If someone were to whisper in your ear, the one key secret thing which allows you to overcome the world, overcome death, be happy forever, and experience eternal life with God, you'd take that to be a pretty important secret, right? The ONE THING that unlocks the universe, sets you free from all suffering, and gives you back your real identity? You'd want that, right? And in a sense, you'd want to uphold that at all costs lest you lose sight of the way out of hell, right?

Well the "secret of salvation" is that you are doing this all to yourself, you cannot be hurt or attacked by anyone or the world, nothing causes you to suffer but yourself, and if you could fully OWN this you would be free from all forms of suffering forever and ever.

But this also means, if you want the way out of hell, and you want to ensure that it is POSSIBLE for you to get out of hell, then you're going to have to allow this truth to be true at all times, in all situations, without exception. Because if you compromise, or make an exception, or believe in any way that this secret is NOT TRUE, then you've literally taken the ONLY WAY OUT off the table, have hidden salvation from yourself, have made yourself hopeless and have disempowered yourself.

No matter how controversial it is, no matter how it flies in the face of societal norms, no matter how radical or extreme it seems to be, if the secret of salvation EVER seems to be untrue, then you are stuck in the hell of your making. If it EVER seems like you did not choose something or did not cause something or aren't the reason why you are experiencing something, you are lost, and you've lost sight of salvation.

If you did not do this to you, all of a sudden this means there is a power and a cause separate from you which determines your fate and your suffering, against your will. It means the dream is choosing for you. It means the day of your death has been decided by some seemingly external will and there' nothing you can do about it. And that means you have no power or ability to get OUT of it or be free of it, because it can do something against your will. That belief is the end of hope and the end of freedom.

This is why it's so important to realize, that this ONE SECRET is THE WAY TO BE SAVED. It is the core exit strategy. It is the ONLY way to leave hell behind. So it's pretty darn important that you don't compromise it or undermine it or believe something contradictory more than this. As soon as you slip into victim roles, victimizer roles, or belief in external causes, you are losing sight of the way home. Only by taking full responsibility for the power of your choice and 100% owning your freedom from YOUR OWN TYRANNY, can you be free from all suffering forever.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

A belief that sickness is real must be a belief that God is sick.

Sickness is an attempt to redefine God as less than whole; suffering, and preparing to die.

What we give reality to, or see truth in, becomes our perceived reality. If we believe that sickness is real, we will in some way experience sickness, because we put it there.

If sickness is real, it cannot be healed. Having given reality to it, it has been established with a sense of permanence and held in suspension.

To attempt to heal that which is real, is nonsense. Reality needs no healing. To attempt to heal a real sickness is nonsense. While the belief in sickness remains active, it is actively producing more sickness.

Those who are sick would like to enjoy health. But they do not have this option. They are fixed in sickness, because they believe the world is real. If the world is real, and they have ambition to go from "real sickness" to "real health", it will not work. A healthy body and a sick body are both illusions, and the experience of sickness as real maintains it.

The only way that sickness can be cured is by recognizing sickness is not reality. Giving it no truth, and giving it TO the truth.

One the one hand we may be saying, I want to not be sick, or I want that person to not be sick. But at the same time, we are saying this because we are experiencing "real sickness" and do not like it. Who would enjoy being "really sick"? If sickness were real, we would seem to "really suffer".

Divine health focuses entirely on God's truth and life. It has no room for even a thought of sickness or separation.

Forgiveness overlooks sickness and error from the start.

"The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real?" - ACIM

"Your brother's errors are not of him, any more than yours are of you. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself." - ACIM

"You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything." - ACIM

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind." - ACIM

Here Jesus has told us that forgiveness overlooks error from the very beginning, because forgiveness is FORE-giveness. It gives truth ahead of time so that it does not PRODUCE errors. Error (judgement) enters in as a FAILURE to be fore-giving - an error in forgiveness ("he who would not forgive must judge").

A form of error is SICKNESS. To overlook sickness we must learn not to make sickness real, which is making the error real.

Therefore to heal sickness, we must withdraw all sense that the error/sickness is REAL, to begin with, otherwise we will be fighting against our own decision to believe in the sickness, and will be in conflict with ourselves. Likely we will wage war against the sickness like it is an enemy, which will only mean that we're waging war against our own desire to keep sickness a reality.

We need to be single minded. One minded. Whole minded. One focus on perfect health and truth, with no room for producing error, and therefore no room for believing that sickness (error) can be in any way real.

When you see or experience sickness, you are in error. You believe the sickness is really happening. You believe you are experiencing it. You are choosing it, and adding to it. You must unbelieve it.

There IS no real sickness!

There IS no real death!

There IS no real sin!

God's truth is the only truth.

What's happening with all this projection that everyone is doing, is basically a mass dis-owning of Self and a mass-disowning of responsibility for each person's own experience.

We're all walking around constantly shoveling ourselves and our own stuff onto other people and onto the environment. We're trying to get rid of ourselves all over the place. It's like, we're taking our insides and we're saying to everyone else, here, you take care of this for me, I don't want it. We're saying that we don't want who we are and that we refuse to do anything to change it.

When this gets really strong it turns to gossip, skapegoating, blame, judgement, victimhood, feeling stuck and apathetic. We dis-empower ourselves this way, by giving away this responsibility for ourselves, allowing someone or something else to have 'the power' and the responsibility to decide for us who we are, what we are, what we experience and what our truth is.

We just plain don't want to own our own truth or be true to ourselves. We want to get all lost in everyone else's business, what everyone else is doing to everyone else, and what the whole world is doing to us. We need to take care of our own business and mind our own business. "Be passerby"!

When we're in the irresponsibility role, we are expecting everyone other than ourselves to own up to who we are, for us, and to deal with our upsets and problems for us. And yet at the same time, we don't really want them to do this, because we don't really want this stuff to be fixed. We want to keep believing we are guilty and sinful and yet at the same time demand that other people remove all the experience of that guilt - usually by them having to change. That's the ego's version of forgiveness - continue to suffer while claiming you don't want to. And that's how you be a victim.

So being a victim really means, you deliberately disowning yourself and responsibility for your inner truth and identity, and then shoving it onto someone else's plate and expecting them to change or deal with it for you, while refusing to allow any change to happen, so that you feel like they're not giving you what you need or want. And yet this is all because of your own irresponsibility. This is why taking back that power and responsibility literally makes it impossible to be a victim, because you're getting out of the entire passive-aggressive "I refuse to be me" stubborn resistance.

We're all sitting around complaining about things which we have the POWER TO CHANGE, as if we do not have the power to change, and waiting for someone else to come along and rescue us. You can put a lot of energy into worshipping some idol or teacher or resource hoping for them to be your savior. But at the same time as asserting that you need a savior to 'do it for you' you're also asserting that you refuse to do it yourself, which means you really will refuse to accept that person's help anyway. You'll end up having a clash with the teacher because you are saying you want mega help but really you don't want any. You instead want to hold onto sitting on the fence of your own life and staying stuck and hoping someone is going to be your hero.

You don't think you have the power precisely because you've given it away. And so you don't see your options of freedom because you think they are not available to you. Yet you are only disempowered by giving your power away in the first place and taking back that power/responsibility gives you the tools you need to make any corrections needed. You can get yourself unstuck. You have the power to do it. You have the ability to wake up. You just need the willingness to not be a victim and to OWN your life and your freedom again.

Funny to think you don't own your own life and you think someone else has control over you. This is your life. Own it. Live it.

"What YOU have "given" life is NOT alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive APART from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death."

"If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible. There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

In heaven, cause or creation produces an effect. This effect is not just an "end-result", but also a beginning. Ends and beginnings are one. A creation inherits from its creator all of the creators abilities. The creation is FULLY given, endowing the creation itself with the same exact capability of creating freely in the likeness of its own creator. Nothing is lost and the "child" creation is not in any way less creative or capable than the "parent" creator. The child can in turn create, and so too its children, with no loss or reduction in the creative ability passed on to each generation. This continues endlessly and immortally in "one continuous line of creation".

On Earth, the story is very different. When we try to create something here, we endow it with a very limited ability of its own to create in turn or in its own likeness. We can build machines which build machines, but only up to a point. Creation here produces effects, but the effect is practically a dead-end. Sometimes we can create things which seem, in turn, to have some limited ability to create other things. But very quickly, the creative flexibility and freedom is diminished down to nothing. After hardly any time at all, all creative ability is lost, we end up with a dead end, and in fact this produces death itself. This world was made as an idea of bringing an end, or putting a stop, to everlasting life.

We're quite proud of being able to reproduce human bodies which pass on traits and give similar potentials to their offspring. This is about as close as we come to any kind of "lineage" or unlimited line of creation. But it still falls far short of the unlimited creative potential of Heaven. Each body eventually typically meets death, because it is limited and most minds in bodies attack their bodies, producing aging and sickness and death, which is the choking-off of creation. With each death, the line of creation comes to a close. This is symbolic of nothing short of the "end of creation" and the end of extension, in which the lineage dies off. To the ego, beginnings and endings are not united, and endings bring a stop to extension. Creating something which cannot itself create, leads to death.

This is why death is so unnatural. It is an attempt to stop creation entirely, to halt the extension of heaven, to cease to do God's will, to stop the flow of life-giving forces from God, to stand in the way of love's expression, to limit and retard the father-son cause-effect relationship, to produce effects which are nothing like their cause, to put a stop to life, to strangle the son of God until there is no life left in Him, and to squeeze every last drop of life from Him. And because death is SO far against the nature of God, SO antithetical to eternal life and constant extension, and so limiting to the unlimited expression of immortality, that anyone exhibiting death in this world cannot be carrying out God's will, nor following the laws of Heaven.

If we are to truly be demonstrations of God's Will, of eternal life, of endlessness, of permanent constancy, of continuation and the total freedom from limitation or reduction, we simply have to overcome death in all its forms so that absolute life can perpetually flow freely and without hindrance through us and as us. We are to become living demonstrations of immortality, a shining light in a dream of death, demonstrating that it is God's will that there be no end to existence, and proving that there IS no death or need for death in the creative life of a Son of God.

False perception means you are looking at something in such a way that you do not recognize what it is.

If the thing you're looking at is false, your mind will think it's true.

If the thing you're looking at is true, your mind will think it's false.

Although it's called false perception, this can be misleading because it makes it sound like it only focuses on falseness. But being a "false" perception, it's really a state of mind that INVERTS EVERYTHING.

What is true is swapped with what is false. What is false is swapped with what is true. That's all part of "perceiving falsely." Perhaps it would be better to call it inaccurate perception or mistaken perception.

If the world itself were a reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem unreal. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

If the world itself were NOT reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem real. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

So being in false mistaken perception doesn't inherently tell you whether the world itself is real or not. It only tells you whether you are in a state of mis-perceiving or not. Whether your mind is distorting or not, inaccurate or not, or deceived or not.

However, Jesus does refer to false perception in contrast to true perception. Perception is "true", or correct and accurate, when it is lining up more closely with facts and isn't introducing mistakes. A truer perception becomes somewhat transparent and stops interfering with what's being perceived. It kind of gets out of the way and reveals something "as it is", rather than interpreted incorrectly.

Nevertheless, even a true perception does not tell you whether the thing you're looking at is true or false, real or unreal. In and of itself perception does not determine this. All a true perception does is it stops distorting vision and takes a direct undistorting look. Whatever is there, no matter whether it is real or unreal, will be seen more for "what it actually is."

But what something "actually is" does NOT inherently tells us whether the thing actually is true, or actually is false, in its own right. Seeing a world truly does not mean that you automatically are looking at a true world. You can see a false world truly as well. You can see a word of fiction truly, just as you can see a work of non-fiction truly. You can see a fake world just as accurately as you can see a real world.

So at no time does perception actually tell us in any way, WHETHER or not the world is INHERENTLY real. It does not tell us if the world is genuine. It doesn't tell us if it is God's creation. And it doesn't tell us whether the thing perceived is really there.

Part of this comes from the fact that "projection makes perception". This means that you in fact have to PROJECT something out first, in order to perceive it. And you can only perceive WHAT you project. And you perceive it because you believe in it, and WANT it to be there. You look within at what is inside of you, and you project it out, and perceive its projection, which REFLECTS back to you like a feedback loop and you perceive it. This is why Jesus says:

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Perception does not cause anything, it does not define whether what you perceive is real, it does not give us any facts, and it does not prove whether the world is real or unreal. All it shows us is WHAT WE ARE GIVING, and what we therefore are CHOOSING TO SEE. And we see whatever we WANT or wish to see, projected out, because WE PUT IT THERE to see.

The question then becomes, do you actually ever perceive "an objective world", in its own right, in its own nature, or do you ONLY perceive what you project ONTO it? And how is it that you can project something onto it in the first place?

If the world were, let's say, completely real and God created, it should not be possible to project ANYTHING onto it at all. It should not be possible to modify it, define it, shape it, interpret it, or in any way have anything to do with "what is there." God by his will has put a world there and it would then be our job to accept it as it is and know it and be one with it. It would not be possible to "project perception".

That it IS possible to project perception onto "this world", the world we recognize as Earth etc, tells you that this world cannot have any INHERENT MEANING of its own. It has to be able to reflect what you project, and it can only reflect it because it is neutral. It is neutral only because it is nothing, and being nothing it has no inherent truth of its own. How could you project false things onto it, OR true things onto it, if it had ITS OWN truth? Its own truth would fight with and block anything you tried to give it.

Perception therefore really hints at us to realize that "there is no world apart from what you wish." There is no world apart from what you give to the world. There is no objective world out there. What we're projecting onto is an emptiness and an illusion, not a reality. What we're perceiving things IN is a mirror. We only see what we put there, otherwise there would be nothing TO see.

Note that perception is feedback, and it is a feedback from what was projected out.. True perception is less distorting that false perception, and could potentially become more transparent, to where it could "see past" what is projected to the underlying inherent nature of the world. To see it for what is actually there. But if there isn't something real actually there, true perception should also reveal that the world is unreal.

We need to realize that true perception does not mean that you see "the truth" as if it is the objective truth. It means that you are seeing in a "true way", such that WHATEVER you see won't be distorted. You are projecting an idea of love which makes the least amount of distortion or misinterpretation.

Seeing truly is only accurate vision, which DOES NOT IN ANY WAY indicate whether WHAT you look upon with it is, in and of itself, actually true or false. True perception can just as easily look upon a FALSE WORLD, and recognize "the truth that" it is a false world. True perception is not "blindness" to what is false, and we must not confuse WHAT is seen with HOW it is seen. You can look truthfully upon and lie and recognize it is a lie, just as much as you can look truthfully upon something that is inherently true in and of itself. True perception DOES NOT tell us whether the world is really there or not!

You can see that perception really has absolutely nothing to do with establishing whether or not this world exists, whether God created it, whether what you see is true and real, or what the inherent nature of the world is. Even if you see love in it, even if you see reality in it, even if you see God reflected in it, it STILL does not prove that the world is objectively real. Beyond what you GIVE to the world, or what you MAKE OF it, you have literally NO IDEA whether the world is really there or not.

True perception can potentially show you "what is there", but it doesn't of itself tell you what "it is." True perception is just as capable of showing you that THE WORLD IS FALSE.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in."

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it."

I’ll say this straight and try not to be too insensitive.

If someone is sick they are deceived. All sickness is an illusion. Death is a lie. If someone seems to be sick, they are lying. Sickness is dishonesty and you should NOT believe them!

If you have a loved one, someone close to you, and they have a sickness, you may be triggered by this idea. But the truth is that even this person that you care for, if they are demonstrating anything less than immortality, they are deceiving themselves. They are pretending to be something they’re not. They’re trying to portray themselves as mortal because they believe they’re guilty and deserve to suffer.

This is what they’re doing. They’re trying to die. Trying to prove that they don’t have eternal life. They’re in denial and have forgotten who they are. They don’t know themselves and believe they’ve changed into something of their own making. They’ve lost touch with the truth and are temporarily insane. Their sickness is also completely deliberate and chosen and serving a purpose they think they want.

To recognize this must accompany also the realization that the sick person, or what appears to be sick, is not how they really are. The sickness is false. It is fake sickness. There is no true or real sickness in God’s creation. All sickness is a deception and a form of denial, an attempt to block life and defend against God. It’s all based on guilt and self attack. A person who is sick is trying to destroy themselves. All sickness is suicide.

The truth is that, given the person is actually immortal, endless, eternal, unchangeable, permanent and perfect, they cannot really be sick. The sickness is not compatible with their immortality. They literally are not really sick. They just appear to have a body that appears to be suffering. And their mind may be temporarily confused. But their soul, their spirit, their self, cannot be sick because it is eternal. So the sickness must be a deception, a cover-up, a decoy, a distraction and a false belief.

What this reveals is that anyone in our life that is suffering or sick in any way to any degree, is an immortal being who is temporarily pretending to be mortal, trying to prove they can die, and trying to deceive themselves and others. They have moved into lies and deceit and denial. They aren’t being completely honest because they’re not admitting to who they really are as God created them. So they are in a sense lost and confused.

This means that is now your task to be willing to blatantly recognize that not only is the sick person faking it, in the biggest picture, and are attempting to portray something which is NOT TRUE, so your job is to hold true to the real truth about them, for them. This means offering resurrection to them by remembering who they really are, for them, as God created them. Holding to the light in them that is immortal and cannot die.

This requires NOT joining with them in their suffering. NOT joining in with supporting, believing, or accepting their lies of sickness. Their victimhood and their sorry state. It is not true of them. They are trying to convince you that they are being poorly treated and victimized against their will, while simultaneously CAUSING every single thing they’re manifesting. They are deceptive and mistrusting and are lying to you. They are NOT victims, they are mis-creating their own suffering to serve their ego goal of death. Do not go into pity when someone is lying to you.

You have to side with the truth about them for them, even if it is AGAINST what they believe. Even if it is OPPOSITE to what they are trying to accomplish. If they are sick, they truly need help from a state of truth, not through commiseration and sympathy. They don’t need false empathy and they don’t need you to support the sickness. You are supposed to NOT BELIEVE IT. This sickness is a FALSE CLAIM they are making and they are in error. They need help to get out of this claim and see sense.

I think that, probably, the only way to fully heal something in someone is to be willing to FULLY COMMIT to the TOTAL rejection of all sickness. To decide to no longer believe in sickness of any kind, in any form. To become completely intolerant of it. Jesus reflects this in his statement:

“Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it.”

Here he states that if you really GO ALL THE WAY, which means recognizing only the immortal christ self in people and not for a minute siding with, believing, supporting, or enabling any form of sickness, then this will put you in a position to HEAL it. You become unable to TOLERATE sickness. That doesn’t mean you get pissed off and upset about it and lost in despair over it, it means you reject all sickness and withdraw all power from it and never again fall for the bullshit lie that someone is presenting when they “are sick”.

We have to stop believing in sickness. We have to stop believing that people are victims, when they are in fact choosing every single speck of suffering. We have to grant acknowledgement of the POWER that people have, the freedom, to choose whether to live or die, and their inherent capability to induce both sickness and health. We have to stop giving fuel to the suffering and stop making it real. We must focus only on LIFE.

“The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no use for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.”

We must acknowledge that people ARE NOT REALLY SICK. There is no real sickness anywhere. Sickness is entirely an illusion, and it shows pictures of things happening which are IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY. We have to stop falling for the temptation and the deception. We have to see someone’s attempt to be sick as a MISTAKE they are making. They are choosing poorly and that is all.

“The ACCEPTANCE of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, merely by denying them completely in himself.”

We must deny death in order to raise the dead! We have to stop feeding the monster and take away all its power. A sick person has merely FORGOTTEN WHO THEY ARE. They are out of touch with the truth, and are therefore out of touch with reality, which is insanity. If they knew who they were, they would love themselves and could NOT BE SICK. If they are insisting on LYING about their immortality, postulating they are weak and suffering and destructible, then it is YOUR job to DENY THE DENIAL OF THE TRUTH.

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE SICK! YOU CANNOT DIE!

”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.”

“If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS.”

“***Do not allow your brother to be sick***, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams.”

“Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take.”

"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."

So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.

The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.

This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.

When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.

Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.

"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

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

Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE."

So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.

The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. "

"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

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

In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

"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."

So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.

If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.

This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.

"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."

The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

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

A major mistake I keep making, or at least am starting to notice I'm making, is trying to find answers in the world.

Jesus is often hinting to me that I'm doing something wrong when I do this.

I'll be lost in the middle of trying to figure something out or decide between two things, or determine what the "real reason is", or find a cause, or basically find any sense of truth to do with anything in this world.

It's difficult because my mind is so used to thinking this way - looking outside of myself for truth, for salvation etc. I'm so accustomed to being in this "mode" of "is it this or that?"... when in fact BOTH of those things are not the answer.

It also happens any time I am in any amount of fear, which is often, whereby Jesus will poke me because I'm once again lost in doubt and trying to decide something. It's really a state of indecision and because of the presence of fear, there is literally no way I can see clearly or find a completely convincing truth.

It often takes several winks and nudges before I I might suddenly have enough awareness to even realize that "I'm doing it again". ... I'm basically trying to find some kind of truth or answer in the world.

A reason why someone is sick. A cause for why something happened. A truth that explains which path to take. Some evidence that shows me something is correct. A sense of certainty that cannot be found in uncertainty. A clear and obvious answer which is profoundly elusive in the presence of fear.

I get lost in all these ways, in what basically is a state of split ego mind, where I am just lost and looking in all the wrong places for a truth that isn't really there.

When I finally am nudged enough by Jesus to look at what I'm really doing, and I've run out of attempts to find answers to what it is that I am doing wrong (lol), and I have pretty much no other option left as to what it is that Jesus is trying to get at, THEN I might suddenly realize..... oh... I'm doing it again.... I'm trying to find truth in the world.

And so what has been really coming to me big time lately, totally unexpected, is this idea that... absolutely everything in this world is NOT THE TRUTH. And cannot be. And it is not real. No matter how it looks, no matter how convincing it is, no matter how well explained, no matter whose credentials are behind it, no matter how real it seems, no matter how I can pinpoint physical causes, no matter how explainable or understandable it seems to be, IT IS STILL NOT THE TRUTH.

It is not God's truth. And God's truth is the ONLY truth. There IS no truth in the world, EVER.

This is quite surprising to me given how much I've been used to finding answers (salvation) outside of myself. It's the totally automatic mode of the ego to find truth externally, or to explain situations, or diagnose sicknesses, or find the "real cause" of stuff. All that is doing is the ego is trying to give truth to its illusions, trying to make mistakes real, making sickness real, making the world real, and that is NOT forgiveness.

Forgiveness HAS to recognize that the ENTIRE WORLD and EVERYTHING IN IT is an illusion, is not the truth, has no truth to it, cannot provide an answer, is not the "final answer", an therefore there is ANOTHER TRUTH which goes beyond this world.

There is a truth which is of God. It is a truth which transcends the world. It is a truth of immortality, eternal life, absolute peace, total happiness, invulnerability, christ consciousness, oneness and love. This is THE ONLY TRUTH.

And so as I've been really really used to finding "some" of the truth outside of me, in the world, in explanations and what appears to be cause and effect in the illusion, where one thing appears to cause something else to happen, THAT is not truth. So I am now going into this process of quite literally becoming clearer and stronger in my discernment that EVERY attempt to find truth in the world will fail, and will only tell me something that is - in God's reality - not the REAL truth.

This is the foundation for miracle mindedness, because miracle mindedness completely defies the laws of physics, chemistry, biology. The laws of nature. The laws of what appears to be separate causes and effects. All rules. All results. All effects. All stuff that seems to "happen" in this world, it is all NOT the truth of God. And therefore, God has power OVER all of it!!!

This is why in order to perform MIRACLES (!!), we need to get our mind into a place where we're very clear about the fact that this world is NOT REAL, that there is NO truth to how it appears whatsoever, that sickness is just a fake image which can be easily changed, that the body is just a fake image which can be easily changed, and that, as ACIM says very early on, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."

While I'm looking for truth in this world, in all the things I rely on and think are sources of certainty and reality, I am distracting myself from the truth of God. And that means I am not being miraculous. Miracles, the power of God's love, will flow IN SPITE of this world, and with DOMINION over this world, and with a POWER that this world has absolutely no idea about.

And therefore no matter what state or condition this world is in, and no matter how it appears, and what seems to be the "finality" of it, or bodily states which seem irreversible, or even DEATH as a statement of "you can't do anything about this because its real".. THATS BULLSHIT! God CAN do something about it, because God does not buy the lie that this world is reality. And that means miracles can happen, and people CAN be raised from the dead, temporarily or otherwise if its preferable, and you are NOT at the effect of this world.

A Course in Miracles thus makes no sense whatsoever UNLESS this world is an illusion, and unless this world has absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. Only then can it be possible that everything ACIM claims can be true, and only then is it possible that natural MIRACLES can happen, ALL THE TIME!

Hallelujah!

When you perceive that something is 'wrong' with someone else, and that this wrongness does not apply to you, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you perceive that what applies to another person, due to their apparent separate free will and the idea that they are supposed to be responsible for what they do, in isolation, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you think that its possible for you to do something to someone else, or to have an attitude or judgement toward them, which does not apply to you in any way, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you believe that someone else clearly is the guilty party and that you did not do anything whatsoever to ask for mistreatment, and that you have been victimized, and that you are completely innocent and they are completely guilty, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you hate someone or judge them or are disgusted by them or offended by them or they seem to be totally crazy or they are your worst enemy, in which you are none of these things, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

In all the ways of perceiving reality, when you perceive that there is a SEPARATION between what applies to you, and what applies to another, that is MENTAL ILLNESS. And this is the foundation of ALL mental illness. A belief in separation, in all its forms and flavors, is mental illness.

When you perceive that something is happening to you which you did not ask for, when you are receiving something you did not choose, or that you are not receiving you what you did attempt to ask for, that is also mental illness.

When you believe that death is inevitable and that it is going to happen to you against your will and that you will be a passive victim of it, that is also mental illness.

You will notice that the above describes THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN KIND. That is because the majority of human kind IS MENTALLY ILL.

To understand WHY this is mental illness, you need to understand how the mind is supposed to function and what is NATURAL for the mind, as opposed to unnatural. All of the attitudes listed above are unnatural and are NOT normal. They are very commonplace, but they are not normal.

The mind, in every person, is not ever in any way supposed to operate in the realm of separation. Your mind is meant to be whole, which means not only that it is whole within itself, but also that it is part of a greater whole in which all minds are joined as ONE MIND.

This means that everyone shares the same mind. This One Mind is the mind of God. When your mind is One with the Mind of God, you are SANE. God is permanently whole and permanently sane and there is no separation of fragmentation in God's mind. You can share God's mind, and that is your NATURAL CONDITION. And it is in sharing God's mind fully that you MUST experience PERFECT HEALTH - perfect divine immortal health.

When your mind is separated off from the whole, and therefore sees itself as separate and limited, it will also see itself as containing limitations and separations. This is what gives birth to EGO. The ego is INSANITY. When there is ego in your mind, i.e. a lack of wholeness, a lack of oneness, a lack of unity with God, you WILL experience insanity - mental illness.

So then as you go around the world perceiving that a given person is "not you", and another person is also "not you", and that there is not something IN them that is exactly the same as what is in YOU, you are in mental illness. You have entered into a private hallucinatory world of separation and division and SELF ATTACK. As soon as you believe in separation in any way, your whole mind must attack itself in an attempt to set one part of itself against the other part. This self attack produces ALL SICKNESS, and all sickness is a form of MENTAL ILLNESS.

Once you are in mental illness, you will perceive that other people are separate from you, that there are separate rules that apply to them which don't apply to you, that what they will is different from what you will, that something can apply to them that does not apply to you, you are in mental illness. Once you start to treat them in a different way than you treat other people, or react to them differently based on their behavior, or have a different attitude of specialness based on who they are or what they exclusively do for you, you've moved away from the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE which is the condition of the WHOLE mind, and have entered into conditionality. Conditionality is insanity.

So then when you are hating the political candidate for the opposition, or when you are against that other sports team, or when you hate that person who seemed to do something to someone against their will, or when you judge someone for the form that they appear to take, or when you can only love a special person and nobody else, or when you believe that you are right and someone is wrong, or that you are good and someone else is bad, THAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS.

It is not natural. It is not normal. It is extremely common and almost everyone on this planet IS mentally ill. This IS a crazy world, but it doesn't have to be.

So when we talk about mental illness, let's be clear about what sanity really means (One shared mind of wholeness and peace and unconditional love), and that anything other than this is mental illness in one form or another. Everyday people rising up 'against' some other group of people, is mental illness. Everyday people attacking some other group righteously because of how that other group is 'less spiritual' or 'less honest' or 'less good' or whatever, that is mental illness. And its YOUR mental illness, not theirs.

All forms of separation are mental illness. All perceptions of separation are mental illness. And all other commonly recognized types of "mental illness", which people would normally call mental illness, such as paranoia or schizophrenia or psychosis or whatever, those are just the more noticeable EXTREMES of mental illness. That doesn't mean that all the other people are SANE. Almost every psychiatrist on the planet is insane. Almost every doctor or nurse on the planet is insane. Almost every pastor of churches or preacher in religions is insane.

The only sanity is in God, with God, joined with God, one with God, as God's Holy Son who is permanently sane and whole and complete, devoid of separation and lies. Only in TRUTH is there sanity. So before we judge other people for being insane or 'not right', let's remember that WE are just as insane and we need to work on our own mental health instead.

In the ego's world, someone has to be to blame for everything that happens. It's way of thinking is a very closed system. No matter what happens, if something happens, someone is to blame for it, even if that person had barely any control over it or much to do with it at all. To the ego, this is responsibility.

The ego wants you to confess that you are, in fact, guilty, and that you do, in fact, deserve punishment, because you did, in fact, separate from God and make all manner of shit happen. To the ego, this is being responsible and 'mature'.

In the ego's model there is zero room for forgiveness. Absolutely no forgiveness whatsoever. Everything that 'happens' in the physical world is proof, to the ego, that it has caused "real consequences" to occur as a result of separating from God. It is evidence of sin, and proves that everyone involved is guilty without question. To the ego, anything 'happening' in this world is a sin, and only sin can happen. To the ego, nothing unsinful can ever happen and God is impossible, meaning innocence is impossible.

So to the ego, when someone makes a mistake, maybe they bump into the fridge and it knocks a glass tray that was resting on the top and it crashes to the floor, you can bet, to the ego, that person is "responsible" for this entire thing. Not just the accidental bumping, not just the item falling down, not just the smashing, but all of it. Every single bit of it. And, to the ego, every single bit of it was ON PURPOSE, completely deliberate and intentional, producing real irreversible effects. It will point the finger in condemnation and declare "you have sinned". The ego has no concept of `not on purpose` or `unintentional` or `accidental` because that would suggest not guilty, which it refuses to accept.

To the ego there is no room for anything happening without it being involved in guilt in some way. To the ego, nothing occurs but without someone's deliberate intention and involvement, and therefore every single thing proves that someone is guilty. The ego claims that if you own up to this and "accept responsibility" for this and take full responsibility upon yourself for every single part of what happened, then and only then might you be excused or let off. If there is even the slightest hint of what seems like a resistance to accepting this "responsibility" it will condemn you further for avoidance and irresponsible carelessness. It demands you must own up to what you did (sin), that you must completely admit to it (it happened), that you did it intentionally (its your fault) and that you should enter into shame and guilt and suffering because you DESERVE it.

This is not responsibility. It is condemnation. It is a death sentence. When you hold other people to these standards, where the ego exalts the idea of getting someone to admit to being wrong, you hold yourself to that standard also and therefore find yourself constantly guilty for every little thing you do. You don't really want that. It's a way to be a victim and to be constantly tortured and therefore in need of being constantly 'good' in order to avoid making even a tiny mistake.

It's okay to make mistakes and break shit and do things wrong and be in error and not know everything and not be accountable for every single little consequence of events set in motion. You're not guilty for clouds moving, or objects falling, or people bumping into each other. You're not even guilty for seeming to deliberately do something wrong. Why does mistakedness have to always call for judgement and attack and the 'justice' of punishment? Punishment is never justified and it fails to correct anything, so it does not really stand for a pure or right way of living but only for how to get fucked over when you step out of line.

True responsibility MUST include the concept of you being 100% innocent. True responsibility must mean that no matter what you did or what effects it had or how serious or whatever, you are still innocent. It must mean you are unconditionally innocent. There is nothing like this in the ego's repertoir. To let you off the hook here and there it would see as begrudging pardons, or stern warnings, and it would never ever consider that you could be wholly found innocent for EVERYTHING that you seemed to do as a blanket statement. Yet Holy Spirit sees only your innocence.

Do you deserve judgement, condemnation, proof of fault, the justice of punishment, self hatred and shame, or some horrific shock treatment in retaliation for an accident? Nope. You're not guilty, no matter what. You made a big giant mess? You deserve love. You totally fucked up your life? You deserve love. And you broke everyone else's favorite toys? If they have a shit-fit that's not exactly your responsibility. Not to justify any behavior. But you're always innocent. Always. And only by being innocent can you be truly responsible. Because you have a responsibility to BE INNOCENT.

People that make mistakes need to be returned to a corrected state of not making those mistakes. They need to be returned to love. This is in the best interests of everyone. It is completely against everyone to punish that person or to feed lies and attack into them. That causes them to become your enemy. You don't want that. It's in everyone's interests that everyone be forgiven and reminded of the truth of who they are. We all need to own up to being God's innocent child. We all need to take responsibility for being who we authentically are, not who people condemn us for being. Responsibility WITHOUT the guilt.

True responsibility means ownership without blame. It also means that only the extension of God happens and there aren't any other consequences. It means everything is correctable. It means mistakes call for forgiveness and love, not punishment. It means you are let off the hook even before anything happens. It means that when stuff happens, you should be laughing, because it does NOT prove anything about your worth. It also means that you're not guilty when you make mistakes and you do not need to claim the guilt that surrounds them. You can own up to being mistaken, which is helpful, but this should never mean "I really did it".