One time, I was exploring my relationship to the holy spirit and it occurred to me that perhaps I was misunderstanding by presuming he was "separate from me", since I always heard him as a separate voice. And this idea came to me that maybe he was not separate and that this separation between us wasn't there. This seemed harmless enough but this opened me up to the idea that I was now "exposed" to the holy spirit without any defenses or blocks or separations or walls, and my ego did not like that one bit.

The ego in me, which was playing with this idea but not really dropping the deeper walls, interpreted this to mean that the holy spirit had "access" to me (to my ego-identified self) and that this meant he could do anything to me and I would have no defense or way to stop it. I wasn't ready to accept this level of openness without the trust that's needed. I felt that if there was nothing to stop him, the fact he proves there is no ego would dissolve me and was therefore *perceived as* an attack or threat. Of course the holy spirit wasn't doing anything of the sort but that's how I interpreted it.

Instantly, within a split second, and without thinking of it at all, my mind attempted to push him away, or rather, to recoil. To distance myself from him by trying to increase the "gap" between us, trying to hide deeper in the body, and to try to go into denial/resistance/blockage to shut him out. The only defense really was the attempt to block my AWARENESS of him. This happened really quickly and I could really feel this recoil in fear. It's not something I "figured out" it's just something I did automatically. I saw the need for a defense to keep me (my ego self) "safe" from this threat of unity. I actually felt scared of what the holy spirit was going to do to me.

Within an hour, my head became congested, my ears started ringing, they became quite blocked, I was starting to get sinus drainage etc. This came on really quickly. Of course, I did not recognize that I had induced this myself, or chosen it. I was doing what is described here in "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

So by the time the hour was up, my BODY was sick. I was not aware I'd caused it or the cause-effect relationship of the event with holy spirit versus what the body was doing. I just thought I was getting sick out of the blue. I started looking ELSEWHERE for causes, wondering if it was something I ate, something I contracted, some emotions coming up, whatever. I then proceeded to suffer with blocked ears, trouble hearing, ringing in the ears, headaches, sinus congestion, for the next couple of days. And you can bet not one single idea of what caused it was related to that event. In effect, the defense is put in place to shut OUT awareness and this blockage causes you to not be AWARE that you CHOSE the defense for this exact purpose to try to make the threat go away.

After a couple days of suffering - and my hearing issues were basically a symbolic representation of "I don't want to hear this truth", I started trying to figure out when it started. I realized that it started right around when I was having that interaction with the holy spirit. And then fortunately I remembered that it had frightened me. And so then I was able to put two and two together and realized that, or at least was open to the possibility, that maybe I had chosen this as a reaction to him. I also was not on "speaking terms" with the holy spirit at this point because I was feeling afraid and did not feel safe or trusting of him, so he hadn't been saying anything.

I started to tentatively realize that I needed to get past this fear. I needed somehow to find a way to re-approach the holy spirit again, without being afraid, having some kind of TRUST, and to find a way to relate to him in terms of that openness to him without it MEANING that I was threatened or under attack. I needed a different way of looking at it so that I wouldn't misperceive our "unity" as a dangerous thing. So I became willing, and I started to try to deliberately trust and to take baby steps towards communicating with him again. And as I did, I was willing to put aside the fear that had been induced.

When I did this, I saw clearly that I had created this defense as a way to try to protect myself and out of fear. And since I could now be willing to more carefully trust the holy spirit and not fear him, it became obvious that I had NO MORE NEED for this protection. Like, it was okay to let down my guard.

Within an hour, all the symptoms vanished completely.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. "

"There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. "

"No-one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

Gradually over time Jesus has been trying to teach me about freedom.

He would say, "you are free". I would be trying to decide whether to do something or not, whether I'm allowed to, whether it's the right thing, etc. I anticipated He would find me guilty for wanting to do something, and tell me not to. But instead, He would do the exact opposite and say "you are free", absolving me of all guilt.

He would even seemingly ENCOURAGE and SUPPORT me in whatever it was that I had chosen to do. And then I found myself wondering, why the heck would He even do that? Well, it's because He has COMPLETE respect for our individual free will. Obviously he would warn me against anything "harmful" or truly a poor choice but within reason, he supports whatever I choose.

And then he would keep saying, "you are free". And I couldn't get it. It didn't seem to make sense. This freedom seemed to live in a sea of "ties" and "chains" and reasons why I should or should not or what would other people think.

The thing is, after a while I start to get this impression that, it's great that I am FREE and that He is acknowledging my freedom so unconditionally, and Holy Spirit does the same. He never outright tries to force me or stop me in any unloving way, although sometimes nudges me strongly if I'm significantly going into ego.

But it's kind of like, because I am ALLOWED to choose anything.... it makes me aware that, in fact, just because I CAN choose anything, does not necessarily mean this is a rule for guidance, or for deciding WHAT to do. If Jesus would tell you, hey, you can do ANYTHING you choose, what would you choose? Would you choose to keep doing things which may not necessarily be taking you closer to God?

Neither God nor Jesus nor the Holy Spirit intrude upon your God-given freedom. They would, let's say, "like" for you to choose to be happy, to choose to do God's will or to live according to God's "intended" way of being. But there is no coercion. At all. And so we are to come to God WILLINGLY, only, not through force or because of some kind of pressure.

So the question then becomes, even though I am FREE, and I do not HAVE to be with God or do His will, what DECISION will I make? Do you actually CHOOOOOOOOSE to accept God's gifts and to live the way He has designed for me, or do I want to try to choose something else?

This is a decision we ALL have to make. "Heaven is a choice I must make". We actually DO have the freedom to do anything, but when it comes down to it, EVEN WHEN you have this freedom and you can CONTINUE delaying as long as you like, don't you start to get this feeling, at some point, that you simply.... want to go home? That you're tired of the things you have chosen and want a better way? Or that you're "ready" to let go of ego pursuits and "give up all the pleasures of the world" and open up to receiving everything God has given, in exchange for nothing?

This is a choice we each have to make on our own, when we are good and ready. It takes WILLINGNESS. And at the very least, it takes a LITTLE willingness, but ultimately a TOTAL free-willed willingness, a desire, a CHOICE, a DECISION, to WANT to be with God and to live the life He would have us live. A life of happiness and joy and eternal life and creation and love. A life of celebration and peace.

You are responsible for your own free-willed choice. But you are also responsible for the consequences of that choice. No-one else is responsible for your choice. And you are not responsible for anyone else's choice. We have to ALLOW others to be completely free to choose ANYTHING, if we are to also atune to our own freedom to choose ANYTHING, otherwise we will choose nothing in place of God, believing that we don't have the TOTAL FREEDOM necessary to TOTALLY CHOOSE EVERYTHING.

There is only one trap. The ego has only one tool. Do you know what it is?

Separation. The ego wants to come between you and God, between you and yourself, between you and others.

It has one devious way of doing this, which in all its forms is exactly the same trap.

As soon as you believe in separation, you perceive a difference between you and God, between you and your real self, or between you and others, you have fallen for it.

As soon as you see difference, you will see a different meaning for each party, and will award each of them a different label. One will be more good, one more bad. Or one will be more right, one more wrong. Or one is better looking, or one is more spiritual, or one is more mature, or one is a better friend, or whatever. Conditionality.

To put it even more simply:

The ego wants you to TAKE SIDES.

By taking sides, it gets you to believe that one of the two SEPARATE CHOICES are better than the other in some way, more preferable, more desirable, more true, more credible or worthy or real.

The instant you do this, you COME BETWEEN yourself and God, yourself and your real self, and yourself and others.

Let's be clear about the ego's motives.

The ego does not give a shit who wins the war.

The ego does not give a shit who is better or worse.

The ego does not give a shit who is good or bad.

The ego does not give a shit who is more evil or holy.

The ego does not give a shit who is right or wrong.

The ego does not give a shit who is winning.

ALL it wants to do is SEPARATE what once was one, into separate parts, to distinguish what it is that keeps those parts separate, and to emphasize that difference as much as possible.

IT DOES NOT MATTER which side you take, where you fall, who you align with, or what you think is a better option. If you are choosing darkness and evil, you are just as much falling for the trap as if you are choosing to try to make out your are "good" and well behaved. If you are the winner of the war or the one that gets destroyed, it doesn't matter. The ego doesn't give a shit. All it wants to do is COME BETWEEN, to keep apart, to separate out and to stop there being unity or oneness or wholeness.

So don't fall for the primary trap, the only trap, of believing that you are escaping the ego by going into one of two sides or one of two possibilities. Or that you're more spiritual by siding with appearances of spirituality (the spiritual ego). Or that you're less spiritual if you're siding with appearances of darkness and rebellion.

BOTH the dark (the shadow self) and the `light` (the persona) are parts of the EGO SPLIT MIND. And both of them are dependent on each other. And both of them are attacked by each other. And both of them are doing things which are mistaken. They both uphold the separation.

It doesn't matter what side you pick. IF you pick a side, that is what matters. IF you go along with the illusion that one party is better than another, or one choice is better than another, you are fucked.

The ego's major weapon with illusions is to get you to be convinced that how something APPEARS tells you what IT IS, and therefore its FORM tells you of its inherent qualities. This is totally deceptive. It makes it APPEAR as though some things in the world are innocent victims and other things are victimizers. Some things are good/light, some things are dark/bad. And then if you start to defend the good stuff against the bad stuff, or feel sorry for the victims, or go along with this whole charade of separate enemies, YOU HAVE fallen for the ego.

BOTH sides of every argument lose. BOTH victimizer and victim lose. BOTH sides of every war lose. As soon as you enter into separation and conflict you're losing yourself, losing God, and losing your brother. You cannot fight and win and be free of this fact. The ego's lie is that you CAN fight and win and be free of this fact - that you can get away with it, or one side can actually conquer the other, or that someone can "win" at this game of life.

THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN THE EGO'S DREAM OF DEATH!

Anyone who plays the game LOSES. Anyone who plays the game or goes along with the game comes to believe in separation, and DIES. The only way out is not to play the game at all.

In A Course in Miracles, there is a sequence of workbook lessons which clarify this point, and which specifically contrasts Heaven and Earth, even using the term "Earth".

The lessons are:

128: "The world I see holds nothing that I want"

129: "Beyond this world there is a word I want"

130: "It is impossible to see two worlds"

131: "No-one can fail who seeks to reach the truth"

128: Refers to what you see with false perception, a distorted view of the Earth, which shows you what seems to be "hell" due to your misinterpretation.

129: Refers to the possibility of seeing the Earth in a different way. It refers to true perception. It suggests you would want to see the forgiven world rather than hell. It ALSO touches upon there being ANOTHER experience even beyond true perception, a third kind of world, which you will at some point go to... a place which is difficult to describe, but this basically is a reference to Heaven.

130: Tells us that we will either see the world of false perception or true perception - hell, or the "real world" (which is not real). This lesson helps you to get into the swing of practicing distinguishing between the world you don’t want (false perception) and the one you do (true perception).

131: This is the clincher. Jesus now speaks of the contrast between BOTH of these worlds, and Heaven. It literally makes statements about "Earth" using that word, and how this place YOU MADE, is not the likes of which God would create, nor can there be an opposite to the "Heaven" which was introduced in Lesson 129. It contrasts Heaven vs Earth in black and white terms, to teach you that even beyond the Earth that you see with true perception, there is ANOTHER PLACE - Heaven - which is the ONLY PLACE that GOD CREATED.

Let’s look at 131 closer.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (Earth) and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***EARTH*** the other's sorry outcome which is HEAVEN’S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

This clearly is telling us, that Earth (the physical planet) is the TOTAL OPPOSITE to Heaven. Not your perception of Earth. Not false perception or true perception. EARTH. Planet Earth. Solid matter. God did not make two minds, whereby Heaven is one of those minds, and Earth is the other. God ONLY CREATED HEAVEN.

This is what is BEYOND the world of perception, beyond true perception (forgiven/real world) and beyond false perception (hell). Heaven is NOT the Earth. Heaven is NOT hell. Heaven is NOT the real world. Heaven is BEYOND ALL OF THIS.

He continues:

"How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find."

He (the Son) thinks he made the Earth, which Jesus just told us is the OPPOSITE of Heaven and opposite to God’s creation. He abides in it (planet Earth) and cannot find Heaven (because Heaven is beyond the dream). Here Jesus also tells us that the hell we made DOES NOT EXIST, refering to the entire EARTH as not existing. And it is exactly this that "there is no world" means!

Jesus also goes on in this lesson to tell us how to practice finding the door to heaven and to go there, where Angels will, light the way and that we cannot fail if we seek to find the truth.

These lessons also correlate directly to Jesus teaching us that God could NOT have created a cruel world where children are born and lose love and wither and suffer and die, which is another reference to EARTH, not perception.

In so many ways, the course tells us that God did not create this world, this planet, or this universe, and that heaven is the ONLY HOME He created, which is beyond all form and beyond this world. Beyond Earth.

Earth, the strange world you made, is simply going to fall away into the nothingness from which it sprang. It is not going to be converted into Heaven, or kept in any way, because it is a world YOU DO NOT WANT, is an opposite to Heaven, and Love HAS NO OPPOSITE. Therefore, Earth does not exist. Hence, "THERE IS NO WORLD" is the she thing as "THERE IS NO EARTH".

You do not want this world. Heaven is EVERYTHING compared to this nothingness.

"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. ... Let us today BEHOLD EARTH DISAPPEAR, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release."

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."

"He does not realize that he MAKES this world, for there IS no world outside him."

""Heaven & Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states. My Word, which is the Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away, because Life is Eternal."

"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."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"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 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, and only Heaven now exists at all."

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ... Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth."

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."

"How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?"

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready."

"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."

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

When you resist what is, you attempt the impossible.

When you are attempting the impossible, you will become aware of impossibilities.

You will attempt to change those impossibilities.

You won't be able to do anything about them because they are literally impossible.

They are impossible because they don't really exist, so you can't really do anything about them.

But if you try to, you will find that it is absolutely futile and you have no power to change impossibility.

But you will try, because you think it's possible to change the impossible. It should be clear how impossible this is to the sane mind.

All you can do is accept what is possible. What is.

Let go of fighting an impossible fight.

Focus on what is, truth.

Focus on accepting and allowing it to be.

This atunes you to the possible.

In the possible, everything is possible.

In the possible, miracles are possible.

There is nothing impossible in or for the possible.

It is possible to be.

I was thinking for a while that maybe certain people were inept. Maybe it was certain groups of people. Maybe it was medical people. And maybe it was the body. Maybe it was just some portion of things. But the more I look at it the more I realize that the ENTIRE WORLD, the whole SYSTEM of thought of this lower-order reality of spacetime, is fundamentally broken. It is an impossible system, based on laws of failure and lack and insufficiency.

The whole thing functions in a ridiculously faulty way. Every motion, every action, every doing, every impulse, causes a disruption and changes and side effects. You cannot do anything physical without it potentially leading to more problems. Everything you do to fix something gives rise to new problems. Every use of materials degrades the material. Every aspect of this entire cosmos is fundamentally stupid as fuck and ridiculously backwards.

The whole thing simultaneously gives one thing and takes away another, in a two-faced self-contradicting self-denying expression of incapability and limitation. Nothing in the world has any ability ever to truly do anything unconditionally or perfectly. There is no unlimited giving, no flawless correction, no ultimate solution, no perfect response, no clear answer, and no magical salvation.

There is literally no salvation in the world which produces a state of utter hopelessness. This is the stupidity of the world at large, and the whole thing is one big giant fuckup. There is no escape from it. The only way out of this hell is through transcendence and forgiveness, recognizing it is NOT REAL, and therefore thankfully there ARE no unsolvable problems. Such is the miracle's ability to reverse everything the world says can never be undone.

The world is an ILLUSION. An illusion that presents itself as being one thing when in fact it is its opposite. Everything it tries to do it does the opposite. Every way it helps it hurts. Every pleasure leads to pain. Every solution becomes broken. It cannot go towards God because everything if offers ALWAYS points towards death and destruction. Even its so-called "life" has death in it.

Contemplating this fact of the world's bullshittery made me laugh so much.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"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."

"When you CORRECT a brother, you are telling him that he is WRONG. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that if he is speaking from the ego, he WILL be making no sense, but your task is still to tell him HE IS RIGHT. You do not tell him this verbally if he is SPEAKING foolishly, because he needs correction AT ANOTHER LEVEL, since his error IS at another level. HE is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is ALWAYS wrong, no matter WHAT it says or does."

When you see a person acting egoically, you will think this is all they are. Whatever they say and do, you point your finger at "that" and consider it the whole person. This is why its incredibly easy to judge and condemn people for their egoic behaviors. As if what you see them doing is what thy are in truth.

But what this really means is you are blinded by perception of form and lack vision, so you are not seeing THROUGH and BEYOND their ego. The fact is that the person simultaneously is a perfect soul, and yet they also have egoic beliefs in their mind. Kind of like having two selves.

If you only see the ego in them and do no look past it ("to forgive is to overlook"), you become blinded by it and do not see their real self. You then hold their ego against them as if that is all they are. In effect, there is more to people than meets the eye.

Jesus is saying we should try not to be deceived by people's mistakes, and recognize it as a call for love. To look past appearances to the holy child of God that everyone is in truth. If you could see past their ego to their holiness, you would recognize their ego as just mistaken, instead of sinful.

Remember everyone here has two selves so when you take everything people say at face value you're not being forgiving. You have to look deeper past the surface. Give your brother due credit and love or still being a perfect soul. Recognize his mistakes as only that, and hold nothing not of God against him. To fixate on a person's ego is to be believe the forms of error.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared, and that its sharing IS its reality."

"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."

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen. And reason, joined with love, looks quietly on ALL confusion, observing merely, "this was a mistake." And then the same Atonement YOU accepted in YOUR relationship, CORRECTS the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. How blessed are you, who let this gift be given! Each part of Heaven that you bring, is given YOU. And every empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the Eternal Light YOU bring, shines now on YOU. The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them."

In this world, the ego has reversed everything. What was visible has become invisible, and what was nothing at all seems to be something.

Similarly, in the world of form, "space" seems to be where nothing exists. And it seems like objects in the world exist within that space, as though they are real things and the space is nothing.

Space is not nothing, as such, it is "no thing". It is the container of things.

In reality, the container of everything is God, and is presence, and is all that is. It is the opposite of nothing. But in the ego's world, with everything back to front, space has come to symbolize nothingness.

So now in the ego world, you look to see where something is, and you look to objects instead of to the space that contains them. You think where objects exists, there something is, and where there are no objects, there is nothing. This is the ego's distraction. It is a device for making it appear that what is, is not, and what is not, is.

The ego has set up the physical universe in this way to always seem to point you in the wrong direction, to make it seem like the very thing that won't help you is what you want, and the very thing that would help you you do not want.

When you are thinking about questioning the ego, it would tell you not to look at your mind because, if you do, you'll discover that there is guilt there. It tells you not to look at the guilt, that you want to get away from it. And it tells you that getting away from it through denial and projection will make things better for you - that you'll become innocent. But this is a lie as well.

If you were to look within and question the guilt and question the idea of sin it's based on, you'd find out there is no sin. The ego doesn't want you to do that. Again it puts guilt in place as a signpost pointing away from itself, so that you'll head in the opposite direction. Similarly fear distracts you away from itself so that you think the problem is someone else.

Also in the ego's world, "change is life" and stagnation is death. Yet, stillness is actually life, and change is death. What we call life - stuff that changes and transformed and is born and dies, is not life at all. It's an illusion of life. Artificial. Backwards. It's a movement into not living. If stillness is life and in the ego's world stillness will kill you (e.g. your breathing stops), you will avoid stillness. See how cleverly it's set up?

Similarly every ego deception takes you away from yourself, takes you away from truth and leads you towards destruction. When you are trying to wake up from this illusion, that's why it seems so difficult. You are going against the grain of the entire world. It tells you to go one way, you need to go another. The ego tempts you to believe something, you need you unbelief it. You fear that someone is causing problems, you need to realize that you are the cause. We literally need to deprogram ourselves from being physically-oriented and deceived by this worlds' rules and all the ways in which things seem to mean something based on appearances of how they work here. This entire world is a grand deception and none of it is truth.

There are no laws but God's.

This world is an illusory opposition to God, and God did not create it.

The ego doesn't have any real power of its own. Its only strategy is to try to get you to willingly give your power to it.

To do this, it has to present to you some kind of temptation or lie, something untrue, and generally something that upsets you in some way. If it can especially get you to have a reaction, or be triggered, then you have fell for its trap.

The ego uses your own beliefs and your own blind-spots, as a way to get you to agree to go along with it. While you remain unconscious and attached to a certain egoic belief, you are quite literally agreeing with the ego and giving it permission to use this against you.

The ego cannot take power from you, you have to give it away. When you give it away, you give it away through playing the role of a victim, perhaps entering into fear or guilt etc. This is your way of making it seem as though the power you share with God has now been separated from God and is handed over to the ego.

In certain other religious circles, this principle is taught in terms of the devil, sin, and how the devil operates. That is, that you first must sin which means you believe in something that's mistaken. Then based on this sin, you have literally agreed that something untrue is true. And now this creates an 'open door' and an invitation and a resonant agreement, which allows 'the evil' to come in and control you. This is also how evil 'spirits' enter people's lives. Because YOU have violated a law of God, so to speak, by going against it, you have permitted darkness/ego/devil to use this darkness against you.

But notice here that the ego/devil does not actually have its own power. And it completely depends on you agreeing with it, and continuing the 'sin' i.e. the false belief. It also does not actually have any power to prevent you from undoing that belief, or choosing again, or waking up. It has ZERO 'actual' control over you, besides your own willingness to play along. If you were to decide to stop playing along, and to withdraw your belief, and to take back your power knowing it is yours, and knowing that the ego can do absolutely NOTHING to stop you, the ego would be dis-empowered.

The only tool the ego has is the presentation of illusions, in an attempt to try to play upon what you believe and to convince you that it is either your friend and ally, or to distract you from choosing again by throwing fears or guilts or rationalizations or whatever else your way, to try to once again push your buttons or pull up your past hurts or play upon your own fears, to keep you ensured in its mindset. And often, in unconsciousness, you will go along with this and be pulled right back in, but ONLY because you have not become conscious/aware enough yet to discern and to decide not to listen or believe what it's saying.

So really the ego is just a mirror for your own mis-beliefs. And it shows you and reflects back to you what you currently believe. Change your belief, and the reflection of that belief - the ego - must disappear.

There is nothing keeping you stuck. There is nothing stopping you but yourself. There is no reason why you can't be loved. There is no reason why you can't wake up. The only thing keeping you asleep is yourself.