In ACIM Jesus warns us against mind-wandering, ie allowing your mind to just go wherever it seems to go with no sense of choosing or spiritual responsibility.

I've found myself mind-wandering about grief recently, causing a lot of upsets. And a lot of emotion had to be felt. But now that it's simmering down I find myself noticing my thoughts more and how they cause suffering.

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain."

Hmm.

Well, a few years ago I was at a hospital often with my wife, and quite often there would have to be conversations about the future. And often these were based on circumstantial evidence and opinion, but as a result of even considering the outcomes at all it would cause a lot of upset. Just even having the thoughts at all produced strong nightmarish emotions. But you're "supposed" to think these things through, right? The emotions are just natural right, and you're supposed to have them?

Over time, eventually, I realised that just even having these thoughts, going through these motions, even to just think about and consider "what might happen", was an egoic pursuit that simply generated a lot of unnecessary suffering. The outcomes almost never actually came to pass, the circumstances kept changing, and after a while it seemed pointless to even think about it. People would say that's "irresponsible" but it was really not that helpful to consider how hellish hell was going to be.

In various situations in life, based on the hierarchy of illusions, ie that some things external cause upsets more than others, we also can get lost in kind of "automatic" thought processes. Lines of thinking which are triggered off by external situations, which we think we "have to" think about and entertain. Something happens and our mind goes off on a tangent trying to solve a problem or explore what's happening etc. Victim consciousness kicks in and before you know it you're having a nightmare.

The problem is that all of these reaction-based trains of thought are a form of victimhood and self-attack. Just even going on these thought journeys actually stirs up and chooses suffering, making things worse than they had to be. No wonder you're upset all the time if you're constantly thinking about how upsetting things are.

Over time it becomes more obvious that it's the thoughts really that are the starting point of the suffering. If I just don't think about something, and don't let my ego throw me into certain lines of thinking, I can avoid quite a lot of suffering. This isn't the same as being in denial, in the negative sense, but there can be a positive use of denial which helps you to remain in the truth.

"When you are afraid of ANYTHING, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you."

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

I've been noticing this with myself recently also. I seem to be getting a bit of a handle on at least some thoughts about grief and loss. I can see that there are certain thoughts I have along the lines of "she's gone", in which there's a kind of black and white separation-oriented thought. It's almost like a death thought, a thought of separateness and aloneness. This thought isn't very productive and just induces strongly upset feelings. I might think that these feelings are normal and natural or that I "have to have them", but I don't.

I noticed also that reflecting on the past in various ways also was inducing suffering. Thinking about some times that were unpleasant and far from ideal, times that I saw with false perceptions and victimhood, if I would think about them it would make me upset again. And it seemed like I was dwelling on these things because they were unresolved, which led to more upset. Jesus was guiding me to stop doing that but for a while I felt a bit compelled because I was reacting too easily to these lines of thought without being careful with what my mind was doing. Again I didn't realize there was any other "better way".

We think we can just think about anything and it has no consequences. Jesus is teaching us that our mind is powerful and thought can produce real effects.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. "

"Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous."

The moral of the story is, you don't necessarily HAVE to have certain lines of thinking. You don't HAVE to consider all possible dire future outcomes. You don't HAVE to dwell on or talk about or go over all the details of stuff that's happened. It's okay to completely avoid talking or thinking about something, not as an attempt to deny it but as a constructive way to have mastery of the power of thought. To be in control of and responsible for what you think, aware of the consequences of what you're choosing.

Thoughts DO have causal power in them and can cause things to happen, as well as being able to cause all forms of suffering. The ego says we can just use thought to think of anything we like with NO effect, but this is totally untrue. It wants to make the mind insert and powerless, and so thinking about "anything" can lead to all kinds of victimhood and upset. You can easily go down dark paths and wander around lost in the woods.

We do have to try to be more vigilant and masterful over our actual thoughts than this. Otherwise we are apt to attack ourselves and make our own situation worse. We need to recognize that thinking can cause pain and suffering, and the right thinking can cause miracles and healing. We need to stay out of drama and thoughts of separateness, of disaster and loss and things being wrong. We need to stay out of thoughts of blame and guilt and it's our own responsibility to stay away from "where angels fear to tread."

At least then we do have the power to prevent ourselves from hurting ourselves, for lessening our own suffering, and preventing having as much upset as we think we must have. We don't have to just go through the motions being a victim, we can get back some power and make a better choice to more responsibly manage and own the minds thought processes. To allow your mind to go into dark places, unchecked and as a string of unconscious reactions, is mis-creation and "makes" suffering and unhappiness and hell.

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight"

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"You are much too tolerant of Mind-wandering, thus passively condoning its miscreation."

This is a big lesson for me and everyone: How to love all the time. It's natural, but our divine nature to always love and express love has been blocked by fear, attack thoughts, grievances, hatred etc.

When other people seem to be loving and we're "getting" something out of the relationship, ie specialness, we open up some of the flood gates and allow "exclusive love" to go towards the person.

But when the person fails to love you, is angry or upset with you or treats you poorly, there is great temptation then in the ego to simply use it as a way to prove that someone doesn't deserve your love. Then you form a grievance, hold onto attack thoughts, fail to heal, and stop being loving. In order to deny love to others, you have to block it, which denies it to yourself! You cannot love and hate at the same time!

This turns then into conditional love, which simply means you will only love others when they are doing something that you want or being a certain way. Particularly when they are seeming to be loving toward you or giving you what you think you want or need or lack.

We have to actually wean ourselves off of conditional love in order to reach atonement. That means that we have to recognize that our "loving" or expressing must not be tied to external conditions of any kind, causes of any kind, or people of any kind. That means that we don't love in "reaction" or response to others, but we simply love because it's what we are and how we want to express. It's a decision.

"Teach only love for that is what you are" says it all.

I've started to see glimpses of this. To refuse to be unloving even in a situation which seems it would warrant defenses or reactions. To simply choose... I'm only going to love right now. And to then love, to radiate love, to be love. Not because of the person, not as a defense, not as a reaction, nothing to do with the ego at all.

Then you find out that your willingness to love is not *dependent* on other people or the state they are in. And at first this seems crazy, that you would choose to love in spite of appearances or situations that seem to "call for" some other response. This expressing of love OVERRIDES the ego's laws in the situation, ignores the hierarchy of illusions, forgets/forgives grievances and has unexpected benefits to yourself.

In a situation, I decided I am only going to love. So I stood there and loved. I felt love in my heart area radiating out. I didn't know I was able to radiate this love. As I did this, the other person was not happy at all. My deciding to love was not in response to their ego. And so it seemed to me there wasn't really a "reason" to love, other than that... it sure felt good. Certainly better than entering into false empathy.

The really interesting thing is, if I choose to love, to extend love, the love expresses, like it goes out and radiates and "sends" love. In this sending, something really intriguing happens. I share in the love, I feel the love, and I become more sane. Love is the "natural nature" of a sane mind. It quickly corrects mistaken perception. It's like the sun comes out and the light is shining and everything is put into its proper place.

I also notice when I choose to love, just spontaneously, not as an ego reaction - to will to love - the extending of that love allows me to receive it. *I* feel loved. By giving love, love comes to me and through me. I was waiting a long time for a certain person to be more loving, and it wasn't until I decided to just love them that *I* experienced the love that I thought THEY were supposed to be providing.

This goes back to the very basic lesson (seek and do not find) that when we believe that we are lacking love, we will shift responsibility for love onto someone else and expect them to do the loving for us. Then they either will or will not, and when they will not, we stay in a lack of love. So we have to learn the difficult lesson, that we cannot get other people to love us and we are not SUPPOSED to. You can and will only experience the receiving of love, truly, when YOU LOVE.

When YOU choose to love, you instantly enter into love's extension and expression, you feel the love, you become part of the love. "To have all, give all to all." This is a basic law of God, that in order to have something you have to give it. If you are not having something, it's because you are not giving it.

If you do not have love and others don't seem to be filling the void for you, it's because you are not loving enough. And when you love enough, you don't NEED anyone to love you FOR you, because YOU are joining in unconditional love and extending God's love. Love comes through you, and you experience it.

It boils down to this simple state, which I presume is what it will be like in Atonement, where you simply love all the time. You express love all the time. You radiate it, flow it, extend it. It comes out through you from God and from your soul. And as it goes out, it has miraculous power. And this loving power actually has something to do with healing and miracle working.

Love has this property that, unless it is given or shared, it does not exist. Love isn't a "state" that's static. God isn't static. God is an extender and creator. "Love goes out because of what it is." "Divine abstraction takes joy in application."

Love HAS to be shared. "God did not will to be alone." When it is not being radiated and shared and GIVEN, it does not have any radiance, and does not shine, and has no presence. That means it is dead. Death is the denial of extension of love, which is also life.

So in order to be alive, to be in resurrection, to reach atonement, and to be happy, we have to remove these blocks to love SO THAT we can once again resume our NATURE of always extending, always loving, no matter what, no matter who, no matter what time or the reason. That means that you being loving really has NOTHING to do with anyone else. You just be loving because you ARE love. You can't help it. "Teach only love for that is what you are".

So that means being willing to love and extend love in ALL SITUATIONS regardless of the situation, or who it is, or how upset they are. And the reason you love really has nothing to do with the other person. You simply do it because it's natural, healthy, you are willing to, and it feels great.

I thought I was forgiving someone because I was doing forgiveness processes about them. But... I didn't really get to a point where I was LOVING them. THAT is the healed state that is the goal to reach with forgiveness. If I am not loving the person, literally, the I must still have some kind of grievance or block to love, therefore am not receiving it, because I am not extending it. And feeling "unloving" unfortunately automatically means you will also feel "unloved".

Love comes from within, and it extends outward to others. It radiates naturally when it is not obstructed. It also contains willingness because unwillingness is unnatural and everyone naturally wants to share love to increase their joy. "God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (love) and want to share it to increase their joy."

That means if you want to feel the love, you have to BE the love. You have to give the love. And that doesn't mean special love, or sacrifice, or loss. It doesn't mean subservience or reaction or slavery or being carpeting. It means you love because YOU WANT TO, IN SPITE OF anyone else. And then you naturally bring that love to others simply because it serves BOTH of you. That is the golden rule. What applies to you applies to them.

Love first. Being loved is secondary and automatic. Trying to be loved first blocks being loved.

This means then we have to learn to decouple or disconnect "whether we will love" or "when we will love" from anything that other people are doing. Even if other people are stressing out and upset and angry or whatever. We have to decide, I, by myself, with God, am going to love right now, regardless of anyone else, even if that someone else is someone close to you.

And that means you have to claim the responsibility, freedom, joy and pleasure of LOVING for YOURSELF, which is the same thing as accepting atonement for yourself. It's your right to love and experience love. It's your inheritance.

Oneness does not mean "one thing."

In reality, all thinking follows along the lines that whatever applies to one creation, applies to all creations. What is true of one son, is true of another. What is true of you, is true of the entire sonship. Whatever applies to you, applies to everything. It either applies to BOTH of you, or NEITHER of you.

This is a LOGIC system, a way of THINKING, based on the simple idea of "BOTH-AND". What applies as true, is true of BOTH you and others. It is true of me AND you. It is a system based on INCLUSION and EQUALITY. The entirety of God's mind and all of creation runs on this form of reasoning, this kind of THINKING. It's how God thinks and how all of creation functions in harmony. And it's how you should think of ALL your brothers, as being equal to you in every way.

In the dream, the ego's thinking was devised as a way to OPPOSE God's way of thinking. To develop another thought SYSTEM and WAY of thinking that breaks away from God's system and DENIES IT. What better way to disrupt equality and everything applying equally to everyone, than to introduce the law of chaos that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone.

In the ego's thought system and its way of thinking about anything, it does not think in terms of both/and. It thinks in terms of EXCLUSION, because the whole system is based on separation/exclusion/isolation/specialness. So to the ego, what is true of you is NOT true of your brother. What applies to you does NOT apply to them. This ISOLATES you from them and sets up a special rule that seems only to apply to some PART of the sonship, not everyone. And "me not you" is murderous.

The entire ego MIND runs on "EITHER-OR" logic. The ego never wants to confirm that anything is EQUALLY TRUE of more than one thing, because this would erase separation and differences. It emphasizes how, one thing is NOT another thing. How you are NOT the same as your brother. How what is over here, is NOT over there. How what you have, your brother does NOT have. This belief alone, this kind of mindset, gave rise to SPACETIME, in which what is true in one location is not true in another.

Now, spacetime IS THE THOUGHT SYSTEM OF THE EGO. And because everything IN spacetime is "laid out" logically on a basis of exclusion and isolation, where one object appears to be over here and not over there, and one object appears to be different to thus not equal to other objects, this maps exactly onto the way the ego THINKS. And so then it seems to be natural to THINK in terms of either/or, about everything in the world, because it happens to map exactly or "naturally" onto the physical world.

You can for example easily talk about how your car is parked in the first parking space and not the second one. How you were in Australia for a week and not the USA. How your body is not the same as your neighbor's body. How you own a particular car while your neighbor does not. How your hair is brown while your neighbor's hair is blonde. All of these ways that you pick apart the world, is inherently a direct reflection of the entire ego thought system (which is the world), and so makes it seem easy to talk ABOUT the world using either/or logical reasoning.

However, because this "way of thinking" is COMPLETELY OPPOSED to God's SYSTEM, his thought system,which is HEAVEN and how heaven functions, whenever you use this kind of either/or reasoning to think about ANYTHING to do with heaven, creation, sonship, sons, god etc, MAJOR DISTORTIONS HAPPEN, hugely FALSE conclusions are arrived at, and all kinds of confusion erupts. The ego's system was made to DENY AND DESTROY heaven's system, so if you USE the ego's system to try to understand heaven's system YOU WILL FAIL. Guaranteed.

Here's what happens. In ego thinking, you think in terms of boxes. Either something is in box A, or its in box B. Those are the only accepted possibilities. All of spacetime's "reality" seems to support the idea that this is the only possibility ie something cannot be in two boxes. However, Heaven is outside of spacetime and transcends its nature and its laws. Things having to be separated out by space, things not being equal, things not SHARING a location, things having to be in one place at a time and not everywhere at once, etc... are all DEFIED by heaven's thought system. The ego's laws are BROKEN by Heaven's laws.

The truth is, in heaven's reality, in God's system of both/and thinking, it is possible for very "strange" things to happen. For example it's possible for one thing to be in multiple locations at once, simultaneously. Not only is the thing in multiple locations, it is FULLY in EACH of those locations. This is because everything in heaven has OMNIPRESENCE. God is omnipresent and so are all his creations. Meaning LITERALLY, that a being in reality is capable of showing up in multiple locations simultaneously.

God is not only everywhere, he is FULLY PRESENT in EVERY location. Without compromise. Without only one "part" of him being over here and another "part" of him being over there. He is not partial. ALL of God is simultaneously in multiple locations at the same time. To the ego, that is regarded as ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. But it is nevertheless possible, because God does abide by the ego's limited laws. The ego would say, anything that is in this location, must be TOTALLY ABSENT from another location. And if it thinks that is true of God, it is not TOTALLY FUCKED In its comprehension of the truth and has come to a completely INCORRECT conclusion. Ego thinking is BROKEN!

Now, that's a problem for ego reasoning, because the EGO wants to put things into nice discreet boxes. It wants to say, well, either a son of God is in this one box, or he is in another box, but he can't be in both at once. But in reality that is actually a LIMITATION which is being placed on what is possible. In reality, A son of God CAN be in both boxes at once! He transcends boxes even when there are boxes. So the ego looks at reality and sees a son of God and says, this Son of God is either:

a) totally separate from all other sons of God because he MUST be ONLY in one completely discreet box by himself, thus "multiple sons" MUST mean SEPARATE sons and this is therefore an "idea of separation", thus the sonship is an ego thing, or

b) the division between the boxes must be erased completely so that there is only ONE box, resulting in there being in truth only ONE son, which by erasing the boxes, has now destroyed the individual sons of God because the ego can't comprehend how many sons can SHARE existence or OVERLAP boxes.

Similarly, if we talk about the notion that a single son of God can be in two places at once, or that there can be multiple sons of God, the ego has no way to comprehend that correctly. It WILL come to false conclusions. All it can conclude is either:

a) if there are multiple sons of God there must be multiple SEPARATE boxes whereby the sons do not SHARE boxes at all and thus are separate - which renders the idea of multiple sons an EGO idea of separation to be discarded as untrue, or

b) there aren't really multiple sons because there can only be "one son per box" so if you take away all the "separations" by taking away all the boxes, there can only be one box left containing only one son, thus completely ignoring the fact that God created many permanent sons IN reality.

This is the kind of ego reasoning that almost everyone in this WORLD uses because it seems to match up to the LAYOUT of spacetime and thus goes unchallenged. To think about or try to understand reality, heaven, creation, and the sonship THROUGH this ego lens, is an AUTOMATIC DISTORTION of the truth. The result is FALSE CONCLUSIONS that SEEM to make SENSE, but are TOTALLY NONSENSE.

It is FALSE to say that God only has one son, by reasoning that there can only in truth be one box in order to have no separation. Separate boxes in reality does NOT mean separation, because the contents of the boxes TRANSCEND the boxes. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds" does in fact mean there ARE many boxes!

It is FALSE to say that multiple sons implies multiple separations and is therefore a separation idea. If you think of "any kind of separation" as being an ego thing, not realizing that it's OKAY and NATURAL for there to be NATURAL DIVISIONS in reality WITHOUT it implying EXCLUSION, ignoring that the boxes are SHARING with each other, then you are making a mistake.

SONS OF GOD SPAN BOXES. THEY TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF EGO REASONING. THEY CANNOT BE CONTAINED BY OR ACCURATELY MAP ONTO A SYSTEM OF THOUGHT BASED ON EXCLUSION! YOUR WAY OF THINKING IS FAULTY!

So in order to actually comprehend how and why there ARE MANY sons in reality, and why AT THE SAME TIME they are "all one", YET MANY STILL, and why this is NOT an ego idea of separation or duality, you have to go BEYOND "box based thinking." And another way of saying that is "thinking outside the box". If you don't think outside the EGO box you WILL come to ALL of the ego's logical conclusions such as "god has only one son" (because it SEEMS to make sense) and "multiple sons is a separation idea" (which SEEMS to make sense) because that's all the ego CAN conclude. It's automatic as a result of either/or thinking.

To think like God, means to stop thinking in terms of either/or. For example, in this world, you have to learn to stop thinking about how your brother is DIFFERENT from you. You have to stop thinking that some truth can apply to him and NOT you. You have to move past this ego model of "its true of you, but not me" or "you're sinful, I'm innocent". You actually have to learn, in thinking like God, that what is true of you is true of THE WHOLE SONSHIP. What is true of you is true of your brother. And you and your brothers are totally EQUAL in every way. And that also means you are transcending the LAWS OF SPACETIME, and you are transcending the entire WAY that the ego thinks, which opens you up to POSSIBILITIES that the ego considers totally impossible.

It's quite a big transition to go from constantly thinking in terms of "true of me, not true of you" or vice versa, to thinking in terms of "whatever is true of me is true of everyone". Or to go from "having individuality is an ego separation idea" to "having individuality that we share but still retaining my SELF is TOTALLY NATURAL." God's system is a matter of either:

a) its true of BOTH of us, or

b) its true of NEITHER of us.

That's totally different to the ego's system of "its true of either A or B but but not both."

It's a TOTALLY different SYSTEM of thought. A totally diffeent MIND. It's a totally different WAY of thinking. It's a totally different way of REASONING and performing logical conclusions. God's system simply is not LIKE the ego's system. And so to understand heaven's dynamics you HAVE to move past either/or thought. If you don't, if you just keep thinking of ANYTHING to do with God's Kingdom USING the ego to THINK WITH, you will conclude falsely!

You have to realize WHY either/or thought is LIMITED, why it was made to produce CHAOS, why it leads to CONFUSION, and why it is totally NONSENSE. In fact, when ego thinking looks at anything to do with reality, anything true registers as nonsense, and anything false registers as making sense! That's because the ego is NUTS and totally OPPOSED to truth. IT CANNOT SEE REALITY CLEARLY. But that doesn't mean YOU can't comprehend heaven's nature, you just have to ditch the WAY you have always been thinking.

So let's say the ego looks at heaven and it sees ok, over here there seems to be a son of God, but over there there also seems to be a son of God. There seems to be two things, two brothers. What will the ego conclude? It will conclude that if there are two things, there are two separate boxes, and the two things are EITHER in one box OR another, but they do not share boxes at all. And thus that this means there are two SEPARATE beings, thus there is *separation* happening, thus its an EGO situation so the two brothers MUST BE ILLUSIONS. And thus it turns the sonship, which comprises MANY INDIVIDUALS, into an ego concept.

That's a PROBLEM, because the fact is that one brother is IN the other brother, and both brothers are SHARING their INDIVIDUAL boxes. There ARE two boxes, but the CONTENTS of the boxes SPAN the boxes. The ego can't handle that! So it sees joined unified SHARED experiences/minds, multiple INDIVIDUALS who SHARE EVERYTHING, as being "separated off" isolated units, and thus concludes that the idea of multiple children of God must be an ego idea of separation that IT has put INTO an ego framework. TOTAL FAIL!

It is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE, in reality, in heaven, for there to be MANY INDIVIDUAL THINGS, which SIMULTANEOUSLY are one. One AND many. Truth that applies to one thing AND to another. Truth that is true of BOTH OF THEM. Something in box A which is ALSO in box B, supporting oneness AND individuality. THAT is heaven's nature! It's a realm, a mind, a thought system, where there ARE many things, in number, many INDIVIDUALS, but AT THE SAME TIME, those individuals are SHARING everything of themselves with each other and God and therefore are "one". The one doesn't cancel the many!

"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (defiant of ego logic) created *SEPARATE BEINGS*, who have EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy."

There is nothing false in this statement and "separate beings" does NOT mean EXCLUSIVE ISOLATED BEINGS. It means MANY beings, who SHARE everything. Who have boxes, and SPAN boxes. They TRANSCEND LIMITATIONS.

Beware. Just because they are ONE, does not mean they are NOT TWO. THAT would be an ego conclusion. And just because they are TWO, does not mean they are NOT ONE! That too is an ego conclusion. Are you following? It's mind bending. The truth about God's creation TRANSCENDS EGO LAWS. Transcends ego logic. Transcends limitations. And transcends the "layout" of spacetime. Omnipresence is the total opposite of spatial relationships, just as eternity is the opposite of time. Spacetime and its structure (thought system) was made as an ATTACK on God.

Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS WORLD, because it is a SYSTEM OF THOUGHT (God's creation) totally opposite to the SYSTEM that runs spacetime. Heaven does not THINK like how the ego thinks! It's laws and rules are BEYOND the ego's laws and rules. Your entire WAY of THINKING has to be transcended and recognized for its limitation in order to go BEYOND it to SEE clearly and correctly the metaphysics and dynamics of heaven. It is not of this world. And in fact you have to unlearn "thinking with the ego" and LEARN TO THINK LIKE GOD. This is in the course! Your mind has to get out of the either/or paradigm!

Ego says, "how can something be two things and yet one thing at the same time? that makes no sense". OF COURSE! It makes no sense to the EGO's way of thinking, so it registers as nonsense, even though IT IS TOTALLY SENSIBLE. One thing CAN be two things! God HAS CHILDREN!!!!!! God has a FAMILY! The Holy Trinity is real and DOES HAVE 3 PARTS TO IT. The Holy Spirit *IS* a permanent distinct ETERNAL CREATION. The sonship DOES have its own children! God DID create legions of angels!

"We are creation, we, the sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes ALL HIS CHILDREN, and their creations."

"God's angels".

Until you can recognize and move beyond the limitations of either/or-based ego thinking you will not be able to SEE or ACCEPT why God has created many sons or why it makes TOTAL SENSE to say so. You have to think way outside the box and use an entirely different KIND of thinking. If you look up "paralogical reasoning" you will get an idea of how this works.

This is also why heaven is NOT DUALITY.

This is also why heaven is ****NOT NON DUALITY.***

***BOTH of those concepts are EGO CONCLUSIONS!!!!***

THEY ARE BOTH FALSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The ego can't help but think that way. "Either its one thing, or its two things". That's ALL the ego thought system can conclude, ever! And so it thinks "one thing" is "more spiritual" than two things, so let's go with that. BUT IT's WRONG! IT"S NO BETTER! "Either its duality, or its non-duality, there's no other possibility". THAT'S EGO!! THERE IS another possibility beyond the limits of that assumed way of reasoning. THERE IS A BETTER WAY!

Reality is not duality OR non-duality. It is "paraduality" or "transduality", to coin a phrase. It TRANSCENDS BOTH OF THEM. Stupid ego rules DO NOT APPLY. God is one AND MANY. Creations are one AND many. One brother is ALL brothers. One mind is ALL minds. There are MANY!!! And it's not duality!

Omipresence! Transcendence of the limits of space and time. Transcendence of finite boxes or being one box or many boxes. SHARED experiences. Transcendent experiences. Unity which does not obliterate individuality. Oneness which does not undo or cancel the multitude of God's creations who are, according to ACIM, "in number infinite"!! Equality which acknowledges REAL BROTHERHOOD. A sonship which DOES CONTAIN MANY INDIVIDUALS who are all "the one son of God" AND WHO ARE THE MANY SONS OF GOD. At the same time! Doesn't make sense? TO THE EGO!

Some of you reading this will get it. Most probably will not, and most have not, mainly because we don't realize just HOW steeped we are in ego reasoning. Thinking like God is VERY DIFFERENT to what you're used to. Any time you go towards "one box", or you go towards "many separate boxes", you are IN THE EGO and failing to comprehend the nature of reality.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." (notice how the ego's reasoning comes to false conclusions because it can't comprehend how multiple souls could have everything AT THE SAME TIME and not exclude each other).

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven. The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed." (Heaven's thought system of both/and GOES AGAINST the ego's thought system of this WORLD)

"...but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world..." (the true nature of heaven is ALIEN to the ego's idea of it)

"Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." (Recognition of reality REQUIRES that you ditch either/or based thought and adopt both/and based thought, which is INCLUSIVE REASONING)

"You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes." (to reach true perception you have to transcend the body's perception, ie transcend EGO THINKING and the EGO WORLD/SYSTEM, so that you can SEE SENSE and SEE REASON and return to reality, only possibly through an acceptance of how everything applies equally to everyone everywhere always.)

"I and my father are one"

Oneness does not mean "one box"! THAT IS EGO!!!!

Oneness means SHARED UNITY AND BEING JOINED AS TWO THINGS IN HARMONY WHO ARE NOT SEPARATE YET ARE STILL TWO THINGS!

ACIM reiterates many times that WE ALONE ARE THE CAUSE of our own suffering. We are not ever at the effect of the world. We are the cause of the world, the dream, and everything we feel and think and experience. Nothing happens without our consent, and we cannot even be hurt unless we ourselves hurt ourselves.

When you take this to the extreme, it means that YOU ALONE are responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, and NO ONE ELSE has anything to do with it whatsoever. There are no causes in the world, your brothers NEVER cause you (God is the cause of you), and you cannot suffer unless you choose to.

You can't even die unless you choose to. NOTHING can happen without your decision. And Jesus is completely literal about this. If you do not CHOOSE to suffer, suffering CANNOT happen to you. Sickness cannot happen, nor can death. You have automatic innate power over death and suffering at all times, and ONLY YOU can bring them upon yourself.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

This puts 100% of the responsibility on your shoulders. Which means that if you are ever tempted to believe that something is happening for a reason OTHER than your own contribution, you are in a state of being mistaken, and now you need correction. Because it is ONLY your contribution that is causing everything.

This sounds easy enough. You just need to realize and recognize that every time you are unhappy, upset, suffering, in pain, sick, angry etc, it is because you are making it happen. If you would just stop hurting yourself you'd be totally invulnerable and healthy and happy all the time. No joke.

What becomes seemingly difficult is the many ways that we might not recognize what we're doing, or that we're even doing anything at all. We can become so used to blame, and reaction, and emotional triggers, and powerlessness, and believing other people actually do stuff, and that it seems impossible we can be responsible for everything.

In fact it runs very deeply. Every single thought you have, every attitude, every belief, are all part of the confusion that "its not me doing it" and "they are doing it to me." In every way, it is really you, who are an immortal being who can never even be changed at all, becoming confused and believing that something outside of you is changing you against your will. This can NEVER be true.

Every time that we lose sight of being THE CAUSE, we fall into temptation. We deny the truth and project causality outside of us. And this is the same as projecting sin. Then we find others or the world to be the cause of us. And this is a defense against the healing God placed in our minds. It's a way to avoid being healed by displacing the problem and its source outside of ourselves.

We talk about teaching others, and helping others, and having relationships, and performing miracles and so on, but the foundation of all this is simply YOU BEING YOU. Are you attacking yourself, or aren't you? If you aren't, you are not under attack. If you are, you are your ONLY worst enemy. This is all due to the suicidal self-destructiveness which comes from believing you are sinful. Are you trying to destroy yourself and others, or are you extending creation?

If you were to temporarily remove the entire planet, and all the people on it, and leave just you floating in space by yourself, whatever is going on in your experience is SOLELY caused by you. There is nothing else to cause it. This really tells you that ALL your forgiveness work is ENTIRELY an inside job. IT has nothing to do with others. It's you versus yourself. Is you trying to master yourself. It's your mind playing tricks on itself. It's you alone affecting yourself insanely.

Weaning off of all the reasons, excuses, explanations, justifications, beliefs, projections, and all other forms of displacement of responsibility, is not easy. We have a lot of habits formed, a lot of assumptions made, and a lot of belief in being vulnerable. We position ourselves as victims on a minute-by-minute basis. We might think it's not even POSSIBLE to question whether these things are happening to us. That things can seem so extreme and lopsided that it seems impossible we can be the one causing it.

But even those things which seem convincing, tempting us, secretly our dissociated choice, we have to dig out ALL of them, to question every single mental activity which is leading you away from your invulnerability. Even the notion that if you are being responsible, other people can still do stuff to you, cannot be true. Even the notion that even if you're doing your best, you will still die, cannot be true. Even death itself CANNOT have power over you if you decide NOT to die. "You are immortal and you cannot die."

The aim here is that you become "strong in the truth". That you stand in your own light. That you know yourself and be true to yourself. That you be so certain of what you ARE, that you don't for a second displace yourself, make a bodily identity, project cause outside of yourself, or believe any temptation that you are threatened by the world. This is how you be the light of the world, by going WITHIN to the light that is in you, so that it can extend.

Ultimately it boils down to one simple thing. You are the one who is making your life hell. It's not anyone else, and its not the world. It's not your neighbors, not your boss, your politicians, your celebrities. It's not certain races or countries or the weather or food or where you live. It's not external activities or events or space or time. It's just YOU. You are the one who is doing it to yourself. Holy fuck!

Salvation has been placed IN YOUR MIND by God because he knows that the PROBLEM is in your mind. And so the solution is in your mind. Your mind is what needs to be corrected, and that is all. This will take care of everything else. You are the one who is against you. You are the one who keeps giving YOUR power away to others. You are the one who keeps losing yourself and confusing yourself with things which are not you. And you are the one who can use the power of your decision to get out of it.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do.""It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace in any way.""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."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way"

"Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself?"

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt"

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident."

"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."

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

"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."

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

The physical properties of matter, this universe, enacts the ego's law of separation between cause and effect. Every single thing which happens in this universe stems from this fundamental canvas of separation.

For one thing to do something to another thing and not experience the same effects, is separation. The laws of physics even tell us that an action produces an equal but opposite reaction - not the same reaction at all but one completely different.

In this world therefore, what applies to one thing does not apply to another. There is no equality. It therefore becomes "possible" to do something in isolation in this world, and have it affect only an isolated part of the world, and perhaps not even effect the person who does it at all.

Another way to put this is that this world allows the ego to get away with murdering God. Its pictorial statement that cause is separate from effect is a statement that God has been separated from His son. It is also therefore an attack on His Son and therefore a picture of the crucifixion of His son.

The way that the ego gets away with murder, is to suggest that it is capable of doing something to God, causing God in some way, but that the effects produced by that attack affect God only, and not the ego self. Therefore the ego self "gets away with it" by separating itself off from the effects. It claims that what applies to God does not apply to you, and therefore you can produce attack without experiencing the results.

This ENTIRE UNIVERSE is set up based on this. ACIM even explicitly says this: "This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." Also in chapter 27 there is an entire section titled "The picture of crucifixion" where Jesus goes into this more.

The physical universe was made by the ego to depict what it would be like for God's son to be crucified, ie murdered and attacked and rendered separate from God. To be separate from God is to be separate from Cause, and therefore cause and effect are separate in this universe, down to the subatomic particle.

Even the idea of space and time, that there could be something which applies in one place or time and not another, is an idea of the separation between cause and effect, and Jesus states in the Course that both space and time are merely beliefs. That doesn't mean you have a belief ABOUT space and time, it means space-time ITSELF is a belief in the larger mind, and is therefore an illusion.

If it were not for this entire world, this entire universe, being based on this separation from Cause, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for you do any of the things you do "in life". You could not use a knife to slice an apple - if the effects which apply to the apple apply to the knife, the apple would have to equally cut the knife. You would not be able to eat food and digest it, the food would have to eat you and digest you also.

Nothing that we call "life" in this universe would be possible without the separation of cause and effect playing out.

Now, here is a VERY important point to make. You can change your mind about this world and work on changing what seem to be your personal beliefs "about" the world, correcting your thoughts and perceptions in terms of undoing your inner belief in separation from Cause. BUT, even if you achieve that, what is to become of the physical universe?

If it persists, it IS still a picture of crucifixion. It is still a physicalized expression of an idea of death and murder. It is still being run by laws of separation and conflict. Everything that takes place in it is un-heavenly and an attack. Every way that every single object moves and interacts with other objects symbolizes and IS the belief that cause and effect are separate - which ultimately is the belief that God and His Son are separate.

You could seem to be awake in the world and yet if the world continues to govern what happens to you, if you have no apparent power to undo it or change it, if you are subject to death, if you cannot heal the sick and undo disease, if you cannot cause objects to move or to change into other objects, then you are BOUND by the laws of the ego. That's a fact.

How can this be allowed to persist, thought to be in some way holy and real, as we stay in this world, confined by this world's laws, completely governed by them, still subject to aging and DEATH, and claim that we are enlightened? There is much more to the truth than this. This world was made as an attack. That's all it was made for. You can see it as a beautiful illusion but does it undo it?

This world's fundamental functioning, it's separation-based operational laws, is precisely what we derive our egoic beliefs from. We base our logic and reasoning and beliefs and values on top of how this separation of cause and effect operates. This leads to an "automatic" ego mind which believes and THINKS just like this universe functions, as though this universe makes sense and is normal and natural and true.

And if we are to reunite cause and effect in our awareness, in our mind, then this should mean that we re-gain access to a causal power which was completely separate from us when we believed what the world shows us. Its picture of death is completely the opposite of real life.

Its claim that cause and effect are separate is a law which MIRACLES break. Miracles come to demonstrate that this world's entire foundation, the fabric of this "reality" (bullshit) is simply false and not true and not what is running the show. Miracles demonstrate that cause and effect are NOT separate, because they come from a mind where the two are one.

Miracles therefore are capable of overriding everything which arises from this world, beyond the ego's laws, and that literally means your causal power is capable of doing absolutely anything which this world would consider physically impossible.

In this world an apple is not an orange. To a miracle-worker, an apple can be turned into an orange. In this world, throwing a ball at someone's head will hurt them. To a miracle-worker, throwing a ball at their head will stop the ball mid-air and turn it into a butterfly which then lands on the person's head and kisses them. In this world when a match is taken to a flammable liquid it will ignite and explode. To a miracle-worker, the match will be cancelled out and nothing will happen, and maybe even that flammable liquid will be turned into wine.

Miracles. Miracles. Miracles. Miracles which completely DEFY absolutely every physical law and limitation, every way that one thing does something to something else against its will, and any way that one cause seems to produce an effect on something other than itself. Think you can punch Jesus in the face and knock him out and leave him with a black eye? Have a try.

The Son of God is NOT subject to this stupid illusory world and its stupid pretend laws and made-up rules and fictional regulations. Jesus tells us in the course, literally, "there is nothing you cannot do". NOTHING. NO-THING. Not just just some small things, not just some big things, not just a few slightly miraculous-seeming hints at something magical. You can literally do ANYTHING. Including moving a mountain.

Is this too far fetched? Is your mind too scary to wield such power? Are you too afraid of the potential of this, being so profoundly abundant that you can manifest anything you need at any time directly from God's unlimited supply, without having to go through stupid ego laws to slave and work hard to earn ridiculous bits of paper and metal so that you can buy what you need at a store? You are far more capable than that. BY FAR!

There is no limit. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

In this world, it always seems as though we are at the effect of the world. As if the world is dreaming us, causing us, doing things to us, making us feel certain ways, triggering certain reactions.

When the world does something, the "ego" in us seems to react with various kinds of stress, emotions, fears, retaliations etc. Always it’s like being strapped into a ride where you have no say in what you feel or what your state of mind is. As though the world entirely dictates everything you experience.

What does the world have in store for you today? What problems is it going to slap you in the face with? In what way is it going to decide your fate? How it is going to upset you and shit on you and make you feel afraid? This is what it is set up to to do, all day every day.

False perception is a backwards perception. It literally feels like everything you experience is coming at you from the world. Your moods, your emotions, your reactions, your state of mind, whether you are happy or sad, or calm or upset, seems entirely at the whim of an external alien will.

The ego in us, is this part of mind that seems to just sit there and receive punishment. The world has some shit on store for you today? Fuck you. The world wants to crap all over your nice sense of security? Fuck you today. The world wants to decide everything’s just going to hit the fan all at once? Fuck you especially.

This is how it is set up. This is what happens in false perception. This is how we experience life, every day, when we believe that the world is the cause of us. That outside forces are shaping us. External events determine whether the day sucks to hell or whether it’s a "good one".

And so, in your mind, there’s this receiver of experience, the seeming passive and powerless and weak and victimized self, defenseless and vulnerable and completely at the effect of everything. That is the ego. That is a state of mind of false perception, of blindness, of being a victim 24/7. That the world is doing you.

To not question this, is to remain unaware of reality, light, truth, power and peace. To not question it is to simply be victimized all the time. Stuff just continues to go wrong, over and over and over again. Shit happens. Bad stuff goes down. Unexpected things break. There’s sudden emergencies. The world plots against you and wants you dead.

This is what the inner victim believes. And because it is the belief in this, it also plays the role of this. It is the desire to be victimized. It is the attempt to position oneself as at the effect of the world. To suffer. To have the world capable of doing things to you. To allow us to overpower you, upset you, shake you, disturb your peace, and take your freedom and happiness away.

It’s not easy to break out of this because this ego self, this receiver of punishment by the world, this sufferer and victim of an alien will, is practically wired into the world like a totally passive absorber of punishment. It sees the world as happening from the outside in, happening to it, not from it. Nothing is seen as coming out of it or as being caused by it or it being responsible for how anything is. This is the ego in all its selfishness and all its irresponsibility and the face of innocence.

This is how it’s wired. It’s like it’s made to be plugged into the world. The world is set up to send messages to it, and it is set up to receive the messages. And in particular it is set up to seem not to even interpret the messages, but to take them at face value. To believe it them, and to let the world define for itself what its truth is. It’s even set up so that whatever the world says it is doing to you, it does that to you, and you have the appropriate reaction according to the hierarchy of illusions.

If the world decides today to do something severe to you, the ego in you decides to go along with it blindly and suffer in the extreme. If the world decides to seem to give you a break, the ego in you decides you’re somehow being let off and given a break from the barrage of punishment. Only to expect that the next fuck-you is just around the corner.

But there is something very weird about this, because it is in fact very backwards. It’s completely unnatural for it to be backwards. It’s like living in the world in such a way, that you don’t see yourself as having any power to do anything, and only that you are to just lay down and let the world walk all over you. Like you are a piece of carpeting onto which the world can just shit as it pleases.

The outside seems to comes into you, people do stuff to you, others decide who and what you are, and the world dreams of you any way it wishes. You seem even to be made by other dream figures, and modified by them as life goes on. This is so strange and so backwards to experience "life" as though the external world is the cause of everything you are forever.

This is the fundamental, natural, corresponding and automatic arrangement of the nature of this world, and the nature of your ego. This is the special relationship, locked into form and dedicated to suffering and victimhood. Where your every relationship is founded on what you get and take from the world and what it does to you on your behalf.

This is how you are automatically wired, as a body identity, to experience the world as an automaton. To sense it, to have it tell you what is there, to have the world stimulate you from the outside in, and to define what your experience is. It transmits stuff into you from the outside and seems to tell you what there is to see and feel. And never does it attempt to challenge this arrangement or raise doubts about the world’s ability to dominate you.

To overcome this, to move into true perception, which requires not only the reversal of cause and effect in your entire though system, but also the total questioning of every way in which the world seems to do anything at all, you have to be willing to fly in the face of what seems "physically natural". To even go against the standard setup of the body senses. To be confronted with the attempt by the world to cause you, and to be uncaused by it. To disregard all temptations and not fall for the belief that sin is really happening to you. Because really this is a dream coming from you designed to make it look like it’s coming from itself.

This is the work and the challenge and the spiritual way out of hell. This is the forgiveness of the world. To stare the world in the face and recognize it is not coming AT you, but FROM you. To realize you have a say in it, you contribute, you choose, you consent, you cause, you have power, and you cannot be a victim. It is completely unnatural in terms of this world to attempts to do this, which is why it can seem so difficult to do it consistently. The world has no end of temptations and problems to offer you to distract you onto the slippery slopes of hell.

The truth then flies totally in the face of the world and is nothing like the world. The world is false. Truth offers a perspective which comes from the inside and extends outward through love rather than acting like a black hole of suffering. It ignores any suggestion that the world does anything to you or anyone, and is completely unaffected and unmoved by any and all occurrences and suggestions of attack happening. It is to stand in the onslaught of a river barraging you in your face and be solid like a rock, unmoved and unwavered by its endless attempted attack.

What you are is immovable, unchangeable, permanent, fixed, absolute, eternal, immortal, invulnerable, powerful, harmless, unassailable, perfect and causal. Asserting and expressing this at all times is the goal. You are not relative but absolute. You are not finite but infinite. You have power over this world and over all phenomenon, over the body and over space and time and matter and energy. You are real and the world is not. And only if it is not is there hope that you can overcome it.

Christianity makes sense. It makes logical sense. The structure of its metaphysics is consistent, albeit mistaken. But here's a secret... everyone who has an ego believes the Christian doctrine, because it's really a doctrine base on the ego's thought system and the ego made it.

For example, it depends on the idea that this world is real, that you do real things in this world, and that if you do the "wrong" real things then that's a sin.

This basis alone is enough for all of the rest of it to spring forth consistently.

For example, if this world is real and sin is real, then you will start trying to identify what is a sin and what isn't. You'll separate out "good and bad". This immediately produces the notion of good and evil. Some things are considered not sins so they are good, and other things are considered sins so they are evil.

Just the mere of act of existing in a dualistic right/wrong world where real stuff happens and some of is it not right, automatically implies that evil exists. Therefore the doctrine now becomes that you should choose only the good stuff and reject the bad stuff.

This actually isn't really just a Christian perspective. It's really the belief of the EGO, and anyone who has a persona and shadow is participating in the battle of good vs evil. If you believe that some aspects of this world are good and some are not, or that some behaviors are good and some are not, you are believing in a separation between good and evil. It means the good stuff is being spiritualized, is being made special, is given extra value, and is seen as acceptable. The bad stuff is seen as unspiritual, valueless, and unacceptable.

So it's not just Christianity that believes in this dynamic. Anyone with an ego believes in this dynamic, even members of other religions if they believe this world is real and that some of the things in it are more spiritual than others.

This goes on to imply that in order to be spiritual, you must only do the good acceptable things, you must keep your behavior in-line, and you must not "sin". If you do sinful things, you will be guilty of sin and be justified in being punished. It would then only seem "right" to punish the sin and condemn the sinner.

This leads to the idea of God, or the interpretation of God, as someone who judges whether you've been sinful or not, and how he then decides based on that whether you are worthy of heaven/love, or whether you need to be punished in hell. So automatically it creates the belief in heaven and hell as the extremes of sin vs not sin.

Anyone who believes that sins are real, Christian or otherwise, actually does believe in heaven vs hell, and good vs evil. They must, because believing in real sin automatically implies these things. Its a package deal.

So if now God is only going to approve of you if you are "good" and do not do the things which are considered sins, and if God's disapproval is going to land you in hell and punishment, it gives you a pretty good motivation to be "good". So then you focus on that, believing that the more good you become the less evil you become. Makes sense right?

This also then implies that if you DO sin, then you need some kind of special pardon if you're going to be seen as acceptable. Therefore you will need to be forgiven by God or Jesus, and if they decide not to forgive you but to condemn you, then you're on your way to hell. This produces such a huge amount of fear relating to whether you are going to be acceptable or not, whether you can be forgiven, and even the possibility of going to a "real hell" is already a nightmare.

To believe that sin is real automatically leads to believing that hell is real. If sin is evil then obviously sinning produces evil and, you know, there's a "place" where evil then seems to exist, and we call that hell. This belief in real sin produces therefore the belief in "real hell", and just believing that hell is real, alone, is enough to frighten the pants off you. It is not so much that the church itself attempts to use this idea to scare you into conformity and control, although that might've happened to some degree.

The ego doesn't need the church to accomplish this. Anyone who believes sin is real will automatically haunt themselves with this belief that a "real evil" could not only attack and threaten and tempt them, but that they themselves could therefore be vulnerable or susceptible to becoming part of that evil, and wind up in hell, suffering and being damned from love forever. Nasty business. All it takes is an ego.

Also then if God is in a position of having to judge between sinners and the innocent, that now turns God into a judger and and a conditional lover. He will only love IF you behave yourself, and if you don't, He will be the one to send you to hell. The amount of fear produced by reacting to this notion, alone, is horrifying, not to mention that it implies that God is fickle and incapable of unconditional love, and so cannot be trusted.

The idea that you might not be accepted or loved, is deeply upsetting. IF God were like this, which he would HAVE to be if sin and evil are real, you're going to be clinging to the edge of your seat until "judgement day" hoping that you've got some chance in hell of not being sent into the pit.

Again this is not just a Christian viewpoint, to be fair, it is the viewpoint that underlies EVERYONE who has an ego. Almost everyone on the planet has bought into this entire thought system as a complete package. Believe in even just one PART of it and you must automatically believe in the rest of it, because it all ties together perfectly logically and leads to all of the other implications.

If you are a A Course in Miracles student, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist or whatever, or an Atheist, if you believe the physical world is real and that it contains good and bad, YOU DO BELIEVE IN HELL, SIN, A JUDGEMENTAL GOD, SACRIFICE, THREAT OF DAMNATION, SUFFERING AND DEATH. If you think you don't, and you have an ego, you're in denial.

In order for you NOT to believe any of this thought system, or any of the parts of it, there MUST be a decision on your part not to believe at least one PART of it. For example, if you were to believe that sin is not real, this AUTOMATICALLY IMPLIES that the entire rest of the ego thought system, the entire rest of "christianity", is false.

If sin is not real, there is no good and bad or right and wrong, things appearing to happen are just illusions, God is unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental, there is no real evil, there in no hell, and you are One with God in Heaven forever. And that's all an automatic logical conclusion that is part of the package deal you get when you believe that sin is not real.

You could also say, I do not believe the world is real. That too will put a pin in the entire ego thought system based on good vs evil, and will completely undermine every part of it. If the world is not real and God did not create it then there is also no real evil and no sin or death and no hell to speak of, and nothing that seems to happen here can prove that you are sinful or guilty, therefore you are already eternally forgiven.

So it's really down to the thought system, and its logical consistency. The ego's thought system is responsible for creating Christianity, it is responsible for creating all political parties, it is responsible for creating all wars and conflicts, it is responsible for creating all belief in sin and evil and hell, it is responsible for all suffering, all sickness, and all death, regardless of what form the belief system seems to take or how it's structured or what side you're on.

What A Course in Miracles is trying to teach is that the entire ego thought system and ALL of its contents, IS NOT TRUE. And that means, since truth=reality, it is not REAL. This doesn't throw Jesus Christ out the window, in fact, because Jesus wrote ACIM and He is teaching us through it the "correction" of not only Christianity's interpretation of reality, but also the entire ego's, which includes far more. It's trying to show us the way out, the truth and the light, and the correct interpretation of what is happening here.

It's teaching us that the world is not real, sin is not real, sickness is not real, death is not real, it's all an ego illusion. God is unconditionally loving, forgiveness is universal and permanent, and only love is real.

"Forgive them for they know not what they do" applies to anyone who believes in separation, because literally a state of ego-mindedness renders you unaware of what you are doing or why.

When you are whole minded you'll see the whole truth. Everything will be in its correct perspective. The truth will be obvious and you'll easily recognize it as true. And in contrast to it, anything that is not true will be very obviously false. There is no effort required in that, only awareness of the whole picture.

In awareness of everything, you need do nothing about the ego because you will recognize it is not real and doesn't exist. It merely needs to be seen for what it is, an illusion, which has disappeared and never was. It is made of nothing and is nothing.

But when separation is introduced to your mind, something else happens. It makes you unconscious to some degree. Separation is a form of denial or a block to awareness, so it blocks out awareness of some parts of the whole picture. It leaves you in a state of partial perception. It's like someone just hid a bunch of facts.

In particular, the truth, which was clear and obvious, becomes obscure and hidden. And without a clear awareness of the whole truth, you don't have a barometer to compare and contrast everything else to in order to find out if its true or false. It's like you forgot what reality is like, so now you're confused about whether what you're experiencing is reality or not.

Without the truth, and with key facts concealed by denial, your mind is now in a state where it is semi-conscious. It does not really realize it is not fully conscious, because it isn't aware of the stuff it isn't aware of. So it thinks it is fully conscious. Even a mind which is severely unconscious and limited still believes that it is fully aware of everything.

At all times, we believe that we're aware of the whole truth, every fact, every detail, and every piece of evidence, regardless of whether we are. Whatever we are perceiving we always believe it is the whole truth. And we are always assuming that we are 100% objective in our perception. We also assume that we are completely unbiased and perceiving clearly and without distorting anything at all, which is far from the truth when the mind has blocks in it (there are no neutral thoughts).

On the basis of this, we also then "make sense" of what reality seems to mean, based on the extent of our awareness, or the facts that we do still have access to. But if we don't actually have all the facts, something strange happens. We come to conclusions, trying to make sense of what we're seeing, based on what we are aware of. And if that means, that we are not aware of what is really causing something, we will try to come up with an alternative cause for things.

So because we're unconscious, we don't "see" that we actually cause everything, that we made the world, that we have orchestrated all events, and that we have attacked ourselves. The causality or the act of choosing to do that, is outside of awareness. So then it seems to us, in partial consciousness, that stuff happens seemingly out of nowhere, unjustified and uncalled for and unfair, as if it happens against your conscious will. It seems like another will has willed stuff to happen, without your permission, and so now you are victimized by it. Yet it it is your own will, unconsciously, making poor choices.

Based on this unawareness, and given only the limited information you have, you'll then try to make sense out of it, you'll assess the evidence, look around you, seek inside you for any sign that you made something happen, and failing to find awareness of such a cause or intention, you'll "rationally conclude" that it must've been someone else. You will then be convinced it's an external cause, or someone else willed against you, or the world did it to you, making you an unfairly treated victim.

This will all seem to make total sense to you. Because you're always trying to make sense of what you perceive, or to understand what it means based on the limited truth. So it seems to make sense, based on not having all the evidence, that other people are guilty sinners and they're attacking you and you are justified in revenge and anger.

You don't become angry on a basis of just being an angry person or as a random thing or just some reaction. You only become angry because to your consciousness, unable to see the full picture, it seems to make total sense to you that it is justified and correct and a truthful conclusion, based on what you're aware of. You look around you and do not see what you did to yourself, or any other signs that you chose it, and so this leads to obvious yet false conclusions about the scapegoats who must've been the cause.

You can't help it, either. In essence, you are not doing this on purpose to be an asshole. You're not intentionally, in your right mind, trying to be hurtful or scapegoat. You are actually simply acting very "naturally" in accord with the scope of your awareness and the resulting effect on your thought system. In essence, anyone who comes to believe in separation, MUST see themselves as being victimized. The mind simply cannot see itself attacking itself so its only option to so believe someone else is responsible.

It's pretty much automatic. Anyone with an ego will react with anger. Anyone with an ego will see themselves treated poorly. Anyone with an ego will hallucinate and be convinced that there are causes outside of their own will doing stuff to them. Anyone with an ego will see themselves as not the cause of problems, but rather at the effect of them, helplessly, and that this is indeed an unfair attack.

There is nothing special at all about the conditions and conclusions that arise in ego mindedness. It is completely predictable, and it applies to absolutely anyone who enters separation. It's like, if you choose separation, you are guaranteed to see yourself as being victimized. And anyone who does this will see themselves this way and will then react to these false conclusions of external causes.

This is why all ego behaviors are forgivable. They are forgivable because, literally, anyone acting in the ego in this way, as a victim or victimizer, MUST NOT see themselves correctly. They are mistaken. They are not aware. They are not aware of the evidence, they don't see the whole picture, they're not aware of what the truth is, they cannot see their own causal power, they are unaware of their own influence over their own perceptions, they don't even recognize their own identity, and they are very confused about what is what.

Any behaviors or attitudes that stem from this state of unawareness HAS to be forgivable, if you can be aware of the larger picture yourself and recognize the simple mistakes that people are making. A person is not trying to be an asshole attacker. They are actually quite naturally reacting and trying to make sense of their distorted reality, based on an inability to see the whole truth. They're literally doing the best they can, or at least are reactive very predictably based on their mental illness.

This is why anyone in the ego is forgivable. Anyone in the ego is simply mistaken. It does not call for attack or revenge. It does not call for condemnation or judgement. It does not call for making guilty or sinful. If you can be in the whole picture and aware of the whole truth, it is obvious once again what is what.

It's obvious that people hurt themselves. It's obvious that people think they know what is true when they don't. It's obvious that they are calling for help. It's obvious that they are confused and hallucinating. It's obvious that they think they sinned when they didn't. It's obvious that they are following perfectly logically consistent conclusions based on the limited information they have. And it's obvious they are not trying to be "bad" or evil on purpose, they're simply unconscious and mentally ill.

People are upset and angry and confused and lashing out only because they have come to believe false truths about what is really happening. They do not see. They are asleep. They think that something bad has happened to them unfairly and people are out to get them and they need to be afraid and defenses are justified and counter-attack is survival. They're acting completely logically and predictably based on their state of awareness, or rather their 'ignorance' of the whole truth. They simply do not know what they are doing.

This is why from the highest levels, you can only have compassion and be forgiving. Forgiveness is justified in the big picture because it recognizes and sees the whole picture, has all the information, can see who does what to whom, sees no victims, does not believe any of the distorted illusions or false conclusions, and simply recognizes that people are mistaken. Awareness of the truth shows you what is true and what is false, clearly and obviously.

All sins are forgivable, because even the idea of sin is just another part of being unconscious and not aware of the whole truth. Sins are forgivable because in truth they cannot cause consequences and have no real effects. Sins are forgivable because no-one can really sin and no-one has really sinned, they just think they have, because there is key information unavailable to them. Blocks to awareness are responsible for all mistaken conclusions.

We simply need someone to tap us on the shoulder the middle of our hissy fit,to remind us, hey.... that thing you thought happened, it didn't happen. You did not hurt anyone. You did not make bad stuff happen. Other people are not trying to destroy you. You actually are doing this to yourself. There is more truth that you do not see or realize. Everything is actually ok. God has taken care of everything. Nothing is out of place. You are still worthy of love. Everything is still exactly in its correct place and everything in heaven is still continuing without missing a single note in heaven's song. It's all good.

I think that I recently reached a turning point. It's particularly to do with the sense of being a "separate person". This seemed to come into question, particularly in terms of relationships with others, how I see them, who I think they are etc. And it also very much involved questioning the reality of my body and the bodies of others.

I seemed to be opening up to an idea of oneness, a sense of sharing, of joining minds, and that others are a part of myself. I could see how I had been trapped inside a kind of prison of isolation for a long time, identified with my body and with being "not others". As if everything I did and how I thought about people all revolved around this sense of me being separate from them. I found myself apologizing a lot in my mind for all the ways I'd been wrongly separating myself off through various forms of conflict and scapegoating.

As I embraced more the idea that my brothers are part of myself, this began to transcend bodily boundaries. It also began to open up a sense of inclusion and shared interests. I started experimenting with the idea of "being" other people, and trying to include them in myself as I related to them. It changes the energy dynamics completely and totally deflates all sense of going to war. I realized this was a major part of the golden rule, the atonement, the idea of sharing, and deeply connected to true miracle-working.

Since that turning point, and as this sense of joining continues to expand, I've been noticing a few things that are changing. I feel as though I am stepping outside of a box that I've been in. As if there's been a little circle drawn on the floor around my feet and I've never before stepped outside the circle. Everywhere I've gone, I've still been inside the circle, cut off from people. And as I now step outside of it, it makes me realize all the more that the body is a device for separation.

In particular I feel that I've been just stuck in the idea of "I am a body" my whole life, and that the body has served as a way to remain separated off. I suddenly started seeing how every way I related to people was a special relationship, based on them being "not me", and all revolving around the body being the thing that separates me off. Seeing other people as confined to their bodies. Seeing myself as only that which is inside this body.

This boundary, which has been there, is now recognized as being the "cause of" a great deal of struggle, conflict, loss and unhappiness. Being identified and anchored to this body and "excluding" others, has formed the basis of all scapegoating, justifying all finger-pointing, all blame, all sense that something applies to others and not me. I see the body now as the core of what keeps me apart from others. And if I separate them off based on their body being separate from my body, that's the whole trap.

Suddenly I find myself stepping outside of this entire dynamic. Transcending bodies. Including people as a part of myself. Developing a sense of shared identity. I realize that peace is only possible by sharing and joining, because only in oneness is there no separation or war. And that it is ONLY through joining of mind and sharing an identity that you can actually work true miracles. It literally requires the two minds to have a shared sense of oneness and identity which transcends bodies. It is that mystical, psychological, joining of two beings as one, that literally undoes the separation, and therefore sickness and death.

I see now much more clearly the "road home", as being a movement away from being separated off, and towards being reunited with others. Of finding more ways to include others in myself. And I see that this truly is the only way to end the war, the conflict, the arguments, the projections, and all the ego activities. We came from a state of union and we have to return to it.

It is quite startling in fact to recognize that, in truth, we are supposed to be basically everywhere, united with everyone, sharing everything, one with all minds, being a part of all beings, and that in contrast, bodies are doing the absolute extreme opposite of that. They are serving as ways to keep people apart, promote conflict, imprison and trap, produce loneliness and isolation, and breed sickness.

I can see now in fact that it is my belief in being separate that fuels sickness in myself and others. It is the very sense of the rift or split in my mind - our mind - a sense of us not being one with each other, that manifests as illness. I have been producing illness between myself and others as a projected form of the idea of being at war with them.

Pictures of crucifixion have arisen as psychological images of dream-weapons held up to support the idea of "not being each other". Of being in a state of attack and special relationship. A state of separating off and being an enemy. It breeds a dream of death that I've been doing to myself. And always whenever the body is involved as a separation device, the relationship is always one of specialness and conflict and hatred.

It feels like coming out of a shell, out of hiding. It feels like realizing that you've been living in a prison cell all your life, anchored inside the body, and suddenly are realizing that this has hemmed you in and has tended to make you withdraw to your isolation as a way to solve problems. Now that I suddenly realize I don't have to be trapped in the body, I can spread my wings and encompass others, be more inclusive and share more.

It's strange but this seems also be precisely what it means to truly forgive. Because forgiveness isn't just about recognizing people's innocence. Forgiveness is atonement, atonement is sharing, and that means joining of minds. Forgiveness literally entails and requires minds to be inclusive of each other. It's not just a state of truer perceptions and more accurate judgements, it's actually a state of union and sharing. A return to shared identity and being.

As a result, and without deliberately attempting to do so, I suddenly am noticing myself giving people far more credit, benefit of the doubt, charity, etc. Just as I found myself doing in certain forgiveness meditations, such as in lesson 121 in the course - forgiveness is the key to happiness, in which you are guided to see light in an enemy and find ways to credit them with the good they've done rather than focus on their shortcomings.

I find myself seeming to put my arms around people psychologically, my mind keeps taking an automatic step away from holding things against people and has this sort of "space" between where they're at and what I credit them with. I seem to be transcending their bodies and their egos along with my own. And that means, what I feel to be, true forgiveness is happening. I'm actually taking a vantage point, generalized and widespread, in which I am literally being more forgiving all the time, more loving, more inclusive, and more sharing.

I've been finding myself suddenly opening up to people more, connecting with people, serving people, helping people more than ever. It is diminishing and removing fears about relating to strangers, and seems to be powering me, not with some kind of bravado or arrogance but with gentleness and connection. I seem to be opening up. And to me that means that, living as a separated off body-identified self means being closed down. It means being cut off from others.

The simple truth is that bodies have been lying to us this whole time. We've bought into being bodies hook line and sinker. And that means being separated from each other, because bodies are literally never joined. The more we are a body the less we share. The more we are a body the more we are at war. The more we are a body the more confined we become to one little spot in the world, which becomes the center of the ego universe, and everyone else becomes an enemy.

Getting away from being a body is the key. It's like opening a door that I never realized was shut all this time. I've been doing this same thing over and over and over forever. Everything I've said and thought and done and related has been still within the confines of this prison cell. Still from a vantage point of being a separated self, a self that is not shared with other selves. A self that isn't united or whole or one or part of a sonship. The unhealed healer that is suffering from "separation sickness" and thinks they have something that others lack - ie that they lack me.

That's been the one common denominator this whole time, and now I'm learning to open the door and step outside. To expand my sense of self, to include myself in others, and to become a part of life. To restore relationship and connection, as well as to uphold health and wholeness. And I knew, it's not going to be long, as this continues to develop and increase, the movement towards being able to truly join minds and perform miracles of union.

Sharing is the key. Joining is everything. The oneness is our true nature. Not in rejection of our individual souls, but joining them together as a collective. We are still a holographic family, many yet one, each other yet ourselves. This means still being "me", but it also means being "more than just myself" and including others in what I am. I've focused too much on the "separate me" part and not enough on the "oneness" part. And it was the "oneness" part of that that I was missing out on. Not any more.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body. Be you free, so that the Holy Spirit can make use of your escape from bondage to set free the many who perceive themselves as bound and helpless and afraid. Let love replace their fears through you. Accept salvation now, and give your mind to Him Who calls to you to make this gift to Him. For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."