I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.

This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.

I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.

I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.

This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.

I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.

I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.

I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.

I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.

This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.

So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".

It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.

In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.

I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.

Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.

As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.

This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.

It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.

Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.

The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.

It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.

I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.

I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.

So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.

But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.

It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?

But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.

That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.

So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.

So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.

If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.

It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.

I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.

So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.

As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.

What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.

We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.

So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.

We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.

I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.

Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.

Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"

"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

Everyone has free will. If someone uses their free will to choose to be mistaken, that's up to them. If they use their free will to try to be a sinful evil-like person, that's up to them. If they use their free will to be angry and violent and abusive, that's up to them. If they use their free will to wage war and murder, that's up to them.

It's actually not a 'right' of ours to judge that the choices people have made are sinful. The choices they have made might be very mistaken, very ineffective, very backward or confused, but it's still their free will to make that choice. We don't actually have a right to hold their mistakes against them or to decide that they are sinful because of what they've chosen.

This means that we have to allow people the freedom to be very wrong, the freedom to attack, the freedom to hurt and damage, etc. That is their free will right. This is not to say that they are sane in those choices, or that it's 'morally right' or justified or loving behaviour etc. But it is still their freedom. If they want to suffer, if they want to produce suffering, that's their freedom.

We therefore have to find a way not to judge such choices as sins. We have to be more like, okay, if that's what you want, then you're totally allowed. Whether or not there are actions or counter-measures or defences or protections or whatever after that point, is another matter. Whether there are consequences of legal actions or imprisonment or whatever, that's another matter. But the person does have the free-will right to do what they want.

What this means is that regardless of how someone is different, regardless of the form it takes, what choices they make, what they seem to want, we have to have an attitude that these differences don't define them as guilty sinners. We can't be judging them for it.

If we start going into modes of like... you did this thing, it's a bad thing, therefore you are sinful, therefore I'm justified in blaming you and shaming you and punishing you .... now we're on shaky ground.

What it means is that we actually want people to have poor choices so that we have an opportunity to see them sin. If they sin, then we can find them guilty. Then we can project our own guilt onto them while making out that they're the guilty one, and it'll all seem nice and tidy and covert. We ourselves as "with sin", and we are trying to cast stones at people we want to be sinful.

As Jesus says in the bible "He who is without sin should cast the first stone." In other words if we're busy judging people and hurling stones at them to punish them for 'sin', we should be a bit more honest and look at the ways we ourselves are being sinful before finding other people to be sinful. We don't really have a leg to stand on. And only those who are forgiving and sinless would be in a position to judge, and would refrain from doing so.

In effect, if we are judging people for making poor choices, seeming to suggest that we think that shouldn't be acting that way, we actually DO want them to act that way, because we get a great opportunity to scapegoat. And that means we can shove some of our guilt onto them and justify it on the basis that they are the one who deserves it, and our anger is justified. Thank God they chose to sin so that we could have a chance to be innocent.

To be more honest we have to stop judging people as being sinners for what they've chosen. But this also does mean that even in the face of people seeming to do what we might classify as horrible things, abusive things, evil things, we have to STILL find them not guilty. We have to still not judge them as evil or wrong or bad people. They are just mistaken.

Criminals, murderers, rapists, child abusers, terrorists, war-mongers, thieves, bullies, you name it... yes they are making quite poor choices but they are not sinful for it. Nor are we supposed to be pointing a finger of blame and saying they are the guilty ones. Or holding it against them, or shaming them, or wanting to counter-attack them, or punish them for it.

If we're doing that, trying to use the things in the world that seem less than holy as justification for revenge and hate and accusation, then we're in our ego. Because the ego loves to judge harshly and find guilty and make wrong. That means we are being "judgey". As "judges" we act like "judge and jury", some kind of God or authority that has the 'right' to determine who is innocent and who is guilty, and to sentence the sinners to death.

We're judgemental and unforgiving. Instead of being forgiving toward them for their mistakes, we step out of forgiveness and go into judgement. We reason that we're not being forgiving BECAUSE the person is judged to be wrong. The judgement tries to justify NOT forgiving, by pointing out how the person is obviously sinful and MUST be judged. So then we're justifying unforgiving attitudes on the basis that people are doing wrong all over the place, which is itself the perceived result of not forgiving them in the first place.

Bottom line is, we are not supposed to be judging anyone or anything. Judging is just another form of attack and projection. At times it can seem to not be angry, maybe just a subtle annoyance, but it's still a way to project guilt. All the things we judge against, we have to find a way to stop doing that. All the ways we say people are wrong, and hold their acts and choices against them, we're being unforgiving.

So ultimately it means that in order to be forgiving, we have to forgive everyone and everything. There mustn't be anything that we single out for punishment, no-one that we call names, no one that we hate or are offended by, no-one that we see as deliberately evil, and no-one that justifies our anger or revenge.

People in their differences need to be allowed to be different. It doesn't mean differences are true or real, but if people are choosing to be different that's up to them. If in any way we categorise their choices as wrong, we're being judgemental. No matter how weird their choices, how strange, how unnatural, how fake, how immature, how selfish, whatever.... we have to still let them have the freedom to make those choices and not accuse them of being stupid, sinful, evil, bad, wrong, guilty, or any other negativity because of it.

We don't have to agree with the differences, we don't have to choose the same things, we don't have to condone it or support it, we don't have to go along with it or let ourselves or others be in the line of fire. We don't have to go into inaction or being carpeting or a martyr or letting people walk all over us etc, but at the same time we must not be having such unforgiving attitudes towards them.

It requires infinite patience. And it requires a willingness not to be at war. In judgement we are unforgiving and cold and heartless and unloving. Only in forgiveness - an earthly form of love - can we be kind and supportive and truly helpful.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is." UrW220W14

The true nature of your Holy Self is that you are a CHANNEL FOR GOD. You are a medium. You are not an island, you are not the source of anything, and you do not have anything other than what God has given you.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE."

Your relationship with God is that He has created you by his will, has shared everything of himself with you, has given you what you are, has put everything into you that you have, and now you must share it.

It is also true that "nothing is for you alone", because everything God gives is universal. It is given to you, and it is FOR you, but it is ALSO FOR everyone. It belongs to everyone because it is shared by everywhere, and if you want to have it for yourself you must share it.

Nothing given by God is ever exclusive or special. You cannot have anything exclusively for yourself. Nevertheless, everything IS yours, because God does share everything with you. It's just that it ALSO belongs to everyone else. And so are not anything special, and nothing is yours alone. Not even your self.

This means that what you are, what is in you, and what you are capable of, is PUT THERE by God. It is in fact him, himself, in you. Such that, any abilities, qualities, characteristics or attributes that you have, are SHARED with him and are part of him still.

This is why "God is my strength". This does not merely mean that God is strong when you are weak. It means there is a strength in you which is yours, which is very strong, and that strength IS GOD. Because God is in you, and you are forever host to him. But without him, you would have no strength at all.

Being a host is being a channel. The stuff that is flowing out of you, the stuff you have to give, the is the same as the stuff you have received. You can ONLY give what you have received from him, because without him you have NOTHING AT ALL. You ARE nothing at all without him. But with him, you are everything. And his only requirement is that you give what you have been given.

The idea of the ego is the rejection of inheritance, the rejection of being caused by or an effect of God, and the attempt to be separated off in isolation. This makes you selfish and self-reliant, with self-interests and special needs. And now you see yourself as having special powers that others do not have, and which are not given you by God, and which you do not want to share so that you can remain special.

In truth, what you are is an extender or relay for God. He supplies you and you give what you have been given. He shares with you so that you can share with others. And what you have been given you MUST share, otherwise you cannot have it. Everything is like a giant buffet where everyone is entitled to everything, and everything belongs to everyone.

"Though prayer love is received (from God). Through miracles love is expressed (from God through you)."

This mean you are ONLY what God has decided that you are, and you have ONLY what God has given you. And in turn this means that you are NOT anything "not of God". You do not have anything not of God. All that you are and all that you have is GIVEN to you by him. Even the Kingdom which is your home is GIVEN to you by him.

In truth you literally have nothing other than what God has given you. You are not anything other than what he has decided that you are. You cannot do anything other than what he has willed that you can do. And you cannot change any of his laws.

This means that anything "not of God" has absolutely no power over you, no power to change you or define you. Nothing can happen to you in defiance of his will. You cannot become anything he did not decide that you are, and you will never be anything but his perfect creation.

You are not an island. You are a CHANNEL through which God extends. The light that is in you is yours and it is in you, as part of you, it is HIS light. It is FROM him. And it IS him. The light in you has been put there FOR you, because it is there FOR you, but it is also FOR everyone. You are not your own possession, you are his. And he has deemed that YOU are to be shared with everyone.

You do not own anything exclusively, and you are not special. You are not a hero, because you are not the source of what you cause. The miracles you perform come from HIM, through you. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

You can only GIVE GOD. Because you have only received God. You can only EXTEND HIS love, because He has given HIS love to you to share. You do not have your "own" love, or your own magical power. But you have HIS love and power, which you can give to others on his behalf. This means you are a representative of God. "I am here to represent Christ who sent me."

We need to learn that we are not isolated discreet entities. We are not fenced off by walls or kept separate from each other. Sharing is our true nature. We cannot have anything, be anything, or do anything, other than what GOD has ordained. Nothing can be true of us other than what HE decides is true. Nothing can HAPPEN that is not his will.

This means also giving up all belief that the world is the cause of you, has power over you, defines you, determines what is true, or that you are a victim of change. Or that even YOU can change what God has given YOU to be. You cannot BE changed from the permanence that God has given. You are STILL exactly what HE wills that you be. You still INHERIT everything he gave you in your creation. And you can still GIVE everything that you are, along with Him.

"Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it."

"Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him."

"The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed"

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give."

"***God is the ONLY Cause***, and guilt is NOT of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way." ... "True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you."

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

Have a look at this picture. It seems like an image of a person. You can see a hand waving. You can see the person's head and shoulder. There's a person there, isn't there?

Well actually, take a more discerning look. There is no person in the image. It's a wall with a shadow on it. Look at the shadow, what is it? Is it a thing in its own right? In fact, the shadow isn't really a thing at all. It's really nothing other than "the absence of light."

It's not as if "a darkness" came along and put itself onto the wall, forcing the light to go away. It's the reverse. It's merely a seeming appearance of light not being present. And that's not even remotely the same thing as "darkness being present". Even in this physical world, by the laws of physics, light dispels darkness, darkness does not dispel light.

So there is light, and there is the absence of light. People think of the absence of light as "real darkness", as if it's a something, has substance, exists. It doesn't really. It's just a lack of light. What happens when the light shines brightly? The shadow disappears completely, because the "lack of light" has been supplied and filled up with light. Then there is no more shadow, no more "illusion of darkness."

Believing that the shadow or the darkness are a real something, that they represent a life form, that they are alive with a mind of their own, that it is doing something, that has will and power and causality, that there's an entire "something happening" there... that's all totally illusion. Total fiction. It's nothing other than light's absence. It's an illusion that "light is not everywhere", which can't be true because real light is infinite and omnipresent. In the light of God, there is no darkness.

And so you can't call the darkness "real evil". It's not. It's absolutely nothing more than what appears to be light's absence. As soon as light shines, light shines away the darkness. The "darkness" that seemed to be "its own thing" has no defense whatsoever against this light. Light dispels it instantly. The shadow can't say to the light "I will not be shone away". It vanishes. It has no power, no mind, no will, no decision, no say in the matter. Because it literally is nothing.

Believing otherwise is as if to say, a fictional illusion of darkness chooses of its own free will to scream with a voice that says "I shall not be removed", which has absolutely no effect and has no power whatsoever unless YOU believe in it. And this is why Jesus says the ego (darkness) is nothing but a tiny mouse. And the darkness HAS no power unless YOU give it power. And it's only YOU trying to MAKE the darkness "be something" that makes you delusional and believe that something "dark" is happening (suffering, death etc).

This world, the world we made in the "separation" from God, is nothing other than a shadow. A seeming illusion of light's absence, in which the shadow itself SEEMS to take on shapes and forms and to do things. There even seem to be events, living creatures, and stuff happening to them. But ALL of it is fiction. It's entirely just "darkness" pretending to exist. And all of this darkness, what holds it in place in the mind (by the mind), is simply an attempt to DENY THE LIGHT. To block it, and to try to give "light's absence" some kind of reality or truth that it does not and never will have. You can't make an illusion real.

When you're looking at the shadow and thinking, that's really a "something", now you've lost your mind and gone into the ego - the belief that darkness really exists and can oppose the light, or do something to the light, or cause the light to stop shining. The belief that "darkness can hide." Darkness cannot make light go away, anymore than the shadows under a tree can determine for themselves that they continue to stay put when the sun moves its location.

There is a very subtle fine line between *recognizing* that all of this shadow stuff is JUST light's absence, an illusion of darkness, versus starting to READ INTO IT and believe that the darkness actually has its own properties, a life of its own, that it is making stuff happen. That's when you fail to recognize the illusion for what it is. That's when you're going unconscious and hallucinating that illusions are real and darkness is real evil and terrible things are happening.

Look at it. This world is nothing but a shadow. It's nothing but a blob of the appearance that light is absent. It is NOTHING on its own. It has no reality. No substance. No real solidity. It's not really there. The instant the light comes to shine upon it, it must VANISH. Darkness has no defense against the light.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

The ONLY reason that it seems as though the world of darkness persists or SEEMS able to RESIST the light, or choose against it, or deny it, or block it.. the only reason you SEEM to be even ABLE to have a "block to awareness" to PREVENT light from shining upon you and keeping you in the light "against your will"... is because you HAVE free will. You can choose, and you can believe in things, even if they are not real. And it's your free-willed, God-given free will attempt to DENY THE LIGHT, by choice, that is "causing" what seems to be a situation where the darkness is "persisting". That you seem able to "block God". That sin seems possible.

All you are doing is choosing to deny the light with your mind, and hold onto the dark shadows, to try to KEEP the light from shining away the world. And this takes mental effort. It requires active denial. Because the instant that you surrender and let go and stop resisting the light, the darkness must be dispelled.

This is also why Jesus says that "illusions recognized must disappear". The instant you *recognize* that that thing you thought had reality/mind/causing you etc is NOTHING but an ILLUSION of a shadow, seeming to be a "something", but is literally NOTHING other than light's absence, the minute you stop believing there is REALLY a "living scene" with a person standing there waving, you have RECOGNIZED it's just an illusion.

You see through the illusion - which is what FORGIVENESS means. To forgive is to overlook - to overlook the darkness and NOT BELIEVE IT IS ANYTHING. You recognize - that's just light seeming to be absent. And this recognition transcends whatever FORMS the shadows are seeming to take. And you see clearly, without interpretation, there is nothing there, just light seeming to be a little absent. That recognition DISPELS the illusion that the darkness "was alive and doing stuff." And so the illusion is broken. The light of awareness shines upon the illusion and shines it away. The illusion - the darkness - DISAPPEARS.

Look at that image again. It's just light and its absence. Think of this world. It is just light's absence. Just a shadow, a nothing. In heaven, from reality's perspective, there is no world. There was just a brief moment of seeming "lack of light", and then through willingness the light was allowed to be recognized as NOT absent, and thus the darkness was dispelled. Recognizing Heaven's truth makes it impossible for darkness to remain. And what is that darkness - it's the ego. The ego is just another word for "what does not exist." It's just another way to say, "light seems absent, but it's not".

When the entire universe is recognized as being NOTHING other than a mere shadow on a wall, in which NOTHING is happening whatsoever ("all events are nowhere"), and the only NEED is to supply the light, the light will come.. and the universe will vanish. The Earth and all the planets and stars and galaxies will vanish in this LIGHT. And "Heaven is all that remains". Because there is no Earth, no world, no universe. There is only the Kingdom of God. The living world of light. Pervasive light that is everywhere WITHOUT shadows, where darkness DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.

The world is unlovable, in its form and appearance, being a picture of crucifixion in a dream of death. It was made to be ugly and cruel and unlike the divine holy nature of the Kingdom. But if we do not love it, our only choice is to attack it, believing the temptation to regard its illusory appearance as reality or "the truth of it".

This presents us with a perplexing scenario, and ACIM actually does state that God loves the world. It isn't that the world is inherently love itself, or made of love, or having virtue and divinity or sacredness. But in spite of its seeming form or appearance, we are told that God does love it.

How do you reconcile that God could love the world, with the fact that the world is an illusion he did not create, made in an attempted attack upon him? Would this not give reality to the world or give it permanence? Somehow God does love the world, in spite of any way that we might find the world unlovable.

Looking at this issue was a turning point for me, because it tells us that just because the world "is hell", does not mean there isn't a way to regard it that overlooks its hellishness, or that you could even feel loving towards it. The forgiven world is seen as lovely and beautiful, in spite of its illusory nature. And somehow we have to find a way to love it in spite of itself.

This may seem wrong, or ego-supporting, or a spiritualization of the world. We might recoil at the thought of loving the body, or the world. We can easily develop an anti-world attitude when we correctly discern it is made of the idea of death and contains no truth.

After all, "the world holds nothing that I want", it "will spin into the nothingness from which it came", "it takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give", and "all its roads lead to death." As a world "made as an attack on God", it has nothing to offer in its nature that you could want. "You do not want the world."

But apparently God loves it, forgiving eyes look upon it without judgement, and true perception shows it in a new light. Even to the extent of it appearing to be a reflection of heaven, through an extraordinary reinterpretation or translation. We have to love it because we have to love, and true perception shows it to us without attack thoughts. Whatever it is, the world will be seen WITH love, through loving eyes.

What love sees IN it is a reflection of itself. And a world seen through forgiveness is no longer a world condemned or condemning. You can love it, but you cannot keep it. And you cannot love it based on its forms or shapes or colors, only because the love is coming through you from another world. To love it is not to be "in love" with it, or to want to keep it forever as a special idol.

You are not asked to have a special love relationship with it, or to conditionally love aspects of it. Only to unconditionally love always, which treats it all the same. Loving the world erases it, it does not possess it. You love it because of what you are, not because of what it is. And loving it translates it into a reflection of heaven to you.

You love the world because you forgive it and overlook the many ways that it sins and condemns and destroys. You love the world because you recognize it is not the cause of you, cannot attack you and has no power over you. You love the world because you come to trust that it is orchestrated by a higher power, with all events and encounters deliberately planned. You love the world because you know you are love and want to love all the time.

There is no world here to love. But we love it anyway, until perception ends and the world disappears, as we look upon the face of Christ and forget the world entirely. Because our aim here is not really to love the world, but to last PAST it, to Christ, which is our self, to rejoin with God, and to erase the gap of separation which was host to the pits of hell. Then God is not just in everything you see, it is ALL you see, and the world is gone.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

"The image of holiness that shines in YOUR mind is NOT obscure, and will NOT change. Its meaning, to those who look upon it, is not obscure, for everyone perceives it AS THE SAME. All bring their DIFFERENT problems to its healing light, but ALL their problems are met ONLY with healing there. The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it."

I've recently come to appreciate what these two terms mean. When I am taking over control, doing everything myself, identifying what things are and what they mean, assigning labels and projecting judgements, I am actually "narrowing down".

I narrow because I am actually tying to narrow what things are. To put them in boxes. Interestingly I can't just freely use my mind to narrow things down without making my mind narrow down as well. Any attempt to label the specific forces my mind to exclude.

When doing this a lot, I couldn't help but notice that my intellectual pursuits felt like they were keeping me stuck in a box. I kept feeling small and childish and afraid. The more I seemed to become close to finding out what the truth was about something specific, the narrower my outlook became and the more I felt hemmed in.

When I confine something to being something specific, focusing on its form and so on, I become blinded by that perception of form. I might think I'm being objective or open but it's not possible to focus on the specific without making your mind become specific.

You might have thought for a long time that you can just use your mind and your thinking however you please, as if the way you think about stuff has no effect on you. But it totally does.

When you're in the business of trying to give meaning to everything and to interpret and judge everything "alone", that aloneness is isolating and actually inhibits your awareness. It closes you down.

Also interestingly the more you "home in on" what you think something is or means, isolating it into a nice tidy definition, you'll think you are "opening up" to the truth, when in fact you are closing yourself off from the truth.

You'll also find that the more you obsess over trying to find the perfect explanation or cause for something highly specific, the more it will slip through your fingers. And you'll be driven mad with the exasperating endless search for answers that can never be satisfies - as you seek and do not find.

Things in the world become true in your mind only when you start splitting the world into separate pieces and putting labels on them. Trying to categorize them into various boxes. This obsession with dividing things up to try to make sense of them or to get a better understanding of them, masquerades as becoming open to what they are. But it's doing exactly the opposite.

If to "narrow down" or pin down what something is, or means, causes your mind to actually close, then doing the opposite opens your mind. To become open-minded doesn't just mean you're not very attached to some things and willing to entertain alternatives, it means you are not in the business of being closed.

To be open minded is to stop narrowing everything down on your own. To be open minded is to be willing to receive the Holy Spirit and allow him to see and decide and judge for you. You're open to his judgement because you're refusing to confine yourself within narrow separating judgements.

The very walls you put around the things you see become blocks to awareness in your perception. As you label and section things off your mind goes into those boxes along with the things you put in them. As you imprison, as you isolate things to form and physicality, your mind shuts down and becomes small, just like those objects.

To become open minded we have to be actually willing to let go of judging and let go of labeling and let go of giving meaning to things. What the Holy Spirit wants for us is to share his perception of wholeness. "The perceptual contents of miracles is wholeness."

This also requires transcending separations between objects by not focusing so much on their differences and exclusive qualities. This is what the ACIM workbook has you doing, overlooking and being non-specific in your selection of objects to consider around you, so that you move towards a more abstract or generalized viewpoint.

That means seeing from a whole perspective, looking with wholeness (holiness), seeing wholeness, and giving a single meaning to everything. It is far more abstract and open rather than being narrow and specific. You have to be "open to everything" (to the single whole) in order to be open minded.

The Holy Spirit doesn't attempt to "understand" the world, in terms of breaking it up into specific things in an attempt to analyze and judge its parts. To figure out the inner workings or relationships between separate objects. He knows that such an analysis leads to separating, partial, blind perspectives, which cannot grasp the whole.

The more you narrow things down in the search for explaining what is true of it, the more out of touch you become with the big picture. The big picture, the real truth, is not narrow at all. It is expansive and abstract and unlimited.

You have to be in an unlimited state in order to really see from a perspective of wholeness, to be able to discern what anything really is. Unless you can see everything at once, you cannot really be in a position to judge correctly.

Open mindedness is a willingness to surrender the position of trying to be God, or trying to fulfill the Holy Spirit's function. It's a willingness to recognize you cannot judge or accurately discern the meaning of anything on your own, and your own exclusive learning has mislead you down dark paths that have only made you suffer.

To be closed-minded has in fact shut you off from happiness and from health. It has caused you to draw conclusions which are narrow and limiting and which take sides. Partitioning off aspects of your awareness and labeling and judging them as right or wrong, and pitting them against each other. Dividing up your "world" into a fragmented experience, erecting walls and inducing darkness.

Openness is really the absence of walls, and it is this absence of obstructions or "obstacles to peace" that allows light to shine and extend. To be enlightened is to be open minded, in which the mind becomes aware of the whole of reality at once. It can't do that if it's constantly focusing on trying to split everything apart and give it a name.

To "not know" what things are, or more to the point to not understand what the world is, is to recognize that on the whole it is fundamentally insane and does not make sense. Trying to make sense of an illusion is like trying to keep its illusory nature and study it. Or to study the ego. It is better to let it be what it is and move into a space of awareness, of not needing to know because the Holy Spirit can know for you.

The Holy Spirit is more than just a guide in this sense. We could say that he is the gate of heaven. That which connects your mind to both worlds, while two seem to persist, until you can accept oneness and singularity again. From his perspective, the entire world has a single meaning. "In this shared purpose is one meaning shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been GIVEN everything, and you are GLAD to see it everywhere."

"Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator, Whose ACKNOWLEDGMENT of you, AND YOURS OF HIM, so FAR transcends ALL learning, that EVERYTHING you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its One meaning."

"There is NO confusion in the Kingdom, because there IS only one meaning."

"This is the light which shows no opposites, and vision, being healed, has power to heal. This is the light which brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves. This is the light which heals because it brings single perception, based upon one frame of reference from which one meaning comes."

"You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you, teaches you how to RECOGNIZE what you see. It is the recognition that NOTHING you see means ANYTHING alone. Seeing WITH Him will SHOW you that all meaning, INCLUDING YOURS, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into one meaning, one emotion and one purpose."

There are people who live in fear all the time. They are so afraid and see themselves as such vulnerable victims, that they are very unaware of the fact that they are doing this to themselves.

In "victim consciousness", part of the mind sees itself as very threatened and weakened. This is the persona. The persona is an attempt to get rid of parts of the Self, keeping certain select parts and chopping out the rest. It seems to do this in an attempt to make itself special, or to give special value or meaning to what it keeps. You will find that victims are somewhat self absorbed, thinking of themselves as superior.

But the act of getting rid of parts of yourself and stripping yourself away simply weakens you, is a form of self mutilation, diminishes you and therefore you can't help but experience yourself as having become weaker. Then you will be much more likely to experience fear and threat and danger, because you see yourself as "little". This littleness, cowering in a corner, is a natural result of trying to be good, trying to be perfect, trying to deny and reject things about yourself that you cannot accept or love. It also the result of not being able to grant the same acceptability to others.

Simultaneously, as you make yourself small and even more prone to danger, where do all of the parts of you go that you have disapproved of? They go into an unconscious part of the mind called the shadow. You relegate them there through means of denial, suppression, avoidance, attack, labelling as wrong or bad, judgement as inferior or unworthy, making guilty, being angry, etc. So the victim will be doing all of these things to themselves. And as such they will have portioned off a significant part of themselves and have made it unconscious - outside of awareness.

However, this unconscious stuff, is still in your mind. And it is now a part of the mind/Self which has been additionally attacked. It's been judged, hated, relegated, rejected, abandoned and so on. You've piled all of your guilt into it. And this has actually turned it into a kind of monster. A dark twisted vicious-seeming monster which is hurt and angry and wants revenge, and which threatens to attack the perfection-seeking persona part of the mind.

So now the persona part of the mind has good seeming "reasons" and explanations for why it should be terrified, because the other part of the mind has become an enemy. And since the other part of the mind is WITHIN the single mind, it's like being locked in a room with a monster. It has access to 'you' - or at least the persona you, and so you will feel exposed to it, able to be affected by it, and will try to escape. And as you try to escape by rejecting it more and more and hating it more and more, it becomes ever more empowered and aggressive and even more of a threat, chasing you down and terrifying you.

All of this inner drama will project outward onto the world and will play out in all manner of ways. It will recruit people to seem to come along and attack you. It will create scenarios where you seem to be terribly threatened. It will orchestrate events through the power of the mind to make stuff happen to fulfill what you think should be happening to you. Whatever is happening on the inside, will happen on the outside. And this will give weight and justification to continuing to believe that this monster is 'out there', everywhere, and not within you.

What the victim does not realize is that it needs to make peace with the victimizer, and that the Self - who you are - your identity, is NOT the victim OR the victimizer. They both are WITHIN what is you - the wholeness of your mind. They are both artificial characters that you have invented and which you've made to be at war with each other. You invented them. And the only reason that you allow it to continue and don't realize you're doing it to yourself, is because you don't realize they are both inside you, are both a part of your ONE SELF, and therefore continue to see them as separate.

If they are separate, and if there is something about the victimizer part that the victim part 'claims' is not themselves, and if there is something about the victim part which the victimizer part 'claims' is not part of themselves, an ILLUSION is maintained - requiring a certain amount of unawareness - that they are SEPARATE IDENTITIES. So long as the victim therefore sees themselves as 'not the victimizer', the mind which houses both parts won't be able to realize that it is both of them.

You must realize that you are both parts, and that both parts are within the whole of what you are. And therefore, any ILLUSIONS relating to how they are not each other, MUST be illusions. You therefore recognize the illusion as just that, see through it, and can no longer believe it. This will instantaneously collapse the persona and the shadow, because they are now seen as artificial constructs in the one mind.

They can't both be true. You have to recognize that within you, you've created a victim-self, AND a victimizer-self, and that YOU are the one who is choosing, animating, giving life to, orchestrating, controlling and USING both of them against each other. And therefore both of them are puppets that you are using, to wage war. The victimizer puppet is attacking the victim puppet, but the victim puppet is also attacking the victimizer puppet. The victim puppet came into being when the mind decided to also create the victimizer. You MUST recognize therefore that you are your own enemy, that you have been the one who has been threatening yourself, and that you are BOTH the victim and the victimizer.

Then you can see that since you are BOTH of them, and since they APPEAR to be different, those differences MUST be illusions. You can then no longer believe in the illusion that they are separate or that either of their sob-stories are valid. If you are the one who is pulling all the strings to perform this self-against-self drama, then these puppets are nothing more than puppets, and they are NOT WHO YOU ARE. And you are the whole. This shift in identity from being either victim or victimizer, to being both, to being neither, is AWAKENING. And only in awakening to a more whole self can you be FREE from this self-attacking, fear-producing, self-destructive state of no peace. It's all been happening inside yourself, and has nothing to do with the world or other people.

And so as the victim walks around the world suffering and feeling exposed and vulnerable all the time, thinking that there is nowhere safe to go and nowhere to be that isn't open to attack, they simply are NOT AWARE of who they are, they are heavily identified with the persona victim self, they are heavily PROJECTING their shadow onto the world and see themselves as very threatened by it. In other words, there is a lot of perceived difference and separation between the two warring parts of their mind. There are many illusions that the person is falling for, because they do not have enough AWARENESS of the fact that they are doing this all to themselves.

And so they think that they have enemies and the world is not safe and they can't go anywhere or do any thing or even move an inch because absolutely everyone seems to be against them. But they are ONLY against themselves. And if they could see this and realize this, they would learn to stop attacking themselves, to stop seeing themselves as the persona self, stop seeing themselves as victims, stop trying to be only good and only special, and embrace the WHOLENESS of who they are. Which is actually unconditional love. And they will experience safety, invulnerability, and immortality. And that is a state in which there is NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. Yes

What if when people in this world make a mistake, there is complete and total forgiveness and unconditional love?

If as a group we are to uphold a shared condition of peace, love and harmony, then we need to have 'shared interests'. That means, it must be in everyone's best interests to treat everyone with unconditional love and forgiveness at all times, absolutely regardless of the seeming severity of anything anyone does.

Unconditional love would say to someone filled with hatred, "Even though you completely hate me, I completely love you."

Unconditional forgiveness would say to someone murderous, "Even though you have tried to destroy me, I find you to be innocent and completely forgiven."

Can you imagine our present day society treating people this way? No. Because by and large, they do not. Most people in this world are riddled with egotism and condemnation of themselves and others. Therefore we have a world where when someone makes a mistake, it is considered to be a 'sin' or 'crime', and that it calls for punishment. We don't believe it calls for forgiveness, at least not unless there has been a huge amount of suffering first.

Maybe we can throw someone in jail for 20 years and make them 'atone' by doing hard time, and then forgive them? We even have a hard time forgiving them when they get done with their allotted punishment. We just want to keep on judging and condemning and finding other people guilty left right and center. Goes to show you how much we all have bought into the 'mistakes call for punishment' system of the ego.

It does not benefit us as a whole, that when someone makes mistakes, we ask them to feel guilty or ashamed. We describe this as a guilty conscience, as though we are supposed to be guilty because it is directing us to learn from mistakes or is telling us how terrible of a person we are because we deserve it. And we believe that this guilty conscience is our 'guide' and trusted advisor, which will steer us clear of mistakes.

BULLSHIT!

It does not benefit us as a whole, to find someone guilty, to ask them to experience guilt, and to suffer and go into a state of profound negativity, following the making of a mistake. All that this does is we now add on an extra layer of even greater negativity. That person, who could've been a loving member of society, is now relegated into a 'bad box' and has to now curse the whole world with their moping around feeling guilty and ashamed, their negative self-talk, their broadcasts of angst and upset, and basically everyone has to now tolerate them failing to give love to others. As if making a mistake the first time wasn't bad, requiring people to follow it up with a health dose of suffering makes EVERYONE suffer.

Therefore we have a vested interest, and should step the fuck up as a mature society, to recognize that the ONLY course of action that is sane when someone makes a mistake is to offer them completely unconditional love and forgiveness and acceptance. ABSOLUTELY unconditional.

How do you think God thinks of people? Do you think He gets all pissed off and angry and sends down some suffering? Do you think he demands some punishment and condemns people to hell for 60 lashes of death and pain? And how long is long enough to suffer? How long is long enough for YOU to suffer when you make a mistake? 10 years? Are you going to carry around all your baggage of righteous self hate and self loathing and believing you should be ashamed and believing you don't deserve love?

Well guess what. When you believe you don't deserve love, you also stop BEING loving, and so you also believe nobody else deserves love, so now on top of the mistake you made which came from unlove the first time, you now add a healthy dose of more - perhaps worse - unlove on top of it. How is that helping anyone? It's completely ridiculous. Being guilty and ashamed and unforgivable and unacceptable is EGOTISM. It does not help anyone. It just pollutes the collective consciousness. Being guilty does NOT atone for a lack of love, it increases the lack of love for all concerned. Love does not equate to guilt and guilt does not offer a gift to those who have been wronged. It's really a slap in the face.

God loves unconditionally. You make a mistake, God keeps loving you. You make a really really really bad mistake on the far end of the 'hierarchy of illusions', and we're talking, sin and death people... you make one of THOSE mistakes.... and God doesn't even blink a fricking eye. He doesn't even waver. He doesn't even stop to think, hmmm.. maybe I should stop loving Paul, he's done a pretty bad thing right there. No. He just keeps on loving, loving, loving, loving, loving, all day every day.

That's called unconditional love folks.

Forgive your enemies. Love your worst nemesis. Otherwise you will not be able to forgive and love yourself when YOU become that enemy. What you do to others you do to yourself. You have to extend the same 'charity' to others that you would want also. You can't be loved unconditionally no matter what you do, unless you are willing to love others unconditionally no matter what they do. Otherwise your belief that 'love only happens if conditions are met' will apply to you also and you'll find YOURSELF unworthy of it. To stop this you're going to have to get out of the ego SYSTEM (thought system, social system), of attacking anyone when they make mistakes. Otherwise you'll believe that when you make a mistake, you're unworthy of love, and you deserve to suffer and die.

Unconditional love calls an end to all suffering. It calls an end to all punishment. It calls an end to all labelling as criminal. It calls for the person making the mistake to be LOVED to high heaven, FORGIVEN totally, and ACCEPTED completely without reservation. It calls for the person to receive correction and healing. And it calls for that person to be RESTORED to the fellowship of the One united brotherhood. Only then can the person actually return to being capable of offering love, which is for the benefit of all, rather than offering guilt and shame and fear and attack.

It is in all our best interests to drop the bullshit ego thought system of 'demands punishment' and 'guilty conscience is a good thing' and 'don't make mistakes or you'll get punished'. Because you know what, while you're waking up you WILL make mistakes, and you won't be able to help it.

Nobody in their right might commits a sin. Nobody in their right mind can be anything other than innocent. Innocence cannot sin. Only when you stop being in your right mind can you seem to make a mistake, and your mistake was leaving your right mind. So now you are unconscious and you are not really aware of what you are doing, so you are not really doing it entirely willingly or consciously, which means you do not know what you're up to. "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" applies to EVERYONE who makes a mistake of any kind!

All mistakes are forgivable. And sometimes you're going to have to claim this unconditionality of forgiveness for yourself, and for others, in spite of whether other people are willing to go along with you or agree with you. YOU deserve forgiveness and so does everyone else. Be one of the few (currently) who hold humanity to a higher standard of being unconditional in our love for each other, rather than buying into ego blame, suffering and punishment. This world has suffered long enough already, and it never deserved even one ounce of suffering to begin with. Let it be over with! Bring on the love!

From lesson 261...

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside? "

"The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God's impermanence is "proof" his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them. For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor? Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer? And if he did not die, what "proof" is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?

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"The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for."

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Changing the purpose of the body DOES NOT mean looking at it as a separate thing and skewing your vision to pretend it looks healthier than it is! It means, LITERALLY, CHANGING THE BODY to DEMONSTRATE that it is not sick!

Some people believe it's our job to change how we perceive the body, that we are to dis-identify from it, and so in a way separate from it. Some also believe we are to focus on healing the mind, not the body. Some also believe the course is not teaching us about healing the body. And some also believe we'll be able to wake up from dreaming without changing the body at all, or healing its sickness, or making it impossible for it to die.

But if this is true, if the body is just some "thing" that exists, that we identify with or not, or make ourselves separate from, or which is not part of our mind, then this raises a question:

WHO PUT THE BODY THERE IF NOT YOUR MIND?

Or additionally, what it is that causes the body to be sick and die if not YOUR MIND?

You have to then answer this question without resorting to jumping to a different level or using an intellectual bypass. The question can only have a couple of possible answers:

1) God made the bodies and we're just changing how we see them, and have to accept them as sick and dead.

2) It was us who made the bodies.

That there are no bodies, bodies are illusions, bodies don't exist, or whatever else along those lines is NOT a valid answer to this question at this point.

Someone HAS to be responsible for the body that is showing up, regardless of whether it's an illusion. SOMEONE is making it appear. SOMEONE is putting it there. Even if it's not really there.

So who is it?

If it's not you who is making the body show up, then it's God's fault. Yet the course says, "Love did not create the body". And God is love, so God didn't put the body there.

And if you are supposed to disconnect yourself from or separate from the body in some way, to go "only into mind", or to IGNORE its sickness or its death, WHO STILL is putting that body there? WHO or WHAT is making it sick? WHO is making it die?

It has no bearing on whether you are at peace or not or what your mind is doing in this scenario. Somehow, someone, or something, must be responsible for making a sick and broken body show up.

We know it's not God. And if you're claiming it's not YOU because you are not a body, you're shifting levels mid-logic. If you are the mind "only" and "not the body", and God didn't make the body, who is CONTINUING to maintain the body? Someone is! Someone is continuing to make the body appear and walk around the planet with sickness showing up in it, and supposedly you're off on cloud9 having a happy time ... so WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

What you cannot escape here is simple fact, that IT IS YOU who are making the body appear. Even if it's an illusion, it is YOU who are dreaming it. The world is not putting it there. God is not putting it there. There is no other cause in the world because there is NO cause in the world. The body didn't show up on its own. Nor did it show up because of your parents.

Your body right now, with which you are contemplating typing a response, or which you are using to read these words, is being put there BY YOU. And as such, you are 100% responsible for everything it showing up as. No-one else is responsible for it.

That means, in conclusion, SINCE YOU are the one who is making your body appear, YOU HAVE EVERY ABILITY to make an entire body appear! Out of nowhere! With the power of your mind only. You ARE DOING IT right now! You've been doing it for years!

So that means, if you are able to project a body, which appears to have a certain condition or state of health, what's to stop you from projecting a body which is in perfect health, has no sickness, and is not suffering, and cannot die?

YOU are putting the sickness into the body. It's your responsibility. The sickness can ONLY stay in the body IF you keep putting it there. If you are trying to get your mind into a place where it thinks of itself as "I am not the body" but the body is still showing up, what does that tell you? YOU STILL believe you are a body. You're not being honest. The body can only appear IF YOU make it appear. The body can only "stay sick" if YOU keep projecting a sick body (from a sick mind).

So there isn't any way to avoid this. You are the one who made your body. You are the one making it right now. That means your mind is pretty powerful at manifesting a human being. And more besides. So why would this ever mean, that you don't have the ability to make it show up as healed, or that you have to put up with suffering, or that you cannot remove sickness, or that you are supposed to become peaceful "in spite of death"? You will never be able to be at peace in spite of death because if death "happens to you" you will see yourself as a victim.

Healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. That's how it works. No-one else is responsible for your state of being, and nothing in the world causes your body to be sick or keeps it sick. No-one but YOU makes the body appear AT ALL. No-one but YOU has the free will choice to make it show up as a symbol of sinlessness.

No-one has to suffer and no-one has to keep sickness or to try to find ways to "work around it" or "live with it" or "tolerate it" or "transcend it". JUST REMOVE THE SICKNESS!!!

That's what miracles are for!

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

If you're seeing bodies, your vision is blinded by sight of form.

Christ's vision LOOKS PAST bodies to the truth and does not see physical forms.

"The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Christ's vision has one law. 2 It DOES NOT LOOK UPON THE BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 It BEHOLDS A LIGHT BEYOND THE BODY; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"THE OPPOSITE OF SEEING THROUGH THE BODY'S EYES IS THE VISION OF CHRIST, which reflects strength rather than weakness, unity rather than separation, and love rather than fear. The OPPOSITE OF HEARING THROUGH THE BODY'S EARS is communication through the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, which abides in each of us. His Voice seems distant and difficult to hear because the ego, which speaks for the little, separated self, seems to be much louder. This is actually reversed. The Holy Spirit speaks with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming appeal. No one who does not choose to identify with the body could possibly be deaf to His messages of release and hope, nor could he fail to accept joyously the vision of Christ in glad exchange for his MISERABLE PICTURE OF HIMSELF."

"Christ's vision is the HOLY SPIRIT'S GIFT, GOD'S ALTERNATIVE to the ILLUSION of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death (seeing the physical world which is made of sin and death). It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which THIS WORLD IS BASED. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable."

"Learning MUST LEAD BEYOND THE BODY to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it."

"The body cannot be looked upon EXCEPT THROUGH JUDGEMENT. 2 To SEE THE BODY is the sign that you LACK VISION, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose."

"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand."

"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"BEYOND THE BODY, beyond the sun and stars, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light"

"The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent FAR BEYOND THE BODY, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace"

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out BEYOND THE BODY, to let you and your brother be joined."

"Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship BEYOND THE BODY? 10 Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND what they were made to see. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT."

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the DARKNESS, not the light."

"Here is a WORLD established THAT IS SICK, and this THE WORLD THE BODY'S EYES PERCEIVE."

"It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him AS A BODY. 2 Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of HOLINESS? 3 For holiness is merely the result of letting THE EFFECTS OF SIN BE LIFTED (body veil disappears), so what was always true is recognized. 4 ****TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE****, for HOLINESS IS POSITIVE AND THE BODY IS MERELY NEUTRAL. 5 It is not sinful, but NEITHER IS IT SINLESS. 6 AS NOTHING, WHICH IT IS, THE BODY CANNOT MEANINGFULLY BE INVESTED WITH ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST OR OF THE EGO. 7 Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. 8 And both must be undone for purposes of truth."

"WHO SEES A BROTHER'S BODY HAS LAID A JUDGEMENT ON HIM, AND SEES HIM NOT. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; HE DOES NOT SEE HIM AT ALL. 3 In the darkness of sin he is INVISIBLE. 4 He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. 5 Here are illusions and reality kept separated. 6 Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. 7 And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED AS A BODY, in unholy relationships with other bodies, SERVING THE CAUSE OF SIN an instant before he dies."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" 2 Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" 3 And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. 4 Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. 5 THE MEANS IS VISION. 6 For what the SEEING (with christ vision) look upon (overlooking bodies to something beyond) is sinless. 7 No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. 8 And WHAT HE SEES HE DID NOT MAKE (heaven), for it was GIVEN HIM TO SEE (by God), as was the vision that made his seeing possible."

"You believe that what your PHYSICAL EYES CANNOT SEE does not exist."

"Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK THE BODY, as it will surely do"

"For FAITHLESSNESS is the perception of a brother AS A BODY"

"IT DOES NOT LOOK UPON A BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created."

"Perception is a FUNCTION OF THE BODY, and therefore represents A LIMIT ON AWARENESS. Perception sees *THROUGH* THE BODY'S EYES and hears through the body's ears. It evokes the limited responses which the BODY makes."

"If you are SIN, YOU ARE A BODY, for the mind acts not."

"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the BODY'S EYES can see. Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS, ***AND OF HIS BODY***."

"(sin) The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet REASON SEES THROUGH IT easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes. "

"EVERYTHING that the BODY'S EYES can see is a MISTAKE, an ERROR in perception"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on ERROR, and NOT SEE PAST IT."

"See how the body's eyes REST ON EXTERNALS, and CANNOT GO BEYOND. Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, UNABLE TO GO BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. "