A Course in Miracles would say no. You always get what you ask for. You only get what you ask for. You never get anything you do not ask for.

There are no victims. There are no accidents. Nothing happens unless it is deliberate. There is no randomness or chaos. Someone somewhere is making decisions all the time.

A leaf does not blow in the wind without someone choosing to make the leaf blow in the wind. The leaf doesn't even appear to exist without someone's mind making it appear to exist.

Where is there any room in this for "might not work" or "not sure if" or "got lost in translation" or "God doesn't always answer" ?

The "Song of Prayer" will tell you that you are always praying and you are always getting precisely what you actually did ask for.

If stuff is happening that you believe was not supposed to happen, or you got results that you seemed to not ask for, or stuff happens that you didn't seem to want.... you need to think again. You DID ask for it, you just didn't realize how you asked for it. You MUST have asked for it otherwise it could not have appeared.

This is the level of certainty that Jesus enjoys. This is how it possible to be completely certain that you are not at the effect of anything. This is the end of victim consciousness.

There is absolutely no room for an idea of being victimized if it is true that you always get what you ask for. The entire fiction of being unfairly treated is absolutely 100% a lie.

You are treating yourself exactly how you wish be treated. You are, right now, experiencing exactly, and ONLY, what you actually did ask to experience. There is nothing happening outside of the script you have written or continue to write.

Nothing happens without your say so. This is how it is true that nobody dies without their own consent. This is how is it true that ALL death is suicide. This is how it is POSSIBLE that if you do not choose death, you will not die, and therefore it is POSSIBLE to be immortal.

Nothing is happening to you that you did not want. So if you do not like it, you need to change your decision. i.e. change your mind and heart.

If you got something you did not want, then you did not realize that you asked for it. It's not a matter of you having not asked for it, it's a matter of you being not AWARE that you asked for it.

Learning to discern HOW the asking happens, is the key to salvation. Recognizing that you ONLY do things to yourself, and nobody else EVER does anything against your will, gives you the key to salvation. Salvation - being saved from all suffering - is possible, because of this.

Every single story about how something happened to someone, some disaster struck out of nowhere, something suddenly went wrong, something occurred that nobody liked, the world went down the toilet, war broke out, there were "acts of nature", "it must be God's will", or any other bullshit, is absolutely a total fictional lie by the ego mind.

Absolutely everything in front of your face right now, you put there. And you wanted it. And not a single thing in your day or your month or your life has ever happened against your will. You have never been victimized.

Nobody has ever died against their will. They were choosing it, wanted it, made it happen, and put every single event in place to cause it to occur, even if those events or causes *appeared* to be coming from something over which they had absolutely no control. They DID choose it. It's just not obvious that they chose it, because of the ILLUSION that they did not, which was part of their cover-up story and part of their way of making it happen.

There has not ever been a victim. There has never been anything happening by accident or out of order or against anyone's will. Nobody has ever suffered a single bit without asking to suffer. No-one has ever been afflicted with sickness without having first put that sickness in place themselves.

Nothing has ever even happened in this world AT ALL, without someone choosing it and making it happen, pulling all the strings and animating all the objects and orchestrating all events. If it were not for minds making such decisions, this world would not even appear to exist at all. It is only here doing its thing because someone somewhere is MAKING IT.

Not one single feeling that you have is caused by anyone other than yourself. They are not caused by events or people or situations or stimuli or any other causes that seem to be separate from your own mind. Any feeling you ever have, you CHOOSE to have. You put it in place.

Not one single physical symptom in your body has ever been caused by any person or object or environmental condition or events seeming to happen against your say-so. Not one single "effect" showing up in your body or your emotional reactions has ever really been put there by anyone or anything other than YOU. You even put in place all of the illusory effects which external causes *allegedly* put in place against your will.

When someone kicks you in the leg, which is you kicking yourself in the leg, YOU put the bruise in the leg. The bruise in the leg is not put there by the person who kicked you, or their physical foot, or anything that happened. You instead conveniently orchestrated and used the situation to attack yourself and make it SEEM as though you have a bruise showing up because of someone else, so that you can project blame for your sin onto them, finding them guilty.

No-one outside of you is guilty of ever doing anything to you ever. Not one single person in this world has ever attacked you or created symptoms or effects in you. There has never been side-effects, symptoms, damage, hurt, pain or suffering occurring in your experience that your own mind didn't put there itself.

When events transpire, by your secret design, to seem to cause something to happen to you, you not only orchestrated the events but you also manifested the causes and the effects all at once, putting them into place in the illusion using your thought.

Nobody ever gets sick. People choose to be sick. Nobody is ever hurt by someone else. They hurt themselves. Nobody ever falls victim to abuse. People abuse themselves. Nobody ever dies of some cause they could not prevent.

People create the illusion that they have no say in the cause, in order to paint this very convincing picture that they are not the one making any choice whatsoever. The denial and displacement of your own mind's decision making, making it look like it has nothing to do with it at all, is an act of irresponsibility and disownership of power.

Nobody is ever weak or suffering or lacking or diminished or limited or disabled or afraid or sick or in poverty or at a loss without having chosen to be so, on purpose, so that it can appear as though they are victims, so that they have a tremendous basis for a huge story about how they do not have any power whatsoever, so that they can fake their own death and blame it on everyone other than themselves.

Death is a choice and death is someone choosing to die. Death is the ultimate cover-up story, all death is fake, there is no real death, every death is a massive illusion orchestrated by the mind to make it look like all power, responsibility, ability to choose and all will to Live have been taken away by someone other than yourself. Not even in death has this been made true.

There is nothing happening in this world, as in, stuff that is just occurring on its own. There are not just events that tick over automatically. There are no forces of nature which just do their own thing like they have their own will. There is no wind that blows on its own or life that grows on its own or cycles of weather that just "happen". Someone somewhere is making it happen.

There is no realm of things which are within control and another realm of things which are outside control. There is only deliberate creation. Either you are making up shit or you are not. Either you are inventing lies or you are being the truth. There is no middle ground where things just occur because of external causes, or alien wills, or fate, or bad luck, or good luck, or any kind of unchosen reason.

You have the power to choose again. You are NOT a victim of the world you see. NOTHING is happening on its own. And nothing CAN happen without you making it happen, wanting it to happen, using it for a purpose, having a fictional need for it, and making it occur in illusions. This whole world is your dream, coming from your mind, coming from your decision making. It is not dreaming itself!

Be free to choose again. Make a better decision. No-one can stop you. You are the immortal unlimited Extension of God, in whom nothing happens without His Will. This is the realm of miracles, where whatever you will, is so.

Whatever you will, will be so. It must. This is your power.

I used to attack myself pretty severely through the fear of being judged by others. I was painfully shy and perceived a need to withdraw in an effort to protect myself, but all this did was hurt myself deeply.

My shyness was a coping mechanism for protecting my sensitivity. I had failed to learn how to express myself fully, and it didn't help that I was an introvert. I had trouble learning social skills and asserting myself. Every social interaction was literally painful.

I did not realize what I was doing to myself. My perception was that other people were perceiving me in a certain way, which I was simply trying to get away from.

After a social encounter, particularly one with strangers or where I had to go into someone else's home or be surrounded by a crowd, I would feel deeply, deeply hurt. I would become strongly embarrassed in the midst of the situation, would tense up, become very quiet (paralyzed) and experience things as though everyone was judging me.

I would return home with a very very deep inner emotional pain, a feeling of "hurt", that was so strong I had no choice but to have a deep cry in order to deal with it. Every social encounter seemed like a total failure and something I did not want to be a part of, making me avoid them even more. It was deeper and stronger than any other emotional upset about any other situation in life. It felt absolutely horrible.

When strangers would even walk past I would immediately cringe and feel attacked. I suspected they were a threat, and saw them as enemies or someone I did not want to be around. They seemed to have power over me and I hid away and withdrew in an effort to avoid people.

I had no idea what was happening in my perception or what I was doing to myself. I only thought that other people were hurting me and causing me to feel like shit. It seemed to all be their fault, and they were the ones who we being judgmental.

But over time I have gradually, slowly learned, that this is not the case. It was difficult to come to realize this.

I saw that I was in fact judging everyone else. I saw them as judged in some way, although this seemed to be subtler and concealed behind my reaction to this perception. Seeing them as judgers automatically meant I was judged by them and therefore at their effect. The effects this produced in my own self was the deep hurt.

I had to realize that in order to see them as judgers, I had to believe they were the ones being judgmental, which was in fact my own belief. I was making them out to be judgers. And that meant, I was simultaneously judging my own self by seeing myself in the role of "judged" by them.

It never really had anything to do with other people judging me either. In fact, probably in 99% of cases they were not being judgmental at all. They were not even interested. They weren't saying anything about me or pointing a finger or anything. But I had this "mental illness" of strongly believing that I couldn't go anywhere without being under attack. And it wouldn't matter if someone pointed out that no-one really cared to judge me because they were too busy with their own selfish interests, I couldn't see it.

What I was really doing was seeing myself as judge-worthy, disassociating a part of my mind and projecting it onto others, seeing them as the judger rather than myself, and then creating the effects within myself that correspond to how I perceived others to be perceiving me. I literally was hurting myself. The hurt I did to myself was far worse than anything anyone else ever did, and it was all because of how I was mis-perceiving.

Underneath this fear of judgement there was a belief that I deserved to be judged, because I believed I had sinned and was guilty. I didn't see myself as worthy of love and therefore perceived that others agreed with me. My direct self-attack turned into indirect self-attack that appeared to be coming at me from other people, but was really coming at me from within a part of my mind that I did not recognize as myself.

I was being both the judger of myself, and the one who was judged. Or in other words, a victimizer and a victim. I played both roles but only saw myself as playing the victim role, and unfairly so. The mere act of perceiving oneself in a victim role automatically creates effects in yourself, typically emotional reactions which try to correspond to the causes that you see as outside of yourself. Because I saw others as judging me severely, I felt severely hurt. Truth is, both the perception that others were judging and the hurtful effects of the judgement were both put in place simultaneously by myself.

I needed to forgive myself. And this has taken a very long time and it's been a very gradual slow process. Over the years, a sense of being separate from others has diminished. A sense of being trapped in myself has diminished. A sense of frustration at not being able to fully express has diminished. A sense of it not being okay to simply be the way I am has diminished. In fact, recently there has been a growing, wonderful freedom, of finally not giving a fuck.

This funnily enough manifested in recent hairstyles. It suddenly became fun to play with looking ugly, rather than trying to look pleasing. And I don't mean this ugliness is another judgement, just that, I've found myself being really "ok" with looking whatever way I look without it meaning anything or causing a judgement.

This is so freeing. It now becomes more of a "playful" experience, where it doesn't matter one way or another, and where I'm growing stronger in my willingness to present myself in whatever way I like without caring (worrying) about what people will think of it.

You may have noticed over time that in my writing I now swear a lot more often. I used to be so repressed that I would never swear, and thought I was more special or holier than others by not doing so. It's now more of a pleasure to swear. To some this may seem like I'm turning 'evil' but that's not the case. I'm becoming more authentic and more myself, censoring myself less and recognizing that I am free.

Taking responsibility for everything I am experiencing shows me that I can only be upset if I hurt myself, no-one else is the cause of what I feel, and therefore I am set free of concern for massive people pleasing or not showing up fully as myself. I was trying to be everyone but myself, to be something I am not, and to disown myself. There is nothing but pain and suffering there when we do that.

There are some people out there especially those who are painfully shy, who appear on the surface to be sweet and nice but have a strong persona, a facade of everything being alright all the time when underneath there is a searing self hatred and repression and sense of unworthiness and of not being "allowed" to do anything. It's a state of self imprisonment. I still at times struggle with limiting myself and Holy Spirit having to remind me "you are allowed". I often thought I was imprisoned by someone else in life, but really it was my own doing.

Some of these people who are suffering from self-inflicted unworthiness and quiet suffering, turn to suicide as an escape. My own life became one of depression and despearation and a growing feeling that I was approaching some kind of "end". If I had not met my wife at about that time I probably wouldn't be here.

A sense of an "end" was a sense of intense separation, isolation and being cut off from everyone. I was ostracized "by society" for an earlier "accident", but really it was a way for me to do this to myself, to give me a good reason why I should suffer in silence and be unhappy. I have had to crawl out of my own self-inflicted hell-hole. Some people are not able to do this. There was a guy at my workplace who was similarly shy who no one would suspect was suffering painfully every day through false perceptions, and he shot himself.

I am thankful for the Holy Spirit and Jesus who have helped me immensely to come out of my nightmares and into a happier place. I still have work to do but everything keeps heading in the direction of heaven. A Course in Miracles has been a God-send in terms of correcting my perceptual distortions and helping me to undo the grossly self-inflicted false beliefs that torture and condemn from the inside out. I am so different to how I used to be now that I don't recognize myself in photos.

Freedom and relief from suffering comes from the recognition of what we are doing to ourselves. We are the ones who need to forgive ourselves and undo our own self attack. There is a way out of hell, because we are the only ones keeping us in hell. No-one is keeping us here but ourselves. Fear of judgement is secretly the fear of being judged by God, which is an attempt not to go Home by justifying self attack. But there is a better way. And that means, if we will become willing, we can go Home to God and be happy. Thank God for that!

You are not of this world. This world isn't the only world.

You are of another world, the Kingdom of God, in which you have immortality - eternal life as given by God Himself.

This world is an illusory world. It's kind of like a layer on top of reality. A pretend world, a picture, of a form and nature opposite to reality.

The things in the illusory world can appear to change, shift, grow, die, etc. But it really has no effect at all on the deeper underlying world of God. God's Kingdom is completely permanently unassailable and impenetrable and perfect forever. It is "the living world of light."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT."

"Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows."

What you are, as an immortal spirit, is firmly anchored in Heaven. Nothing can attack you or change you in any way.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

For you as an immortal being, death is not possible. It's not an option. You cannot choose it to happen to your spirit. Your spirit is invulnerable.

So what is it that can ever die, or seem to die? It can't be you. A body is an illusion, part of the illusory dream world of death. Everything in the dream world is made of illusions and all illusions are the idea of the opposite of reality. Since reality is life, all illusions are the idea of death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So we know that every illusion, whether it appears to show up as a healthy body, or a sick body, or a dead body, or no body, or even just an environment, or a planet, is still essentially made of the idea of death. Even Earth is the idea of an opposite to God's Kingdom.

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

So from the outset, since what you are cannot die whatsoever, the things that can seem to die cannot even be who or what you are. You are spirit, not a body. You exist on an entire other level.

So really you do not need a body, it adds nothing to you, it doesn't improve you, it doesn't allow you to do things that you couldn't do already, and it only essentially was designed as a limit. It can be used in different ways, by an immortal spirit, but the body is not ever what you are.

As spirit, and being on a higher level, you have power over everything on the lower level of the illusory world. All of the world's laws are secondary and once-removed. This world is not primary reality, or the starting point of anything. It is not a cause but an effect of a higher mind's dreaming.

So this means, you on the level of Christ, have power over, total power over, everything in the world. That includes the body, it includes all states of sickness and death, it includes matter and energy, it includes all of the so-called laws of physics and biology, and in effect you have power over everything in this universe.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

""My Self is ruler of the universe." ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. "

Since you have power over everything in the universe, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do", "what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world.", you get to dictate what happens to the body. You, from a higher more vertically causal level, get to choose how to USE any aspect of this secondary world.

You can choose to use the body to attack through, which is a toxic idea which affects the body and attacks it. This produces sickness and death of the body on this level. The body then conveys the idea that being dead is the only truth.

You can choose to use the body to heal through, which is a healing idea which affects the body and heals it. This produces a picture of a healed body, an illusion of a healthy body, which then demonstrates the thought/belief that being alive is the only truth.

So your mind gets to decide whether or not the body dies. And this depends entirely on what you use the body FOR. If you use it for attack it will be attacked. If you use it to heal it becomes healed. And in its healed condition, sustained by the mind, sickness death cannot "happen" to the body against your will and your power.

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent"

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"The mind being sane heals the body."

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

So in effect, you could choose to use the body for healing and to symbolize eternal life, resulting in it being healed. By the power of your mind, the body is not allowed to be in a state of sickness, yet alone physical death.

The body can be sustained indefinitely, at least in time. It can't be eternal because the mind has to constantly maintain it and it is not natural to constantly project bodies. It could stick around for a million years if the mind so chose. Aging can be reversed and halted. But eventually once the purpose of healing is fulfilled in the help of others, there is no longer a need for a body to use to reach those who dream of death. Its purpose of healing is part of the atonement plan.

"Illusions recognized must disappear"

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"The body cannot remain without illusions."

When the entire idea of death, which the world and body is founded on, is recognized, it must disappear. When it is no longer useful for the atonement plan, and all souls have returned home, there is nothing more to keep the world intact. Nor is there any need or will to maintain it.

"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."

You don't have to automatically go towards physical death. Death is a choice made by an immortal being pretending it can die. You cannot die. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt." "Swear not to die, you holy son of God. You've made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

There is no point choosing to make death happen when you acknowledge that you already have eternal life. What sense would it make? It would be not only futile but a completely pointless waste of time. If you knew you could NEVER die, would you CHOOSE to attempt to make death happen? That's what we do when we cause sickness and death. And if we were to never do that, would sickness or death happen?

No. Because there are no other causes of it. The only cause of death is your mind's power to choose to attack through the body. If you don't do that, the body cannot physically die or become sick.

"Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body"

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

The truth is, there is no real sin. Sin, the idea that you can attack something real, is literally impossible. Reality cannot BE attacked because it is permanent. Therefore sin is 100% impossible.

The question then is, what is this "sin" thing? It must be a fake sin, some kind of artificial sin. It can't be a real one. But in this world there for sure seem to be "sins" happening.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "To the ego the body is to attack with". "The body is the idea of sin made flesh" etc

Even when there seems to be a sin taking place, let's say someone is murdering another person, the truth is that this cannot be a real sin. Real sin doesn't exist. So what is it?

It has to be some kind of illusion of sin, like a fake sin. It has to be a kind of camouflage or disguise. Something which SEEMS to be one thing but is actually something else.

Sin, being untrue and false, has to be a lie. It cannot be a true something because sinlessness is true. Innocence is permanent, per the will of God that you be forever innocent. So whatever sin is, it must be a lie. It's some kind of pretend sin.

Recognizing this is forgiveness because it means you're not taking the appearance of sin at face value and believing it's really what it seems to be. It means you're seeing beyond its ILLUSION of sin, and are recognizing that it IS NOT really sin. It's something else.

The illusion of sin, is just kind of an assertion, a lie, a story being told, a portrayal of a seeming attack, which is impossible, upon something which is unreal, as if it were real. That it is even seeming to happen is a lie. That the events seem to be taking place is a lie. They aren't actually happening.

Sin is therefore an assertion of evil, or an attempt to "make possible" something that is not possible. It's an attempt to assert that something real can be destroyed. This was the whole purpose of the world we made.

"Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin."

"Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth."

"It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin."

This world, the world of sin, was made as a lie, to depict something untrue (that God's son is crucified), and that attacking God (or reality/truth) is possible.

"The world is a PICTURE OF the crucifixion of God's Son."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

But it's no more really an attack on God, than it is an actual crucifixion of God's son. It's an illusion of this. It's a NON attack, appearing as an attack. It's a NON-crucifixion, seeming to look like a crucifixion.

This is why sin is an ILLUSION. And this is why illusions are DECEPTIVE. And if you believe the appearance of the illusion without realizing HOW it is deceiving you, you are being TEMPTED by it and fall for that temptation. And then all you SEE is the surface appearance, like seeing a puzzle that you can't solve.

Falling for temptation is buying into sin as though it is real and possible. It is the belief in real sin and therefore real evil and death.

Even what APPEARS to be a physical murder, with the seeming "proof of sin" staring you in the face, CANNOT BE that. To take that at face vale is to fall for temptation. To just "buy it" based on how it appears, is delusional. Believing it is the temptation to believe in sin and thus be sinful yourself.

Nothing real can BE murdered. So how can the murdered thing even BE real in the first place, if it SEEMS to have been murdered? And how can there even seem to be a depiction of murder, when real murder (the destruction of reality) is IMPOSSIBLE?

Whatever the situation SEEMS to be, whatever it looks like, if you look only to its physical appearance, you are "blinded by perception of form". The form, the shape, the evidence, the colors, the smells, the proof, all tell your body senses a LIE, that actual real sin has taken place. And it seems undeniable, if you believe it.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not."But a a dead body cannot be true. And a sick body cannot make any sense. And illusions of suffering cannot be real suffering.

"A sick body makes no sense."

Even suffering which you supposedly inflict upon yourself, cannot ACTUALLY be real suffering. In fact, even suffering is actually impossible. Nothing real can ever suffer.

"There is no pain in God, and therefore none in me."

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

So what does it mean if I SEEM to be suffering? It can only mean that I SEEM to be temporarily experiencing an ILLUSION of suffering, which seems LIKE suffering, or a PICTURE OF sickness, but IS NOT THAT. It can't really be that. It has to be something else, pretending to be suffering. Even unhappiness is fake unhappiness, covering up your happiness.

So what this tells you is that ALL illusions, incuding sickness, death, pain, unhappines, any kind of suffering at all, MUST NOT BE what they appear to be. And in fact that means there are TWO possible interpretations of the thing. Because you can either be DECEIVED BY an illusion or not.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

The false interpretation - "false perception" - looks at an illusion and falls for temptation to believe it is verbatim first-hand reality and therefore true. This is completely delusional and a total failure to be aware of the big picture. This is naive and irresponsible "spiritual blindness."

The true interpretation - "true perception" - looks at the same illusion and SEES THROUGH ("to forgive is to overlook") the LIE, does not fall for the temptation, sees DEEPER and BEYOND the surface appearance, and does not STOP its vision at the physical form.True perception or "accurate perception" is what we use in SANITY, to correctly evaluate "what this thing is". And a correct evaluation of anything that looks like a sin, is that IT IS NOT REALLY THAT. It CANNOT BE what it appears to be. It cannot be AT ALL.

A correct evaluation of any illusion is that you can see the "workings" of its DECEPTION, and you are not deceived by it. You can RECOGNIZE how and why it SEEMS to present a picture of sin and death and suffering, but is in fact simultaneously SOMETHING ELSE. This means recognizing that it is FALSE and UNREAL and UNTRUE.

What it IS, is NOT a reality, but a fiction. What it IS, is a lie. An audiovisual lie. Like an hallucination. A mistake in perception and understanding.

All illusions are two-faced because the ego is two-faced. It is never just what it appears to be on the surface. Murder is not "actual" murder, or "just murder". It is a deceitful lie about something happening which CANNOT possibly happen in reality, IS NOT happening now, and CANNOT BE what it appears to be.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

A dead body CANNOT BE a real dead body. It can only be a LIE of a dead body, appearing like a dead body, AS IF dead bodies were possible, when they're not. Bodies don't even exist yet alone dead ones. All death is fake.

So sin, everything physical ("the granite block of sin"), is an ILLUSION which APPEARS to be something - an entire world, but is not REALLY that. The whole physical world, Earth, the sun, the stars and galaxies, it is all a deception. The world is a lie.

"The body is what you made in attempting to deceive yourself."

"There is no world."

"There is no sin."

It's all an attempt to dream up what "real sin" MIGHT be like, IF it were possible, and to try to make it SEEM not only possible but completely real. To make sin believable. But sin is unbelievable, and not believable, to one who sees through its bullshit.

This world is not really a world. This body is not really a body. Sin is not really sin and guilt is not really guilt. Sickness is not really sickness. Death is not really death. Nothing in this world is what it seems, because this world is an ILUSION of a world and NOT REALLY A WORLD.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not created it, for what He creates must be eternal as himself. And the time will come when everything you see will have an end."

When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.

In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.

Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.

However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?

It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?

If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?

Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

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

"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."

You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.

Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.

Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.

So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?

The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ****It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. ****When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."

2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.

3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.

This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.

So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.

"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."

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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

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A very common-place belief is that you choose something at one moment in time, the "change" is implemented at that time, and then you stop making any changes. It then seems that the effects that you choose are on a kind of auto-pilot, just carrying over from the past, as if you are not making any decisions NOW that are resulting in the effects remaining.

So for example 20 years ago, someone attacked you and damaged your leg, and ever since then you've been walking with a limp. You THINK that the limp is there "because of" that one moment in time which changed the "direction" of your life, as though a temporary hand steered you in a different direction, but this is NOT how it works.

When anything happens, as a "one time" thing, it is not a one-time thing. If you accept it, thus believe in it, and YOU implement the effects, and you maintain the belief that it happened, you are CONSTANTLY BELIEVING that it happened. It's like you suddenly get into a groove, you STAY in the groove, and are continually now under the influence of this belief. The belief is CONSTANTLY EXPRESSING. The belief is continually RE-MANUFACTURING the effects that you chose, moment by moment.

So if we re-frame this, 20 years ago you DECIDED that you would walk with a limp. You NEVER CHANGED YOUR MIND about this. You THINK that you only decided this one-time 20 years ago, but in fact you have been deciding to walk with a limp for 20 years straight. Every single day you make the same decision, or commit to the same intention, and without changing it you KEEP MAKING the same effects. If you would realize you need not suffer, you would change your mind and set yourself free, NOW.

This works exactly like a projector, because it is a projective process. At some point in time, you put a movie reel into your projector and switched it on. It started projecting an image of a broken leg. Each moment, the projector shines light and broadcasts this image. And then the next moment it does it again. It puts that image out there again, and again, and again, and again.

Over time, the movie screen shows a broken leg, CONSTANTLY in a state of being broken. Why? Because the movie reel has not been changed. It just keeps RE-PROJECTING the same picture, based on the same programming. Putting the movie reel into the projector is not what "caused the broken leg" 20 years ago, it's the fact that the SAME movie reel (belief) is STILL in the projector! This movement INTO this state of damage has not been chosen against, in 20 years! You have no UNDONE IT.

This is how beliefs and choices really operate. Because in every single MOMENT, you have free will to CHOOSE what you will experience. And just because you seem to keep choosing the SAME experience over a prolonged period of time does NOT MEAN that you can't change that experience in an instant. Just because you have this long story of built-up belief that you were damaged 20 years ago and have had this broken leg for SO LONG that it can't possibly be healed, that's total bullshit. It is completely irrelevant. The decision to have the broken leg is happening NOW, not in the past.

Every moment, you are choosing and projecting a version of the body that you CHOOSE it be. Every moment you are broadcasting its image. Every moment you are determining its condition. Every moment you are putting out there a FRESH COPY of a picture of a body. It's not even RELATED to the one that you projected 5 seconds ago. And the one you "had" 5 seconds ago DOES NOT EXIST. Nor is the one you have now, a "carry over" from one you just had, nor has there been any transfer or maintaining of its "state" outside of your mind. The body does NOT have its own state.

The ego has been very good at creating the ILLUSION that the past carries over to the present, or that something happening 20 years ago is still affecting you in a kind of cause-effect relationship. As if the past causes the present. This is total fiction. The leg is not still broken because of the past, it's still broken because the MIND HAS NOT CHANGED.

So you have to realize this. Beliefs, when you implement them, are DECISIONS, which will CONSTANTLY EXPRESS, for as long as you keep the belief. The EFFECTS of this belief will continue to be produced - CAUSED - so long as you keep the belief. If you have this belief lodged in your mind for 20 years saying "my leg is damaged", it will constantly ensure that the leg shows up as damaged for 20 years. It's like you develop an ATTITUDE, and you keep this attitude going, and every day you have this attitude, and therefore every day PRODUCE the same EFFECTS.

Yet you are free to change your mind at ANY TIME. And the instant that you undo that belief and accept the CURE of Atonement, all of those signs and symptoms of damage will disappear. INSTANTLY. With no bearing on how long it's been there or "why" it's "more difficult" to heal it if you've had it for decades.

It's simply not true that decisions or "influences" or "causes" occur "momentarily", at one moment in time, affecting things just briefly (e.g. an accident), causing irreparable damage which just happens to then carry on "on its own". Nothing EVER carries on on its own. The mind HAS TO BE MAKING EVERYTHING HAPPEN AT ALL TIMES. "Mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

So you are either CONTINUING TO BELIEVE and therefore CHOOSE that the body be in a certain condition, for however long you decide to keep believing that, OR you change your mind and the body changes NOW.

It's through realizing this mechanism which is how things ACTUALLY work, that you will go on to realize this: WHEN the mind decides the body is sick, the body becomes sick. *****WHEN THE MIND DECIDES NOT TO BE SICK, IT INSTANTLY HEALS THE BODY*****. Or better, it instantly undoes the image it projected a moment ago and projects a fresh image of a body in a healed state SYMBOLIZING the beliefs of the mind. The body is not an end in itself, it only EVER is an EFFECT of the mind causing, choosing, believing.

As soon as the mind is changed and the BELIEF and NEED for the sickness are removed, do you really think the body just "carries on" being sick on its own? As if, once again, there is a cause-effect relationship through time where the PAST determines what the body's condition is NOW? It does not. If you remove the CONSTANT DECISION from the mind, as to the body suffering or being in a certain state, you are now making a NEW DECISION about the state of the body, and the body NOW MUST be projected in this "new form". This new appearance, to correlate to what your BELIEF IS NOW.

This means, there is a direct instant correlation between your state of mind and the state of the body. There is a DIRECT MIRRORING of mental health and physical health. If the mind contains an attack belief, the BODY will show up with attack in it. If the mind is HEALED, it ABSOLUTELY MUST only project a body THAT IS ALSO HEALED. Because the body is nothing but a SYMBOL OF THE MIND. The body is not a thing in its own right, with its own mind or will or continuity. There is no such thing as bodily continuity. There is only "what am I choosing to project this instant?"

You choose to switch out that movie reel, you get rid of the "broken leg" movie, take it out, the mind is clear of it, what happens? The leg STOPS SHOWING UP AS DAMAGED. Instantly. Because now there is a new projection, one which does NOT include broken legs.

I've seen this happen over and over. Typically, let's say that someone has a so-called "accident" (a choice to suffer), and in this accident they become "traumatized", and now they KEEP the trauma, and ADJUST to it, and allow it to stay. Basically that now means, they have formed BELIEFS, which are CHOICES, to go INTO a certain state of mind relating to this incident. Which means they now are carrying around with them this CONSTANT STATE OF SUFFERING, in the mind, which they have not healed. They have not UNDONE "what happened".

They have not released the pent up emotions relating to it. They have not freed themselves from ALLOWING (permitting) that incident to AFFECT them in any way. And so now they live under a dark cloud, choosing to STAY IN THE ACCIDENT MOMENT, continually, never letting it go. And therefore the symptoms and effects that are CAUSED BY THE BELIEF, continue to be regenerated and re-caused, at all times, every day. And as such every day is now suffering because they dipped down into hell and never got themselves back out of it.

When bad shit happens like that (you hurt yourself on purpose), you have to UNDO IT, otherwise you will simply carry it around with you CONSTANTLY going forward. You will not let it go. Until it is HEALED. You have to heal all such "events" and choices and beliefs relating to it, to ERASE IT FROM YOUR MIND. Then by doing so, you are no longer CHOOSING THAT IT BE HAPPENING. And therefore it does not occur, never did occur, and YOU are now re-living it every moment. When your mind STOPS believing in it, the symptoms MUST DISAPPEAR. They cannot show up WITHOUT your belief, and believing is choosing. If "life beats you down", you HAVE TO GET UP AND ATONE.

So in summary, decision making is a PERPETUAL thing, not a momentary thing. You are ALWAYS expressing from who you think you are. You are CONSTANTLY emitting and projecting based on your beliefs. And your beliefs are choices. So you don't ever make momentary decisions, you instead decide to go into or commit to a LONG-TERM state, and then you stay there in that state for years, not changing your mind. When you change your mind, it doesn't matter how long you've been in that state, your NEW STATE of mind must now project, NOW, a fresh image of a body. NOT CONNECTED TO the past "condition". The body does not have any continuity! It is not subject to causes and effects in the world. It is caused solely by your mind.

Which means, when your mind is sick, your body will show up as sick. When your mind is healthy, your body CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE, because it can ONLY represent what your MIND IS CHOOSING to symbolize itself as.

"A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being SANE, IT HEALS THE BODY."

"A damaged body is PROOF THE MIND **HAS NOT** BEEN HEALED."

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

This pretty much explains why you have the freedom to deny God.

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free.

You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack HIMSELF, and God is not insane. When you denied HIM, you WERE insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's Creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HIMSELF to you in your Creation, and His gifts ARE eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?"

Note also that "separation" as in the theoretical idea that you CAN BE separate (which is impossible), is totally different from "THE separation", which is another name for the fall of man, the tiny mad idea. We DID in fact have the idea, we DID believe it, and we DID "fall". This is why there appears to be a facebook. BUT, the fall is not actual real separation, it's just belief in it and a denial that actual separation is impossible.

"The Separation (not ACTUAL separation, but the state of believing it's possible) HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

So we did have the tiny mad idea, we did go into it through belief (which is really denial), and we did find ourselves in a "lower order reality". But this state in which we SEEM separate is not ACTUAL separation or real separation, which is impossible. It's just us MISTAKEDLY believing that it's possible and happening.

THE separation, the fall from Heaven, did occur. But it was not an actual separation.

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. "

The failure to communicate (to receive, to give equally), resulted in a state of denial, not listening, being unaware of perfection, a breakdown in the experience of oneness. It did not change anything perfect, it just closed the communication channels to a degree.

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened.""

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

"Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception.

Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam". While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anaesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor."

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer.

The fruit of only ONE tree was "forbidden" to man in his symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it, or it could not have BEEN eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?"

"Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the "self concept," a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself."

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior."

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.

In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:

First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him.

These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.

To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

So you see, we are IN a state of sleep, dreaming, denying, pretending not to be as God created us, imagining things are true which are not, being unwilling, and trying to give it reality through belief. But none of it is true, or really happening, what it represents (an actual separation) is fictional, and it's just an illusion masquerading as a separation.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

Ok let's break down this passage and find out what it's saying.

"A miracle is a correction."

Before the correction, your mind is in a state of confusion, darkness ego. You are on a lower rung of the ladder. The correction corrects your mind and raises you up to a higher rung on the ladder. The false belief, mistaken perception, block to awareness, denial etc is "corrected" ie healed, and your mind opens up to some light. This alters your perception indirectly.

"It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false."

Being "like drops of healing rain", miracles are a little bit like detergent or soap for your mind. The correction actually comes from a higher level, e.g. the eyes of christ or through Jesus or Holy Spirit. The miracle shines or blesses or soaks into the "corrupted thought", the illusion, the false belief, the darkness, and "fixes it". Cleans it up. Gets rid of the blockages and dirt in the mind. To remind your mind that illusions are false, it lifts your awareness up towards forgiveness, into the light, where you have the correct perspective ie the state of forgiveness. They heal you so that you can recognize what is true and false rather than being confused. It doesn't have to add anything to do this (other than love which was lacking - "miracles supply a lack" of love/life).

"It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits."

So this takes place in your mind within the range of perception between false and true perception. You start out perceiving and believing falsely and the miracle drips into your mind and heals the error, undoes the blockage or confused belief, and raises the mind up toward the atonement. It can't lift you up any higher than perception will go ie up towards atonement/forgiveness because all they do is essentially "remove ego."

"Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it gives."

Note that Jesus elsewhere states that "healing is NOT a miracle." Nor are shifts in perception, which are temporary effects. Miracles in fact are like nuggets of light, sparks, impulses, energy, love-power-bubbles, which come down from a higher level and heal the mind, lifting it up and returning it to life ie resurrection. Miracle are the REMEDY, which cause healing and shifting to occur, but miracles are independent of the healing or shifts. They are not the healing itself, they are the "healer" or healing agent. They prepare the mind for being in a state of salvation by gradually erasing all the ego junk and setting you free. They also can be transferred, given, sent, broadcast to others like a little package of life-force, causing resurrection.

"A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways."

For miracles to occur, or for you to "do them", you have to GIVE them ie to extend love. You cannot give miracles without receiving them also, and you cannot receive them unless you are willing to give them. Giving miracles to others, ie extending christ love, blesses both of you, and lifts you both up, and benefits both the giver and the receiver simultaneously. When you send love to someone, you will feel invigorated and lightened. You can't love without being loved. Nor can you perform miracles unless you are willing to also be healed. This is the opposite to the world's laws which say that you receive without giving or give without receiving, as in the unhealed healer.

"A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."

This is an important part about body healing. Perception is upside down or backwards, when what is true is mistaken for what is false and vice versa. Levels become confused, and e.g. the lower level is thought to cause the higher, or body causes mind, or world/dream causes the dreamer. This is corrected because the distorted beliefs are undone (victimhood etc) and the mind is healed, thus perception changes as a RESULT of mind healing. Note that what you perceive comes from what you project FIRST, which comes from what you believe and value as true FIRST. Perception has no causal power in it, it's passive, like reading a book. Note that "perception is a RESULT not a cause".

In addition, the "strange distortions that were manifest" includes THE BODY'S PHYSICAL SICKNESS, because an unforgiving mind FORCES the body into sickness and death. The body becomes "distorted" by the mind through kind of "mind-force fields", which act on the body when coming from unloving attitudes and "hurt" the body, distorting it into forms of sickness, away from the body's "natural" blueprint of healthy functioning. When the mind is having upside-down/backwards beliefs/perceptions, it is believing in sin and attack, is projecting onto the body, and is using the body as a weapon. Thus the body becomes sick. As mind is receiving/giving a miracle, mind is healed, the remedy is provided, perception auto-adjusts as a result, AND the "strange distortions that were MANIFEST (visible)" in the body are also corrected. They simply are reversed and disappear because the mind stops holding the body in a twisted formation and lifts away all attack from it, thus healing it and restoring it. "Now is the body healed by miracles."

So moving upwards towards forgiveness, receiving healing, being corrected, having false beliefs undone, moving into the light and love, heals the mind, fixes perception, and then ALWAYS results in the body being healed. Or rather, "un-attacked".

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain."

"It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

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

The miracles don't "do" something to the body so much as they CEASE the ego doings that were attacking it and which were BLOCKING love from shining on the body to heal it. And without constant ego distortion the body image "reverts" to its undistorted form. To me it's kind of like the body has a standard healthy form and then mind "twists, bends, distorts it" making it appear differently (as sickness), but if you remove the distorting/force-fields/mind-bending you're simply left with the healthy body showing up.

"Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified."

Once the miracle has done its healing, mind is corrected so perception is in line with truth and forgiveness is seen as the only sane way to see things. Unforgiveness is what has been undone. Remember "the miracle does nothing. It merely takes away..." (which is kind of a doing) and it removes the distortions... it does appear thus to DO something, it does heal the body as well, it's just that it does it by UNDOING the ego influence and cancelling the evil distortions.

"Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. "

Here Jesus is kind of shifting gears and is no longer talking about how miracles heal and move you up towards forgiveness, but is now talking about where miracle actually COME FROM - from the top down. e.g. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Being IN forgiveness, having RECEIVED a miracle, and your mind now being CORRECT, YOU now "deliver them" to all you look on and miracles become effortless EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE which have miracle-working capabilities, because love heals and undoes error. You can now bestow miracle onto others from a christ-minded state of love and GIVE the miracles you have received.

Note that this raises the question, who does or where does the miracle come from when you personally are in a state of hell? Apparently you are not able to DO them until you are loving enough and close enough to christ. "Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first." WHO bestows miracles on you when YOU are in the dark? Is it a healing that comes from the Holy Spirit? Does Jesus inject healing into your mind, like he says he does? "I inspire all miracles" etc. Certainly your distorted ego is not a miracle worker, nor is any beginner to the course. Yet you are able to find healing through forgiveness and purification work, most of this purification work is I think NOT a miracle.

"Miracles ENTAIL (require, before beginning to do them), a sudden shift into vertical perception." Vertical perception is christ vision. You have to be pretty advanced in your own mentally healed state in order to be able to DO them. In order to receive them you have to be able to GIVE them. So somehow you have to get yourself "high enough" first, and that takes purification work.

... skipping a couple paragraphs...

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

Miracles are resurrection devices. They heal the mind and lift it up towards atonement. They literally GIVE LIFE where it was lacking, reversing the signs of death. The natural side effect is the cessation of ego attack, which eliminates the present-moment projection of body distortions and thus immediately heals all sickness and raises the dead. Every miracle increases life. "Miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life". Every miracle is a resurrection. "Miracles raise the level of communication." "Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead". By giving/receiving loving healing through expression/extension of love, where "miracles are a spark of life", the SPARK or POWER inherent to love is given and blesses and CAN REVERSE DEATH.

The ultimate result of miracles naturally is that there is nothing left TO UNDO, because everything has been healed, and so their PURPOSE comes to an end as the world is undone and all sickness is eliminated and all death cancelled. Before this ending, bodies become healed and now symbolize ONLY LIFE and become incapable of death, because "the mind being sane heal the body." And now the body is used for Christ/Holy Spirit purposes, representing LIFE and HEALING, and is a walking demonstration of miracle mindedness, now able to give the same miracles to others.

"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.

Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.

Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.

This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.

It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.

This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.

Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.

So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.

This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.

There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.

You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.

Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.

It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.

It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.

On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.

The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.

This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.

But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.

A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.

The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.

Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.

Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.

Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.

But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.

All is well. It's just a room.

The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.

As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.

The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.

To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.

Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.

If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.

True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".

Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.

To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.

Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.

In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

"A world forgiven cannot last."

As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.

To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.

In the past, my wife became disabled and was unable to fend for herself. She became dependent upon me. I had to take over responsibility for her life, her wellbeing, her decisions, her food and cleanliness, her health. I had to keep her alive.

Now, in that scenario there was a lot of pressure. Having developed dementia and brain damages she would sometimes act out, lashing out at people, hitting people, swearing at people. She didn't mean to, she couldn't control it.

Because I took on responsibility for her life, I felt it was up to me to keep her going, to manage her behaviour, to feed clothe wash and support her, to administer medications, to take her to dialysis treatments 3 times a week for years, to get through hospital visits, to defend her against inept doctors and nurses, and to generally try to stop her from dying.

All of this began to produce some ego-creep in me, in which I started to feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and afraid. I felt afraid that if I didn't do the right thing she would die. If I didn't do the right thing, her health would decline. If I didn't do the right thing, there would be judgement and attack, possibly even legal action.

There was shame and embarrassment and guilt when she would act out. There was fear, that if she acted out towards the very same medical people that were providing "life support", she would get herself kicked out and would die. There was fear that she might not make it through the night, that her breathing was poor, that she might do something to make herself worse off. And feelings of guilt crept in that I wasn't doing it well enough.

You could say, as some would, that this was to be expected. Given all the pressure, all the responsibility, all the support and time and management and effort I had to give just to keep her going, to put out fires, to stop things from getting worse, anyone would feel upset and lost, afraid and guilty, ashamed and embarrassed.

But that's not what A Course in Miracles would say. It would say that there is a secret of salvation - that we are doing this all to ourselves. It would say that if I felt guilt or shame, I must've chosen to feel it. It would say that if I was afraid, I must've decided to buy into fear. It would say that if I was resisting death, that was a choice on my part. It would say if I was embarrassed about how she broke the rules today, that was something I was taking personally by myself.

So I had to look at this, because it was all part of me becoming a victim in this scenario, of seeing myself as constantly on the defensive, under attack, fighting against the institutions. I had started to blame myself, that it was my fault. The sense of responsibility was shifting into a sense of personal guilt, that if anything went wrong somehow it reflected on me. That if she acted out or made things worse for herself, it meant I was more ashamed somehow.

Obviously this is not something that was anything to do with me really, was not my fault or my doing. But of course when you have a lot of social and peer pressure and medical pressure and even legal pressure to say, you have to look after her right otherwise the punishment will come, that can be very tempting. I did buy into it to some degree, and I take take it on as a personal thing. And this resulted in my attacking myself.

So in order to apply the secret of salvation, I have to look at that and see, I was NOT being caused by other people, I was not responsible for what she did even if in physical terms I was, I was not guilty for anything that went wrong, I was not shameful for her lashing out at people, and I was not to be blamed for failures and losses and dramas and various other forms of things I couldn't control.

The secret says, that if you are upset, you are doing it to yourself. So that means, I made myself guilty. It means I shamed myself, it wasn't other people doing it. It means I made myself afraid by believing in the body and in death and in threats. It means I chose to be embarrassed, to feel incapable, to feel loss. I did that to myself.

You might also say, it's quite a tall order to expect someone going through such a difficult thing to have to rise up to a state of perfection. To not react at all, to have no investment, to not take things personally, to not feel threatened. Indeed it is quite a tall order. But it's the ego that really makes things feel like hell, it's the lack of responsibility and power that makes you see yourself as victimised and under attack. It's not our natural state to be positioned as a victim like that.

So I take my power back. The power that I gave to these people, the power that I gave to the situation, the power that I gave to her. I take back the power that I disowned by playing a role of caregiver and saviour and protector. I take back the power that said it was my fault, my job, my responsibility, my role and identity, to have to be responsible for another person's life and wellbeing. I take back my power to recognize I chose to see myself as under pressure and attack, threatened by death and its cohorts, and these things have NO power over me.

It is ONLY by taking back your power that you can be not a victim, can let go of the various victim roles like being guilty or ashamed, embarrassed or lost, afraid and powerless. For me it was a profound lesson which actually, overall, did increase my power and my awareness and my sense of responsibility. It wasn't a loss or a failure, it's just that the lesson was so strong that it also knocked me down a few pegs in some areas and became overwhelming.

I am not a victim of the world. I am not a victim of doctors and nurses. I am not a victim of the law. I a not a victim of official rules or requirements or paperwork or legal proceedings. I am not a victim of what another person needs or how they act or what they choose to do to others. I am not responsible for causing my wife's suffering or sickness or behaviours. I am not guilty, and I am not ashamed. I am the holy son of God, guiltless and sinless, pure and innocent.

We must think of ourselves as immortal beings, still as God crated us, still perfect and pure and holy and good. We cannot sin, and have never sinned. We are not guilty, and cannot become guilty. We have never been attacked by anyone or anything in the world. We cannot suffer unless we try to make ourselves suffer. I was not suffering because of the situation, or my wife, or the medical staffs, or family members, or anyone else. I cannot suffer unless I choose to do so, and I had chosen to do so. And now I choose again.

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."