"Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through prayer, love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."
Ok so... we talk about GIVING something in a miracle - expressing love. But there is another half to this - the RECEIVING of love. We are actually all quite averse to RECEIVING FROM GOD because we denied that God is our father, threw away our inheritance, and tried NOT TO RECEIVE in the separation. And the only reason we are all so miserable and suffering is because we are not willing to RECEIVE AND EXTEND. God's gift is to simply "give what you have been given."
This is really about the higher level of prayer. In lower prayer, you see yourself or others as lacking and in need, and so you make the need real and then ask for its removal. You pray "God, please take this away" or "God, please help them stop being so whatever."
But these are requests based on a belief that something is wrong. And believing something is wrong with ANYONE is the same as believing they are guilty and dysfunctional. "God, please help my enemy stop being such an asshole." Or, "God, please help my team to win the match." Or, "God, that person is so defective, please heal them."
This isn't miracle working. Miracles operate at the much higher level of true prayer. Real prayer is not based on believing that something is wrong and then asking that it be fixed. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition that NOTHING is wrong, God has ALREADY GIVEN what is needed, and NOTHING is lacking.
This high state of prayer is a willingness to RECEIVE LOVE from God, to acknowledge he is the cause of you, that you have received effect from him, and is a reclaiming of your inheritance.
The ego would say, in order to give something you have to lose it, and so giving is not receiving, and if you give love you will use up your love and run out. That in order to heal another, you have to sacrifice and lose what you have, and they better be grateful for transferring their lack to you.
But in this there is no receiving and no inclusion in what is being received. The golden rule says what you give you receive and all you give is given to yourself. But it also means, you have to be willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD, in order to HAVE LOVE TO GIVE.
So you cannot work miracles without first receiving God for yourself, because you then have to EXTEND what you have received and GIVE GOD in order to perform a miracle for another. That means a recognition, acknowledgement, and gratitude, that God HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING ALREADY.
Everything was given you in your creation. It is your natural inheritance. You threw that inheritance away by denying it when you bought into the mad idea and adopted an authority problem. The authority problem has to be undone so that you recognize 1) God is your creator 2) You are not God's creator, and therefore 3) God has given something to you.
Recognizing that everything has been given to you should inspire natural gratitude to God, and where there is gratitude there is love. To THANK GOD for what God HAS ALREADY given, and is giving now, is to RECEIVE LOVE. And THAT is what the highest form of prayer really means.
It is more aligned with an experience of a COMMUNION with God in which you are sharing with God, receiving from God, and giving what you receive. It is your natural state. In this state, you are open to BOTH GIVE AND RECEIVE, not just to give.
In this state of what we're calling prayer you are not really asking for something that you DON'T have, or that another LACKS. You are looking to the light and recognizing IT IS THERE already, because God has put it there already. He has fore-given (given ahead of the need) in order to prevent a state of need.
So you be grateful to God and thank God for having already given perfect love to you, and you open to RECEIVE that love and LET yourself BE loved. And then you receive that love from God, which heals your mind in a way like nothing else can. And then you GIVE that love as a miracle.
Once you have love, expressing yourself is miraculous. Every way that you then express the love you have received and shared with God, is a way of EXTENDING and SHARING that love. God is given, and is allowed to extend THROUGH you to another. This also entails recognizing that the light and love that is IN another IS ALREADY THERE, and IS NOT MISSING.
You receive God within yourself, acknowledge and be grateful that God HAS GIVEN IT ALREADY, and so you are blessed with it. And then you recognize that it is ALREADY IN ANOTHER - seeing past all sense of lack and damage and brokenness and sickness as UNREAL and NOT TRUE, seeing past it (which is forgiveness - to overlook), to the light. To see the Holy Spirit IN THE OTHER ALREADY, because God ALREADY PUT IT THERE.
Then you continually extend God from the prayerful awareness of having been given God within you, as love and light and power, and you extend it (unconditionally give it with no strings attached) to the other who HAS IT, in order to amplify the awareness that it is ALREADY IN THEM. And so the light in them intensifies as you strengthen the idea of the Holy Spirit in them, and their mind becomes healed also.
The completed sequence then is simply: "A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God (received in prayer) through Me (extended by me) to all My Brothers (acknowledging they already have it also)." This is achieved through higher prayer, which is now a MEDIUM through which God is extended, in recognition of a pre-existing perfection that overrides any notion that something is wrong.
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."
"I give the miracles I have received." "God is but love, and therefore, so am I."
"However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception."
"Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."
This is the VERY SIMPLE essence of our work with ACIM to return to sanity. We simply need to identity and recognize, correctly, WHAT IS TRUE, AND WHAT IS FALSE.
This recognition comes about through the DISTINCTION between the two. Some things are simply inherently true - such as the creations of light. Some things are simple inherently false - such as the illusions of the dream world.
It is only because we have CONFUSED AND SWAPPED what is true and what is false, that we do not clearly recognize which is which. We have lost touch with reality and sanity. We simply need to learn to distinguish clearly between them, and recognize that ONLY that which is really true is true.
If your mind has confused or mixed or swapped truth and lies, it perceives accordingly. False perception is INVERTED perception, meaning what is true appears false and what is false appears true. This "total confusion" is the logical outcome of the ego thought system. It produces false perception in which NOTHING is recognized correctly.
To access true or accurate perception, that which actually is true must be "separated out" from that which is false. The false must be clearly and accurately recognized AS inherently false, and the true must be clearly accepted AS the only real truth. All real truth is of God. All real truth is THE KINGDOM and its contents. All real truth about YOU and your brothers is defined in the creation of souls.
When you have COMPLETELY distinguished correctly what really is true and what is not, BOTH the true and the false are recognized for what they are. The true - as in heaven or the real world, is seen as the only truth (vigilance for the Kingdom), while the false - the world of illusions - is regarded AS false and give no reality.
Jesus in fact tells us that if we give reality or truth TO that which is false, we will SEE IT, because we invest it with belief. This produces false perception and sees the world of bodies. When that which is true is the ONLY place where you allow there to be reality and truth, you will SEE ONLY the face of Christ.
This means that learning to SEE THE TRUTH (the Kingdom), allows you to OVERLOOK the false world (which is now the forgiven world, the veil, which disappears from sight). He wants us therefore to SEE ONLY REALITY.
Jesus makes reference to this many times over...
"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
"Recognize this, for it is true, and truth MUST be recognized, if it is to be distinguished from illusion"
"You do not have them now, because your mind is totally undisciplined, and you cannot distinguish between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear."
"Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice."
"Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true."
"Its sole concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand, and error on the other."
"His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made."
"Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false."
"Thought-systems are but true or false, and all their ATTRIBUTES come simply from what they ARE. Only the Thoughts of God ARE true. And all that follows FROM them, COMES FROM what they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from which they come."
"But a hypothesis is tested as either true or false, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If it is shown to be true it becomes a fact, after which no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status AS fact is questioned. ... EVERY idea which the ego has accorded the status of fact is questionable, because facts are in the realm of knowledge."
"For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion, you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."
"The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception."
"My role is to separate the true from the false in your own unconscious, so it can break through the barriers the ego has set up and shine into your minds."
"Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true."
"In his complete identification with the Christ, the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him, Jesus became what all of you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it. He made a clear distinction, still obscure to you, between the false and true."
"For reason sees the SOURCE of an idea as what will make it true or false."
"Innocent (or true) perception means that you NEVER misperceive, and ALWAYS see truly. More simply, this means that you never see what does not exist in reality."
"If nothing but the truth exists (and this is really redundant in statement, because what is not true CANNOT exist) Right-Minded seeing cannot see ANYTHING BUT perfection."
"The way to correct all such delusions is to withdraw your faith from them, and invest it ONLY in what is true. To whatever extent you side with false perception in yourself or others, you are validating a basic misperception. You CANNOT validate the invalid.""If you are willing to validate what is true in everything you perceive, you will make it true for you."
"The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."
"Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgement is in which perception ends."
"In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds much along the lines suggested very correctly by Bill, e.:
If perfect love casts out fear,
And if fear exists,
Then there is NOT perfect love.
But only perfect love really exists.
Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not existBelieve THIS and you WILL be free."
The idea of death was made as the opposite of the idea of God. The separation from God was total opposition to God's nature. It's an assertion that God does not exist, blotted out and dead.
Whatever attributes God has, death is the idea of the total absence of all of those attributes. A total lack of life, of love, of happiness, of peace, of sharing. Anything that God is, death opposes.
"The thought of death is ... the opposite to thoughts of life." UrW167L8
God is creation, and so death is destruction. God is permanent, and so death is change. God is love, and so death is murder. God is reality, and so death is an illusion.
In order to oppose God, the truth must also be opposed. That which is false is asserted as true. True and false become swapped. The truth of God becomes a lie, and the lie of death becomes a reality.
As a result, all of the attributes of God are assigned to death, while all the attributes of nothingness are assigned to God.
Death is now seen as inevitable, real, permanent, eternal, irreversible, powerful, known, true, dependable, trustworthy, welcoming, wanted, attractive, loved, salvation, peace and happiness. God is now seen as uncertain, changing, vulnerable, hateful, vengeful, nothing, meaningless, lifeless, mindless, unloving, destructive, dark, murderous, unwanted, rejecting, an enemy, selfish, unsharing and unreal.
The result is that we have a belief in death, which takes on every possible form. It takes on physical form, as well as in the form of changes of mind, states of feeling, types of thoughts and senses of identity. Every illusion, all of space and time, every perception arises in the idea of God's opposite.
"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come." UrW163L2
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?" UrM28A1
Anything less than the true nature of God is a form of death. This includes any sense of unhappiness, any notion of attack, any kind of sickness, any temptation, any desire for bodies, any false perceptions, any fear or guilt, any idol worship and any way that you see yourself and others as less than having eternal life.
There can't even be atoms and molecules and bodies and planets without the idea of death. Death is change and change is time and time is death. To be separated from life, from God, is to enter into an illusion of dying. Spacetime is the idea of the death of God, in which God appears to not exist.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him." UrW230W32
"And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born." UrM28A6
Every aspect of ego, every form of separation, every unloving relationship, every body worship is all a form of death. If you believe in anything but God's reality you believe in death and are trying to die. We came into this world precisely because we wanted to play with death and to pretend that we can die. We are immortal beings, making a world that is always dying in which we can pretend to die.
"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9
Undoing death is resurrection. To resurrect is to side with eternal life and reject every form of death. Sickness, which is "a little death", must be forgiven and reversed. Death of a body must be reversible. And an entire world rooted in death must be undone. Without the idea of death, spacetime cannot exist. And without death, there is no world and no separation from God.
"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." UrT12G3
"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real." UrM28A3
"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it." UrW163L7
"There is no death. The Son of God is free." UrW163
"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8
"There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever." UrW163L9
Is the miracle just for you, or for you to give to others also?
Did Jesus only experience miracles for Himself, or did He also share them with others?
When Jesus performed a forgiveness process, do you think that He was applying it only His personal, separate self and his own separate mind? Did the rules of forgiveness only work within his inner experience, or did they overflow onto others?
I am discovering something which I think has been majorly overlooked by the ACIM community. I overlooked it because I always thought "I" was doing the Course, therefore "I" was the one who needed forgiveness, that "I" should claim atonement for my ego self, and that therefore "I" am the only one who is going to benefit from forgiveness and miracles.
But the ego cannot claim the atonement for itself. So THAT "I" cannot be the Self that we are claiming the atonement for. Therefore if that I isn't the identity who experiences atonement, it must be an atonement that extends beyond that I, right? It must go beyond the ego self, and therefore the miracle MUST be shared with others. We MUST be awakening to a shared identity, which is a shared mind (minds that are joined cannot be sick), which means that whatever process of forgiveness and miracles I am applying, it CANNOT just apply to my "self".
I'm suddenly starting to see all manner of understandings about forgiveness, which I had applied to my "separate-me", suddenly applying to others. And as I look further into the idea of working "healing miracles" for others, it is starting to become glaringly obvious that the process of applying forgiveness "for my self" can actually be applied FOR another person.
In other words, this isn't all about me me me forgive myself. As within so without. The "in here" mind in this body is not all of my mind. The world "out there" is not outside of my mind. The out-there world is actually inside my mind because my mind CONTAINS the world. Now, we're talking about at the level of CHRIST here, not just the level of personal Higher-Self mind. The One Son, not the sonship.
I do believe that in ACIM Jesus is teaching us from a level of Christ much of the time, and that the truth's he's trying to point us to are at the Christ level, not just level 2 or 3. At the Christ level, the entire world is the ego, the entire world is an illusion, and the entire world is within my mind. Therefore, "other people" are also in my mind, they are part of my dreaming, their illusion of sickness and death showing up in form are aspects of MY delusions, and therefore I CAN heal their sickness by healing my "self" - ie returning to the Christ identity - the shared collective Christ consciousness.
That means the Course isn't just about me remaining separate - an ego - studying the Course in isolation, doing it "to myself" or "for myself", ie, for my separate identity. In order for miracles to express through me to "others", the rules of miracles must apply equally to the "me" that thinks it is separate inside this body, AND the "me" that is showing up externally. It is all One.
For example, when you look at someone else's body and you see sickness. If you believe it is real (God created it), there is an illusion in "the mind" relating to misperceiving that sickness. You think that illusion is in the mind that's in your body. So you go about a forgiveness process to correct that illusion seemingly in "your mind", to adjust your "personal perception", but it now means you see the other person's sickness correctly as an illusion. This however still leaves an illusion out there. The person is still sick. And in God's truth, illusions are not real, so that person cannot really be sick. Their illusory sickness must go!
So there is an "application" of a forgiveness process that is meant to be applied to OTHERS. This is the proper functioning of the "procedure" of performing a healing miracle for your brother. When bringing in the Holy Spirit and fulfilling your role as "asking for what you want" through commands, and are believing the person must be healed (per God logic) regardless of what *appearances* show, this means overlooking and thus forgiving the appearance of sickness being real.
The forgiveness is occurring in my mind and I move into a place of forgiveness, where I am not making errors, and where I do not see errors as real. And at the same time, that alignment with God will activate the Holy Spirit to flow through you. If you then express that the person is not sick but healthy, their body MUST respond and change to a healthy body.
My willingness to overlook the illusion of sickness in another, yes it heals my own mind if I have delusions about it, but once my mind is free of that delusion, I am now in a position of authority and power. And I am also now joining in mind with the brother. And I also no longer support their sickness. Therefore, as the loving thing to do, I can dispel it.
So what I'm seeing is, much of ACIM is taught as a sort of self-help program, focused on your separate self with no way to apply it to your brother, that you cannot apply it to them without splitting your mind, that you can only forgive yourself etc... but, there is confusion about IDENTITY here. WHO is being forgiven and that that leads to, is quite different.
You are the light of the world. You are the salvation of the world. That isn't passive. That isn't like just being a shiny light on a mountain top. It has power. It dispels illusions, not just at the personal-self level but at the united sonship level. This is why some of Jesus's teaching actually relate to being the Christ, in which all of the illusion exists, and the ability to overcome absolutely all physical laws.
You can wake up to your higher self at level 3, and be at peace with this world. But that will not necessarily grant you walking on water. To do that, you need to become the Christ.
And for the Christ, there are no limits.
In the ego's world, someone has to be to blame for everything that happens. It's way of thinking is a very closed system. No matter what happens, if something happens, someone is to blame for it, even if that person had barely any control over it or much to do with it at all. To the ego, this is responsibility.
The ego wants you to confess that you are, in fact, guilty, and that you do, in fact, deserve punishment, because you did, in fact, separate from God and make all manner of shit happen. To the ego, this is being responsible and 'mature'.
In the ego's model there is zero room for forgiveness. Absolutely no forgiveness whatsoever. Everything that 'happens' in the physical world is proof, to the ego, that it has caused "real consequences" to occur as a result of separating from God. It is evidence of sin, and proves that everyone involved is guilty without question. To the ego, anything 'happening' in this world is a sin, and only sin can happen. To the ego, nothing unsinful can ever happen and God is impossible, meaning innocence is impossible.
So to the ego, when someone makes a mistake, maybe they bump into the fridge and it knocks a glass tray that was resting on the top and it crashes to the floor, you can bet, to the ego, that person is "responsible" for this entire thing. Not just the accidental bumping, not just the item falling down, not just the smashing, but all of it. Every single bit of it. And, to the ego, every single bit of it was ON PURPOSE, completely deliberate and intentional, producing real irreversible effects. It will point the finger in condemnation and declare "you have sinned". The ego has no concept of `not on purpose` or `unintentional` or `accidental` because that would suggest not guilty, which it refuses to accept.
To the ego there is no room for anything happening without it being involved in guilt in some way. To the ego, nothing occurs but without someone's deliberate intention and involvement, and therefore every single thing proves that someone is guilty. The ego claims that if you own up to this and "accept responsibility" for this and take full responsibility upon yourself for every single part of what happened, then and only then might you be excused or let off. If there is even the slightest hint of what seems like a resistance to accepting this "responsibility" it will condemn you further for avoidance and irresponsible carelessness. It demands you must own up to what you did (sin), that you must completely admit to it (it happened), that you did it intentionally (its your fault) and that you should enter into shame and guilt and suffering because you DESERVE it.
This is not responsibility. It is condemnation. It is a death sentence. When you hold other people to these standards, where the ego exalts the idea of getting someone to admit to being wrong, you hold yourself to that standard also and therefore find yourself constantly guilty for every little thing you do. You don't really want that. It's a way to be a victim and to be constantly tortured and therefore in need of being constantly 'good' in order to avoid making even a tiny mistake.
It's okay to make mistakes and break shit and do things wrong and be in error and not know everything and not be accountable for every single little consequence of events set in motion. You're not guilty for clouds moving, or objects falling, or people bumping into each other. You're not even guilty for seeming to deliberately do something wrong. Why does mistakedness have to always call for judgement and attack and the 'justice' of punishment? Punishment is never justified and it fails to correct anything, so it does not really stand for a pure or right way of living but only for how to get fucked over when you step out of line.
True responsibility MUST include the concept of you being 100% innocent. True responsibility must mean that no matter what you did or what effects it had or how serious or whatever, you are still innocent. It must mean you are unconditionally innocent. There is nothing like this in the ego's repertoir. To let you off the hook here and there it would see as begrudging pardons, or stern warnings, and it would never ever consider that you could be wholly found innocent for EVERYTHING that you seemed to do as a blanket statement. Yet Holy Spirit sees only your innocence.
Do you deserve judgement, condemnation, proof of fault, the justice of punishment, self hatred and shame, or some horrific shock treatment in retaliation for an accident? Nope. You're not guilty, no matter what. You made a big giant mess? You deserve love. You totally fucked up your life? You deserve love. And you broke everyone else's favorite toys? If they have a shit-fit that's not exactly your responsibility. Not to justify any behavior. But you're always innocent. Always. And only by being innocent can you be truly responsible. Because you have a responsibility to BE INNOCENT.
People that make mistakes need to be returned to a corrected state of not making those mistakes. They need to be returned to love. This is in the best interests of everyone. It is completely against everyone to punish that person or to feed lies and attack into them. That causes them to become your enemy. You don't want that. It's in everyone's interests that everyone be forgiven and reminded of the truth of who they are. We all need to own up to being God's innocent child. We all need to take responsibility for being who we authentically are, not who people condemn us for being. Responsibility WITHOUT the guilt.
True responsibility means ownership without blame. It also means that only the extension of God happens and there aren't any other consequences. It means everything is correctable. It means mistakes call for forgiveness and love, not punishment. It means you are let off the hook even before anything happens. It means that when stuff happens, you should be laughing, because it does NOT prove anything about your worth. It also means that you're not guilty when you make mistakes and you do not need to claim the guilt that surrounds them. You can own up to being mistaken, which is helpful, but this should never mean "I really did it".
Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.
Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.
When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.
However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.
"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."
(Urtext T27I10)
In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.
However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.
Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.
"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."
Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.
Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.
As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.
Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?
"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and ***no one dies without his own consent***. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."
No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.
And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.
You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.
And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.
You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.
Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.
"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."
(Urtext T27I10)
The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.
"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."
You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.
All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.
"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."
"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."
"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed ***from his own crucifixion***, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."
Somewhat channeled just now... Thanks Holy Spirit.
Fear is a protection against guilt. It is put in place to hide guilt. If the guilt were to be revealed, it would condemn you and you would "find the guilt" i.e. "be found guilty."
We put fear into place because we do not want to deal with the guilt that has created the fear. Guilt always is the source of fear because Sin confirms something really happened, guilt confirms that what you did was wrong and you're to blame, and then because of that you can't help but be afraid of punishment in the future.
Anyone who has guilt will become afraid.
So we actually use fear to put a layer of protection and disguise on top of guilt, to cover it up. Then we dwell on how afraid we are. And we project the fear as well because we don't want to live with the fear either. We don't want to be "found fearful". So then we try to get rid of the fear too by projecting onto others and accusing them of causing it.
The whole point of that projected fear, then, is to reverse cause and effect, to make it seem like the cause of the underlying guilt is someone else, and not ourselves. When we do this we're throwing a decoy out there and trying to pin blame on it. IF we can blame someone else for causing our fear, i.e. if we can project responsibility for the fear onto someone else, then we can find them GUILTY. Its then their fault. They seem to be causing the fear. They seem to also be threatening to 'create' the punishment that you believe you deserve (because deep down you feel guilty).
So then having projected fear and blamed its cause on someone, covering up your secret plan to use it as a cover for guilt, you'll believe that they are the ones who are 'making you be afraid' - because by projecting you are completely "disowning" the fear and are trying to get rid of it. So if you can pull off this deception, even deceiving yourself, that someone else is causing this fear, then you've accomplished a tremendous switcharoo... a wonderful coverup story that prevents you from having to go back and look at the GUILT that caused all this fear in the first place.
Other people are not making you afraid. They are not turning you into fear. They are not attacking you or getting ready to punish you. But you'll still believe in punishment forthcoming while you cover up the guilt and don't heal it, because fearing that punishment (which HAS to come if you believe you are guilty) doesn't really get rid of the cause of the fear, and you still believe in guilt, and even though you're trying to make out that other people are the ones who are sinning against you, it STILL does not convince you that you are safe or innocent.
You'd rather be afraid than be guilty. Even though the fear is really about you becoming WORSE OFF than when you were 'just guilty', because now you are guilty AND afraid, the fear pretends to hide the guilt and make it 'unconscious', so that you seem to not be aware of it, so that you can pretend that you are ONLY having to deal with fear. And then of course you are ONLY having to deal with the idiots that you project the fear onto - its all about them, having disowned responsibility for the fear as well.
So even though fear sucks, and fear of punishment sucks, and being so afraid and so PROJECTING of fear that you believe you're actually WITNESSING the people show up who are there to come and punish you (for you, so that you can blame them ;-), you'd still rather be in fear and projecting of fear than be guilty.
You don't want to look at the fact that you CANNOT BE AFRAID unless you are guilty. Who can have anything to fear if they are innocent? Who, who believes they are not guilty, can possibly have a NEED for an ego device that *seems* to alleviate the guilt by covering it up and turning it into fear?
You also cannot be PUNISHED if you are not afraid. The only way you can find punishment is by projecting your fear onto other people, effectively recruiting them as your attackers to do your dirty work for you, WITH your will, pretending that it is against your will. If you are not afraid there is nothing to project, which means you will not READ INTO other people a suspicious frightening motive of bringing down GOD's WRATH of punishment for your sin.
Remember this all goes back to the underlying belief that you sinned by separating from God. That's what this is entirely all about. All the guilt is about that. All the fear that comes from the guilt is about that. All of the projection of fear is about that. And all of the punishment that you're sure will be forthcoming because of how guilty you are, is all about that. It's all about what you think God will and should do to you, which you are deciding FOR Him on His behalf - i.e. on your own. Which is a mistake.
So where are you on the scale of forgetfulness? Are you in the separation stage? Have you turned your experience into one of sin? Have you gone further and blamed yourself for the sin, demanding that you be responsible for it? Have you taken the guilt even further and realized that it means you must be punished, which induces fear? Are you in fear mode? Or have you taken fear and projected it onto others outside of you, describing all the ways that it is their fault that this whole thing is happening? No matter where you are on that scale, right now, you CAN get back to God's love by retracing your steps.
And that means, if you are terrified of punishment, you're pretty sure to be in a state of projected fear right now. You need to take back that projection so that you at least own the responsibility that the fear is yours, its in you, and you made it up. Then you need to rewind that more and ask yourself, WHY am I afraid? It ABSOLUTELY IS NOT because of any projected reason or outside person. Ever. Absolutely not. That's heading in the wrong direction TOWARD the ego. You need to turn around and go the other way, back the way you came. Back toward the Holy Spirit. Retrace... if I am afraid now, it's because I believe I SHOULD be afraid because I believe I AM GUILTY.
Under the fear is guilt. What is it you are so guilty of that it requires such a fear of terrible punishment? Why are you so fervently TRYING to orchestrate that punishment, bring it on, and make it happen, forcing it to occur, through the device of fear and fear's projection? Why do you deserve such a punishment? Did you sin? Did you do something wrong? Do you have a false BELIEF that says you're a guilty sucker and don't deserve FORGIVENESS? You always deserve forgiveness. Always. There is ALWAYS a way to return safely to God's welcoming love.
Retrace those steps. Go backwards. Undo the fear by undoing the guilt. Get out of the fear by recognizing you are NOT GUILTY and therefore have NOTHING to be afraid of. Recognize your innocence. Holy Spirit recognizes it for you while you pretend otherwise.
You are perfectly safe in God's love and He will not condemn you of the things that you think you are condemned for. You are certain that there is NO WAY you can be forgiven for what you did, and NO WAY that it can be TRUE that you are innocent and deserving of love. This is your mistake. This is what must be corrected. You MUST find a way to remember you are not guilty, or you will just keep feeling afraid.
You don't need to 'deal with' your punishing attackers. If you stop projecting your shit onto them you will not see them AS attackers and it won't be their fault you are afraid. You also don't need to really work on the fear, because if you get rid of the GUILT then the fear will automatically disappear completely. It has no foundation. And you don't even especially need to work on guilt because if you have NOT DONE ANYTHING WRONG, you have not sinned, and you have not separated from God, then there isn't any call for guilt and you are perfectly innocent.
Choose again. You are not stuck and you are not being victimized by anything but your own certainty that you deserve it. Choose again. You are worthwhile and lovable and deserve complete forgiveness.
God loves you still. There is a way to be free of this whole nightmare. Choose in the DIRECTION of the Holy Spirit and your way will be made straight.
Let's take a closer look at sin and find out why no-one has ever sinned.
"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
"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."
""Sinless" means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God's you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful."
What is sin?
Simply, it is the attempt to reverse cause and effect. You are the effect of God, and God is the cause of you. When you attempt to reverse this, so that you are CAUSING GOD, this is "sin". It would mean God is now affected by you, changed by you, against His will. That means you have attacked Him and changed him. The belief that you CAN do this, and that you HAVE done this, is the belief that sin is REAL. But this is IMPOSSIBLE.
There is a simple fact to keep in mind. You CANNOT change God in any way. You cannot cause him or affect him. You cannot do anything against His will. You cannot attack Him or make Him be something He does not want to be. Which means, literally, YOU CANNOT SIN against Him. You cannot cause God, therefore you cannot sin. Your hands are tied. You cannot attack anything real.
This also means that IN REALITY, nothing real can be threatened, nothing real can be sinned against, nothing real can be CHANGED, and therefore SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE. You literally cannot go against, oppose, object to, resist, attack, defend against, or do anything TO God or anything real. Sin is literally impossible. Sin literally CANNOT HAPPEN, and HAS NOT HAPPENED. And this isn't mere theory, you literally HAVE NOT SINNED AT ALL.
It is vital to absorb this FACT, because it lays the foundation for correctly framing what's to come next.
You have not sinned, you cannot sin, sin cannot occur, you cannot attack God, you cannot change reality, and you cannot cause the death of life. SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY.
Now. As you find yourself in a DREAM WORLD, Earth, reading words on a screen, you are not being aware of reality. You are not effectively "IN" reality. The world is an attempt to overthrow reality and replace it with unreality. The world is unreal. It's a dream of death. It's an ATTEMPT TO SIN, despite the fact that actually doing this IN REALITY is impossible. It's your best effort to TRY to PROVE that sin is not only possible but has occurred.
You MADE UP a bunch of dream illusions to try to paint a picture of what it might look like *IF* you had sinned. That picture is this world. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." It's a picture of THE IMPOSSIBLE. "It is the world you see that is impossible." In this world, NOTHING HAPPENS. "All events are nowhere."
Yet this world SEEMS to contain things happening, seems to feature bodies attacking bodies, and seems riddled with sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." And if we BELIEVE that this world is REALITY, we WILL believe that the "sins" that occur are REAL sins, mistaking FANTASY SINS for reality. These ILLUSIONS of sin, IMPOSSIBLE sin seeming possible, are literally nothing but fiction, with NO REAL CONSEQUENCES against anything real. God is not affected by it, nothing real is threatened by it. You literally have NOT CAUSED ANY DAMAGE OR HARM EVER.
The fact remains. You literally cannot sin. You can't even begin to sin. This world is not real and so anything "happening" here is not REALLY happening. If you break a window, you did not break a real window. You broke a dream window. If you killed a flock of sheep in a fit of rage, you didn't. You merely dreamed of doing so. If you think you did some terrible crime that is punishable by death and suffering, you are ATTEMPTING to hold a deathly judgement against an INNOCENT Son of God, BY MISTAKE.
Because here's the fact of the matter. If you cannot sin against anything real, and therefore sin is impossible, you believing you HAVE DONE SO MUST BE MISTAKEN. You MUST be confused. You MUST be delusional. You MUST be out of your mind insane if you think it's even POSSIBLE to sin, yet alone that you have, or "have the proof" to show for it. There is no such thing as evidence of sin. There are only lies and illusions of sin. There is no real sin. ALL SIN IS FAKE.
Only by being very mistaken does anyone BELIEVE they have sinned. Only in confusion are we convinced that it's even POSSIBLE to cause something against its will. Only by being in ERROR having made an error of discernment does it seem plausible or "happening" that there can be "real death", "murder", "war" and the like. These are DREAMS of hell, not real hell. They are illusions of sin in an illusory world.
You have never sinned. You will never sin. God finds you guiltless, sinless and innocent forever. This is what you need to wake up to - accepting this is FORGIVENESS. The overlooking of sin, the overlooking of guilt, the overlooking of death. There is no sin, or guilt, or suffering, or sickness, or death. ALL of it SEEMS real, SEEMS to be happening, SEEMS like an awful terrible nightmare. But it is nothing BUT a nightmare. It's a nightmare to BELIEVE you can sin when you can't, or that you HAVE sinned when it's impossible.
You cannot sin. You will not sin. You have not sinned. There is no sin. No one has ever sinned. No one can sin against you. You have never sinned against anyone. YOU ARE NOT A SINNER. You are ETERNALLY INNOCENT. This is the only verdict the Holy Spirit will accept about you because He knows without a doubt that your idea of sinning is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE and completely illusory.
You are DREAMING of sinfulness, suffering and death. You are punishing yourself in a hell of your own making for NO GOOD REASON. You are finding yourself guilty for having DONE NOTHING. You are not criminal, sinful, or guilty. You have never hurt anything or anyone. You are EXONERATED because IN REALITY SIN DOES NOT EXIST. If you think it exists, you are unaware of reality.
Belief in sin IS THE PROBLEM, not the sin itself. This whole world, the entire ego separation, the dream of death, is ALL about your BELIEF that you DID SIN, in DENIAL of the fact that YOU DID NOT. The WHOLE THING is a case of mistaken identity and false accusations. A claim that you accomplished something you could never do. It's an attempt to invent the evidence and give it credit/reality so that it SEEMS to prove you DID commit a horrible crime against God. YOU COULD NOT, NEVER DID, NEVER WILL.
So this whole world is A MISTAKE. You are MISTAKEN when you believe you or others are sinful or guilty. "BELIEVING in" sin being true is the actual issue. Your belief is mistaken. Your belief is madness. Your belief is an ERROR. And all errors can be CORRECTED. You believing you CAN and HAVE sinned is NOT TRUE, it and this error in thinking needs to be corrected so that you will REALIZE, you never did anything AT ALL. You accused yourself FALSELY.
No matter what you think you did, no matter how extreme or severe or what the consequences seemed to be, YOU HAVE NOT done a single thing EVER that God is upset with you about. You have ONLY been very mistaken. You have only ever had "mental illness", believing something is possible that isn't. You've acted insanely because you were not in your right mind. No one in their right mind believes in sin because the authority-problem notion of "I can change reality" is utterly ridiculous.
Mistakes call for FORGIVENESS AND HEALING. To forgive is to overlook the error and recognize the truth. You have not sinned. There is no sin. "And in this view are all your sins forgiven." A mistaken person merely needs healing, not punishment. You deserve forgiveness and healing, not condemnation. You have simply been confused and have mistaken illusions and dreams of sinning for reality.
Not one single sin in the history of the planet has ever happened. There is no sin anywhere. All "doing" is illusion. Everyone is eternally innocent. God finds you worthy, and loves you forever. Sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You are holy and always were.
In A Course in Miracles, Jesus gives a new definition for what is life, and what is death. He does not mean that life is "the stuff in this world" and that death is "when bodies are totally dead and lie on the ground decaying." He has a totally different view of life and death because he recognizes what things ARE, not what we think they are.
"Life" is equated ONLY with eternal life. That which lives forever, cannot be attacked, never becomes sick, does not age or grow old and cannot die. Life which extends forever and produces more life through miraculous creation in the extension of God's being, which is the ONLY function of Spirit. That is real life. And such a life is only possible in what Jesus refers to as HEAVEN. And Heaven is considered to be completely OPPOSITE to Earth and a totally different place to exist. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."
"Death" is equated with anything that is NOT that or which opposes it in any way, which includes dreams, and includes this world (Earth). It includes any state of separation, any dream world, any dream body, any thought of attack, any even minor upset, even a slight grievance, all forms of sickness ("all sickness is but a little death"), all levels of suffering, and the "final" death itself. In other words, everything in this world and universe is considered to be DEATH. It is a dream of death. The entire thing is made of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world."
This is why "there is no life outside of Heaven". There is nothing ETERNAL in this world, because all things visible will end and all things that perish are illusions. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for everything He creates MUST be eternal as Himself." And let's face it, without denial, nothing in this world lasts forever. This world is the idea of being outside of Heaven, it is founded on separation, and it is founded on denial of life. Which is death.
Jesus states, this world is "at best an ILLUSION OF LIFE, at worst, death". Even if this world is seen with forgiving eyes, even if it is seen through true perception, even if it is supposedly loved, it is STILL an illusion of an opposite to Heaven and it STILL entails the idea of death, without which it CANNOT seem to exist at all.
This is what Jesus means by life and death. Life is Heaven, Earth is death. Life is eternal. Anything limited is an illusion of life and is made of the idea of death. Anyone who has perception still needs healing because they're still inside a separated state and are inside the idea of death. Anyone who is a teacher of God, using the body for a holy purpose, is still inside a dream of death.
Until you GO HOME TO HEAVEN, you do not have access to eternal life. Even though it is permanent, and hiding behind this world's illusions. Until you are IN HEAVEN, and have forgotten this world Earth, you have not CLAIMED eternal life or gone beyond that which perishes and ends. Earth IS NOT HEAVEN. It cannot be heaven. Its laws and the spacetime belief that it is based on a TOTALLY OPPOSED TO LIFE. The things you see in this world which you THINK are life, are NOT. They are illusions of life.
Even the "real world" is an ILLUSION OF LIFE. It may reflect or seem SIMILAR to or like Heaven but it is NOT the same thing. And nor is LOVE, in this world, the same thing as LOVE in Heaven. Because love means LIFE and CREATION and that is ONLY POSSIBLE in Eternity. Outside of Heaven, LOVE IS AN ILLUSION OF LOVE, a REFLECTION, which appears like a picture, an image, symbolizing love. It falls short of the full love of God which can ONLY be experienced beyond this universe, beyond the world, beyond the body, beyond ALL illusions of life.
This is why RESURRECTION HAS MEANING. When you get to the end of the curriculum, it ENDS IN THE RESURRECTION. It ends there because resurrection means LIFE. And that means, that every state you were in BEFORE the resurrection, WAS NOT LIFE. Resurrection is the RETURN TO eternal life. Before that, you did not have awareness of eternal life. You only had awareness of dreams of life. The body has absolutely nothing to do with LIFE.
"The body does not live or die, it is nothing at all." To think that EVEN the human body is alive, is a mistake. It does not live, because if it lived it would have a mind and a will and a soul and THAT is the level confusion that produces sickness. The body does not CREATE. Believing it creates is SICKNESS. It does not CAUSE anything. It has no ability to EXTEND LIFE. Its production of other bodies is an ILLUSION of the extension of life. Baby bodies are no more "life" than adult bodies. They are all illusions in a dream world.
"The body is the central figure in dreaming." It depends on the dream, without the dream it does not exist, and the dream cannot happen without it. Dreams are not REALITY. They are not REAL LIFE. If you endow the body with the properties of Christ, ie eternal life, mind, spirit, extension, etc.... you are making an illusion real and you have false perception. It IS FALSE PERCEPTION to believe that this world is ALIVE. It is false perception to believe that physical objects EXIST. It is false perception to SEE BODIES. It is false perception to look with the body's eyes and senses and believe that what they show you EXISTS AT ALL OR IS EVEN HAPPENING. These are illusions. "To sense is not to know."
This is an imaginary universe designed to block your awareness of LIFE. It is a dream state. And ALL dreams are based on the one central dream from which all illusions stem - death. It may seem to entail a spectrum, ranging from what what seems like life, to what seems like death, and it may seem to you that a living body is "more alive" than a dead one, but they are ALL THE SAME ILLUSION. NONE of them have eternal life, and they are all ILLUSIONS of life and death. They are not real. They do not exist.
ONLY the creations of light are real. ONLY the extension of God's spirit/being is real. ONLY unlimited infinite love is really love. ONLY Heaven is ALIVE. It is the LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT. It is absolutely nothing like this illusory world of darkness and death. And if you think that death is ONLY the state where things are do decayed that they are laying on the ground "lifeless", think again. That is merely the extreme end of a spectrum ranging from death to death.
You, RIGHT NOW, in your body, imagining you are living, are NOT REALLY ALIVE. You are NOT RESURRECTED. You are half dead. Asleep. That is what UNCONSCIOUSNESS means. Until you are FULLY CONSCIOUS, fully awake and aware of Heaven, you are unconscious and asleep and dreaming, and in your dream you imagine a world that you think is alive, even though it is being manufactured by a mind that is RESISTING LIFE and AVOIDING BEING ALIVE. We are all just zombies, "the living dead", walking around a world made of death, without which there is no world.
Heaven is life. Earth is death. Heaven is heaven. Earth is hell. Heaven is eternal. Earth will end. Heaven is reality. Earth is a dream. Heaven is immortality. Earth is mortality. Illusions of life do not turn into life. They disappear and reveal the life that they were trying to hide. Heaven on Earth is "heaven on an illusion". Not going to happen. Illusions recognized disappear. "A forgiven world cannot last." You will not find even ONE example of eternal life IN THIS WORLD, YET ALONE being able to say that ALL THINGS in this world have eternal life. Not even ONE LITTLE THING lives forever here, and anyone who thinks that's not true, is clearly in denial.
"Where God created life, there life must be". IN Heaven.
"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions."
"Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE'S dream."
The VITAL thing thing to realize, which is brought to light by the Atonement principle, and seen with true forgiveness, is this.
IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIN. You cannot do it in reality. You are literally incapable of changing God. You are literally incapable of making effects in God, stopping His will, changing who you are, corrupting your innocence, becoming sinful or dying. LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
You HAVE NOT sinned. You HAVE NOT separated. You cannot leave God. You cannot do anything to change reality whatsoever. God's Kingdom is totally the same as it always has been. His Kingdom cannot be assailed, it is permanent. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. You are 100% incapable of separation or sin or death. This is literally absolutely true. You simply HAVE NOT DONE, what you think you have done, and you ARE NOT doing it now.
So the question remains, what exactly IS this "state" that you are in? If it is impossible to sin or be separate, why does it seem like you are?
Simply, because you cannot ACTUALLY sin or attack reality or kill yourself, you have ONLY IMAGINED that it is possible. And that means, you are simply IN DENIAL, and you have made the ERROR of BELIEVING that you can do what you cannot do, that the impossible is possible, that you have done what you have not done, and you think something unreal is real.
So it's not like, you actually DID separate or sin, and that now you need to undo all that and heal it. You DIDN'T do it. You HAVE NOT produced real consequences. NOTHING REAL HAS HAPPENED AT ALL because nothing real can be threatened. So it has not been threatened. Whatsoever.
All that's "happened" is you've pretended to be ABLE to do what you CANNOT do, pretending to have done what you CANNOT POSSIBLY have done, and now you are "dreaming", literally "wishful thinking", having a fantasy, that you've convinced yourself you actually DID do it. That you are doing it now. That you are PROVING that it is real and possible. But you're not. You're failing to prove it. Reality is unaffected. You are just delusional.
So it's not that you're inside a real separation trying to get out. It's ONLY that you BELIEVE you are, you THINK you are, and you are MISTAKEN in believing and thinking you are, because in truth YOU ARE NOT. You have not done anything real whatsoever. You're just someone who believes they have committed a crime that they HAVE NOT committed. You think you sinned, but you didn't. You think you had a power that you do not have. You think you've CAUSED something REAL to happen against God, but you DID NOT.
LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
All you have is a case of BEING MISTAKEN. All you have is a case of having MADE THE ERROR, of believing, that you can and have done something that you shouldn't have done. It's not even that you DID make a real mistake. You just THINK you did.
It's like, a child who does something and they think they broke something, and they become upset and start crying, and hurting themselves, because they feel bad about what they did. And there's the adult trying to reassure them, that what they THINK they did, it totally does not matter, they DIDN'T cause any real harm, nothing has really been affected, and if they will just open their eyes and LOOK, they will SEE that it's TRUE, that NOTHING HAS GONE WRONG.
It's the recognition that everything is STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Everything is still perfect, holy, whole, innocent, unharmed, safe, protected, undefiled, unattacked, completely happy, and totally healed. Because it's only your MISTAKEN BELIEF that ITS NOT, that needs to be undone. You are just mistaken. Just very deluded and deceived, in believing something is true that isn't. YOU ARE JUST CONFUSED.
What you think you've done, you HAVE NOT DONE. What you think was possible, IS NOT POSSIBLE. You're merely in a state of denial, pretense, trying to convince yourself that you ACTUALLY CAN DO what you cannot do. You're using all kinds of illusory dreams of weapons against yourself and others to TRY to bring about the death of God's son, to try to attack, to try to produce PROOF that you ACTUALLY HAVE sinned and that you ACTUALLY DO deserve to die. But not only have you not sinned, YOU CANNOT DIE. And even your attempts to prove it with a DREAM, wherein the dream body seems to die, STILL does not prove it. Because you carry on.
"You have made a bargain that you cannot keep." You literally are NOT CAPABLE of proving to be true, what is NEVER true. You literally CANNOT destroy the Son of God. So this whole ENTIRE dream world, designed to try to demonstrate and prove that God's Son can be anything less than immortal, is TOTALLY FUTILE. It DOES NOT WORK. Death does not work. Death is FAILURE, failure to make illusions real, failure to prove death overcomes life, and failure to have ANY REAL EFFECTS WHATSOEVER.
So basically, there you are, an innocent IMMORTAL BEING, who can NEVER stop being immortal, PRETENDING to be mortal, pretending to suffer against your will, pretending to be a victim, pretending that a dream world is choosing everything for you against your will, and pretending that you can die. ALL TOTALLY FICTIONAL. All fake. All made-up. All illusions. Because NOTHING can change the sheer FACT of what you are, a totally immortal spirit being that IS STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Which you can NEVER CHANGE. EVER.
"I am still as God created me" is atonement thinking. This is a forgiving perception. It is a recognition that only the truth is true. It is a remembering that NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED. Nothing has gone wrong. You are totally safe and loved in Heaven. You HAVE NOT SINNED WHATSOEVER. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING REAL HAS BEEN AFFECTED!!! Not even a tiny bit! You're just sleeping and dreaming of being a sinner. You'll wake up to realize and remember, that dream was so ridiculous, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for you to sin!
Absolutely EVERYTHING In this ENTIRE WORLD, this whole universe, is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. Not one single thing about it is true. It is the dream of death, a TOTAL FICTION, absolutely bullshit in every way imaginable. It is a state of denial, a state of unconsciousness, a state of dreaming that you're exiled from Heaven.
You are having nothing more than a bad dream of death, in which terrible things seem to happen, impossible things, unthinkable things. And yet when you wake up, you will know, without a doubt, the ENTIRE THING was totally impossible. And you will thank God that NOT ONE SINGLE THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAS EVER TRUE.
This is atonement. This recognition is forgiveness. This truth, that you HAVEN'T done anything, that NOTHING happened. That THERE IS NO WORLD, NO EARTH, NO SPECIAL THINGS, there is NO DREAM, there is ONLY HEAVEN. "Only the creations of light are real" "There is no life outside of heaven." Therefore you are JUST MISTAKEN to believe otherwise, and recognizing this is a forgiving attitude.
You ARE forgiven, fully, because you LITERALLY have NOT DONE ANYTHING!! Your only choice now is whether to recognize and accept this truth, or whether to stay in denial and pretend you can and should suffer. And it's not God's will that you suffer in any way.
"Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."