gods, their idols, their shrines, their special songs, their statues, their rituals and traditions, their special clothing, daily behaviors, sacred images, holy locations, and various other magical things. You also see this in all super-positive approaches (magical unicorns) and all super-negative approaches (witchcraft etc). Both, being a belief in a special external power, or external love, are beliefs in magic. Just different sides of it.

These are all ego distractions of false spirituality. Also the new-age movement with its positive thinking, magical charms and paraphenalia, law of attraction, yoga, special kinds of body activities, etc is all part and parcel of an illusion of spirituality. Things which seem like they will achieve something, but achieve the opposite, is the hallmark of the ego. The test of any genuine spirituality is whether it "really works" to bring about more awareness of love.

All of this is an attempt to "find yourself". It’s the same thing as trying to find love. Believing that it is OUT THERE, and that if you just try hard enough you will find it. The ego has a response for you. It will tell you that you need to make a lot of passionate effort to become spiritual. It will encourage you to do lots and lots of "spiritual practice". Even if it overwhelms you. Why?

Because it denies that you are already very spiritual. It takes you away from the love that is already in you. Having a really strong passion for "finding the truth" and "finding love" and "becoming spiritual" actually makes you feel hopeless and worthless and unloved. It takes you away from the love that you are already. Appreciating what you already have (gratitude for what God has given) is a better strategy.

The more the ego can emphasize how much love you lack, the more it can compel you to seek for it. The more estranged your are from your own self, the more you think you will find it outside you or in someone else. The more you disown your own love, the more you will blame others for making it go away. And the more you try to find it, the LESS you will find it.

You already had it! Seeking for it makes it seem like it’s not here. Seek, and you will not find it. And you will not find love or truth, or health, or happiness, or wholeness, or peace, or willingness, or power, or unity, or joy, "in" the world outside of you. If you are doing that, prepare to be disappointed. This is the ego’s guarantee.

After you have recognized these illusions and have stopped trying to pretend to be loving or spiritual, through radical honesty and authenticity and responsibility, sorting out what is really true and what is really false, and have surrendered the seeking, and have seen through the TRAP of believing that you are not ALREADY love, you will return back to where you started from. This is the "journey without distance". Your destination, the love within you, where God put it, required no real distance at all. To find it, you didn’t need to travel in dreams at all.

Love is already in you. God put it there.

Your SELF, your real identity, is already in you. God put it there. No-one can give it you you and you can’t find it anywhere. Because you have not lost it.

The only problem you have are the blocks to the *awareness* of love’s presence WITHIN YOU. It’s already there!

It’s just covered up. It’s hidden. Love being hidden makes it seem like love has "gone away". This suggests that you really did become sinful, as if you sin made innocence become corrupted. You never did. You just *covered up* your innocence with a cloud of images of sin, and then tried to cover that up with illusions of innocence. Sin did not corrupt your innocence, or make you unworthy of love. It just temporarily blocked your awareness of it being PRESENT, right here, in you, as you, right now.

You have no needs. You need do nothing. You need not seek for love. "You are the love you’ve been looking for." All that is needed for enlightenment is the recognition of this truth. "Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all." It means recognizing where love IS, that you ARE IT, accepting that it is COMPLETELY TRUE OF YOU, your willingness to receive it from God, and your willingness to accept it is IN YOURSELF ALREADY! Accepting the atonement is accepting that you never did lose the love that you are.

You already have the light in you. You already have the truth in you. You just don’t believe it’s there or that you’re worthy of it, or that you want it, or that you need it, or that you can have it, or that it hasn’t gone way. Love didn’t leave you. Love didn’t reject you. You left love. This is the inheritance that we threw away. And which is waiting for us to reclaim. God has kept our love safe for us, forever.

We ALREADY HAD EVERYTHING we needed. God already gave it fully and shared it with us. It was after having it that we tried to throw it away. But we could not get rid of it. You can’t make love go away. You can’t get rid of God. But you can deny it is there by blocking awareness of it. Remove the blocts, and hey presto, OH LOOK, I AM ALREADY LOVE!!!! I’ve been the love that I‘ve been trying to find, all along! Surprise!

Here are some of the miracle principles with particularly speak to the idea that a miracle is something that you receive from God, and GIVE TO another person. Remember giving and receiving are ONE.

3 - Miracles occur naturally as EXPRESSIONS of love.

8 - Miracles are healing because they SUPPLY a lack. (remember he who temporarily has more gives to he who temporarily has less)

16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to GIVE as to receive.

18 - A miracle is a SERVICE. It is the maximal service you can render to ANOTHER.

19 - Miracles make MINDS (plural) one in God.

21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS.

24 - Miracles enable you to HEAL THE SICK and RAISE THE DEAD because you made sickness and death. (the dead aren't going to be raising themselves, they need YOU, the un-dead, to perform the miracle!)

27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me TO ALL MY BROTHERS.

35 - Miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

40 - The miracle acknowledges EVERYONE AS YOUR BROTHER and mine.

45 - A miracle is never lost. It may TOUCH MANY PEOPLE you have not even met.

AS you can see, if you study the miracle principles it is CLEAR that a miracle is NOT just a shift in your own perception, OR just a healing in your own mind. It is something SHARED and EXPRESSED to others to help them. It's not all about your spiritual ego.

Now, you could loosely interpret most of these in a mindset of, well, this is only speaking of my 'perception' and 'seeking not to change the world' and all that... you could read into that if you want. You could say that your forgiveness just blesses people in a kind of passive way. But miracles are much more than this. This is what we have to wake up to. It's much more than just dealing with your own separate identity. It is about sharing God with others!

What is the title of the book?

"A Course in MIRACLES".

You'd think anyone who knows of Jesus would want to know how he performs miracles, right? He already demonstrated them and now he has given us a manual to learn how to do the same. Hello!

Sometimes someone will tell you that they love you, and they want you to know you are loved. But you feel like you can't reciprocate because you see yourself as "in need". You feel like you have a lack, that you're not enough, there isn't enough love in you, because you feel guilty and afraid.

Once you're `in need` you actually are attempting to 'take and get' from others because you think you are lacking, so this is your top priority. When someone loves you it reminds you of how much love you don't have and you feel guilty about this. You see the other person as being needy, because YOU are needy. And because you see them this way, you will think that their love is actually neediness and that it is demanding something from you.

You especially don't want to be demanded from at the moment because you're already in need and don't have enough to give as it is. So your neediness is basically making it seem like suddenly everyone is taking from you and being selfish, and that love is selfishness and not unconditional. So then you might retaliate to this perceived 'attempt to get' that you see coming from another, even though its your own 'attempt to get' reflected back at you.

So sometimes we do not want to be loved. Sometimes we want to get, because we believe we are not loved, and that getting will solve it, but really we still feel unloved. We can't allow and accept love from others if we are not able to first recognize it within ourselves. If we see ourselves as lacking and unworthy and in need, then we will reject love even if its given freely with no strings attached.

So just because you love someone, it doesn't mean they can or will accept it. You can't force them to. They have to love themselves, and somehow their sense of neediness has to not be MET but actually REMOVED, because it is FALSE. The sense of neediness is an illusion that blocks awareness of love's presence.

You are already love. You don't have any needs in love. And love is not taking away the love you have. But you must open to receive and to recognize and appreciate the love that you are otherwise you will see rejection where there is none and won't allow yourself to be supported.

I had a dream last night where I seemed to be teaching someone about using the mind to heal.

This woman and her husband were in a hospital where their daughter was in the bed. She had some problem with her knees and couldn't walk. The parents were pleading with the doctor to do a procedure, but the doctor was hesitant that she was not ready.

I approached and spoke to the mother, and I asked her, when you look at your daughter's knees, what thought do you have? She said that she thinks "my daughter is sick". I told her that her mind has power and her thoughts actually cause things to happen. So when she thinks her daughter is sick, she actually makes her sick.

I then told her that she has these thoughts as reactions and is letting the situation tell her what the truth is, instead of using her thoughts to heal. I told her that she can have thoughts of her daughter being not sick, and that this would actually cause her to be healed. That this was the power that we all had in our minds to be able to change the situation.

That was the end of the dream. It all seemed very simple and straightforward. You have to ignore what you see as the current state, because that's just the result of past choices. Then you choose what you want to see and use the power of thought to believe in it. This causes the situation to change and now you see what you wanted to see.

It's because people think that their thoughts have no power or influence, and are afraid of them, that they think there is nothing they can do to change situations. That thoughts are just neutral commentaries on what is happening.

But thoughts have power and can cause things to happen. This is what we are afraid of, that our thinking can actually influence situations. And by not recognizing that our thoughts are powerful, we end up reinforcing sickness by "reflecting on it" instead of choosing to undo it.

It's much more supportive to believe someone is not suffering than to believe that they are. The mind doesn't just observe, it creates. Everything you think and feel has an influence on the whole world.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"EVERYONE teaches, and teaches all the time."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

Fear is like this little box inside of which there is fear, and the fear keeps trying to get out.

It wants to get out and point fingers at all kinds of things outside of the box, so that it can explain why the fear exists.

If you let it, fear will project outside of the box and you'll believe the fear in the box is put there by things outside of it.

But fear never leaves the box.

And everything fear says and does inside the box, stays in the box (stays in Vegas? lol)

If you can look at the fear and not at what the fear is pointing to, and not at what it is insinuating is the cause of it outside the box, and instead realize the presence of the fear ITSELF is the problem, then you're on your way.

The fear itself is the problem because it's ACTIVELY attempting to attack your invulnerability, destroy your innocence, threaten your immortality and stop you from realizing something very important...

There is no fear outside the box. There is no cause for fear outside the box.

Outside the box, everything is perfectly alright. Everything is God. Everything is safe. Everything is lovely. There's no fear there.

This is what the fear does not want you to see, and it is a defense against seeing this by telling lies about what's outside the box.

It's kind of like this nasty little shitty little liar that tells nothing but lies and it really can't be believed. You have to realize not to listen to it at all because it's entirely false.

Don't buy into the projections that try to justify it, those are NOT the problem. All the 'causes' of the fear, that is NOT the problem.

The problem is merely the presence of the fear itself which acts as a reality filter and tries to destroy what would otherwise be a perfectly excellent situation. A Holy Instant.

Once you recognize fear as a dirty rotten liar that tells no truth and which is always confined to its box, and you don't allow it to project or listen to the projections, then something should occur to you...

There is no OTHER reason outside the box to be afraid, and if the fear is kept in the box and then REMOVED entirely, the situation you're in is actually really really really good. Things are working out. Everything's flowing. God is loving. Everyone is ok. You're totally safe. That's the truth fear tries to mess with.

So then your mind can take a little leap and realize, hey, this fear isn't telling me what's right, it's lying to me, and the situation ISN'T terrible, and people AREN'T threatened, and I AM safe and loved. And in that realization you can now confidently march forward, access the power of God, walk in confidence and reassurance, and wield miracles.

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, ***Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it.*** And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, ***damned by its maker***, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"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."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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."