"The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world.In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."
The "purpose of the world" originally was to manifest war and tears.
When the purpose upon which it is built, the foundation of it, the reason for it, the cause of it, is uprooted and transformed into a purpose of love.... this actually dismantles the world. Because the world is MADE OF war and death and misery. The world was made as a DEFENSE MECHANISM against reality. When it is no longer seen as a place of war and death and misery, as in the forgiven world, and the mind no longer WANTS to defend itself against reality, "that" world can no longer be maintained. When all souls have seen the forgiven world, it no longer has that PURPOSE. Which is why Jesus says that you'll barely have time to delight at seeing the forgiven world because upon seeing it it no longer has a purpose and you're ready to be scooped up by God.
That doesn't mean it's been given a new purpose like - let's all keep it and love it forever. Instead, the END of its purpose heralds its disappearance. Just as Jesus says that once perception is perfected, perception ITSELF is no longer needed. Perception, and this world, and the body, are nothing but teaching/learning devices. Once the Holy Spirit's purpose of using them to accomplish learning is finished, they no longer even have THAT purpose, and without a purpose the world is nothing. It is over. It has no USE. And so the mind simply drops it and it disappears into nothing.
This is the same mechanism as described in "sickness is a defense against the truth" in which when the PURPOSE of a sickness is recognized, and the mind no longer sees a NEED for that purpose (ie I don't NEED a defense because the truth is not attacking me), it simply recognizes the sickness as pointless and unnecessary and it simply vanishes. Sickness without a purpose cannot stay. Just as the world without a purpose cannot stay.
The world is or was a device for separation, just as is the body. When it is no longer used FOR separation, it no longer is NEEDED, and it no longer is protecting the mind from God. And as such it is cast off. Gone. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
What you are, and what your brother is, is ONLY what has been given by God. Your inheritance, shared with your brother, comes only from God. You are permanent host to God. God is in you. He has shared his Will with you. He has given his Mind to you. You have his freedom and his love. You are ONLY what HE intends you to be.
There is nothing about you which God Himself did not create, and anything He did not create does not exist. If it did not come from God, it is not really there. If God didn't give it to you, or you didn't extend it from Him, it is not yours. You have nothing that does not come from him.
"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
The only seeming temporary difference between you and Jesus is that you think you have things which did not come from God. You think you are something He did not create. You think you have a will that is different to his. You think your body is really happening. You think problems in this world of problems need to be solved. You think there is a world you made to oppose his. Nothing that He did not create exists. Nothing you made is really there.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."
If there appears to be sickness, it cannot exist. If God Himself personally did not put the sickness there, it cannot exist. God must be involved in anything real. If a person has any form of sickness, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, it cannot have come from God. If it did not come from God and is instead an attempt to shut God out, then it did not come from reality, nor can it be anything but an illusion.
Your brother cannot be sick because God did not create sickness. Your brother cannot be a body because God did not create bodies. Your brother cannot be unhappy, sad, suffering, dying, afraid, guilty, sinful, condemned, attacked, or even slightly annoyed, because God himself did not put it there.
There is no sickness in God, there is no pain in God, there is no hatred in God, there is no death in God. God does not have cancer or heart disease or diabetes or stroke or heart attacks or liver failure or brain damage or ulcers or lung disease or broken bones. He did not create these things. They do not exist in Him. He did not give them to you or your brother. Therefore they CANNOT be real, they cannot exist, and you and your brother CANNOT really have these things.
We are but to recognize that we have nothing other than what came from God. Only the truth is true and nothing else is true. If God isn't a co-creator of it with you, it is not real. If God Himself did not create it with you, it is not real. If you made it yourself, it is not real. There can be nothing true about the world or the body because God did not create it. He did not create war or sickness or death. These cannot be true, they cannot be real, they cannot be there.
"It is not God's will that you suffer."
"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."
"God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him."
"There is no difference between your will and God's."
"Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome."
"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form."
"There is no opposition to the truth."
"There is no death because what God created shares His Life."
"There is NO chance that Heaven will not be yours"
"If God is real there is no pain. If pain is real there is no God."
"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."
"There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state."
"There IS no hindrance to the Will of God"
"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."
"There is no emptiness in him."
"There IS no barrier between God and His Son"
"For there is no lack in him."
"And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change."
"If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible."
"There is no veil the love of God in us together CANNOT lift."
"There IS no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son, as the Son is blessed in Him."
"There is no fear in perfect love."
"there is no possible alternative to God's plan that will save you"
"There is NO strain in doing God's will as soon as it is also your own."
"IN the Kingdom, there is no teaching OR learning, because there is no BELIEF. There is only CERTAINTY."
"There is no death, because the living share the Function their Creator gave to them. Life's function CANNOT be to die. It must be life's EXTENSION, that it be as One forever and forever, WITHOUT end. "
"God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable."
"There is no sin."
"There is no death, the son of God is free."
"I am not a body,I am free.For I am still as God created me."
"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."
"Today's idea is true because the world does not exist."
"I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, And I would know my own reality."
Something like this has to be read carefully because all too often people quote bits of this as if it's saying "don't bother changing anything in the world", and it's NOT saying that.
"If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."
What it says is that the world you're seeing is the result of something you are projecting out of your mind, and therefore it makes no sense to try messing with the picture out there - you are better off changing the content of the film reel in your mind so that it projects a different world.
It in no way says that you should never try to change the world. It in fact is an instruction on HOW to change the world. Or in other words, how to SWITCH TO a different world that has the changes you want built into it.
Change your mind, so that it causes a different world to be projected. That's what it's saying. If you don't realize that your mind projects the world you'll start wrangling with the world itself trying to force it to change AGAINST your mind's projections, and there's no point doing that because you'll just keep projecting the same world. If you want to see a different world you have to change your mind SO THAT you project a different world entirely.
This also means that when it says to change your mind ABOUT the world, it does not mean that you keep THE SAME WORLD and change your mind about it. It means you need to change your mind so that it is different in its state than it was in before, SO THAT it projects a DIFFERENT world. The state of mind and its thoughts "about" the world it had projected before, has changed, NOT so that you see THE SAME world in a different way, but so that your changed mind makes a NEW world. In fact, the quote might as well also say "don't bother changing your mind ABOUT this world, because that won't change THIS world - change your mind and make a different one."
The problem people have is they think there is an objective world out there that you project onto or perceive, rather than realizing that your mind MAKES the world. If you don't like what you've made, make something else! That's what it's saying. Don't change the effect of what you already chose in the past. Don't change your mind about the SAME world and try keeping it in with a different perception. Choose something different and make something new. The world you see is what you project TO see. Projection makes perception.
In effect, you CAN'T change the world anyway, and changing your mind about the world switches to ANOTHER world. The world is just an effect. Like a picture on a movie screen. If you don't like it, change what's in the projector and watch something else.
God who is the first cause, can only give what he has. All he has is himself. He can give his own nature and extend himself. He cannot add anything which he did not have before he gave it. He cannot add anything of a nature unlike his own. Nor can his creations give anything OTHER THAN God.
If God is love, then God can give love. If God is permanence, then God can give permanence. If God is happy, then God can give happiness. But if God is not death, God cannot give death. If God is not separation, God cannot give separation. If God is not a body, God cannot give a body.
All that God can create is created in his own likeness. He cannot even conceive of anything unlike himself. He has to operate within the laws of the very reality of his own nature. He cannot break his own laws or operate outside of them. All that comes from him has to be entirely like him.
When God creates something all it can do is inherit God. God gives all of himself to it and so it has everything that God has. This is an act of sharing. Any creation must have all the qualities of God.
Since God is a creator, or extender of self-nature, so too must his creations be extenders of their own God-given nature. This means that all creations are REQUIRED to be able to GIVE what they have inherited. They must be able to create fully, and anything they create must have ALL the properties of their creator, including the ability to create in his likeness.
It is not possible for creation to occur whereby what is created is only PARTLY like its creator. Nor can a creation only inherit SOME of its creator's nature. It has to be FULLY GIVEN otherwise it is not fully created. Therefore any child of God can and must create creations, which are themselves AS FULLY CAPABLE OF CREATING as God is. And they CAN ONLY CREATE WHOLENESS.
The nature and attributes of God are therefore inherited and passed down through the generations of creation from father to son to grandson, and the grandson is JUST AS CAPABLE AS GOD and FULLY LIKE HIM still. But similarly, his grandson CANNOT CREATE anything UNLIKE God. And God is not a planet.
Now, when you look at planet Earth, this perfect extension DOES NOT HAPPEN. "Creation is impossible in this world." On Earth, that which seems to exist or which seems to be made or created, unfortunately NEVER inherits ALL of its creator's potential or nature. At best it inherits only SOME of its parents attributes. And as a result, most of the things that exist in this world CANNOT CREATE LIKE THEIR CREATOR. This produces a kind of "dead end" where "created things" cannot create anything at all.
For example, there is no way to claim that a car is capable of creating its own lineage of cars. It is ridiculous to suggest that a house can beget houses, or that a planet gives birth to planets exactly like themselves. Even when you look to objects which are somewhat more organic or reproductive, you still see a LACK OF TRANSFER of the full attributes of the parent to the child.
For example even humans are NOT able to create PERFECT MIRROR IMAGES of themselves in their chidren. Not only do children come from TWO different parents, the child as a single body cannot look FULLY like BOTH of them. It is impossible. Nor does any child inherit ALL of the attributes of the parent. In fact most children are biased toward being more like one parent than another, and no child is an exact mirror image of anyone. This is why all bodies are different and not equal.
This is because physical objects, matter, energy, this world, planet Earth, this galaxy and universe, are NOT A CREATION. They do not exhibit the LAW OF EXTENSION. They CANNOT PASS ON the fullness of the attributes of their creator. This alone also tells you that this world was NOT MADE BY a WHOLE-MINDED creator. It was made by someone who only partially created, or who wanted to not create fully, and who "created" WITHOUT GOD.
This world cannot have come from God. Quite literally, if a potato exists and is real, then God is a potato. But God can't be a potato. Because there are also chickens. And For a chicken to be real and exist, its creator has to be a chicken. God can't be a chicken and a potato because they are different. God has ONE NATURE, not two. And expecially not billions of natures, all of which contradict each other. God is not contradictory.
The more glaringly obvious and simple argument that God did not create this world is simply that IT IS NOT ABLE TO DO THE SAME. It cannot create in its total likeness. It cannot pass on all its attributes to a creation. Its creations DO NOT inherit all of its qualities. And no body, planet, chicken or potato, has ANY ability to CREATE A MIRROR IMAGE OF GOD. Nor are any of them actually LIKE God AT ALL.
It doesn't matter how you frame it. It doesn't matter how you perceive it. It doesn't matter what forgiveness you do. It doesn't matter how much you love or it choose to see a reflection of God in it. It STILL IS NOT like him. It STILL IS NOT A CO-CREATOR. Every child of God has to be a co-creator with God and create in his EXACT likeness. This world simply can never do that. It cannot extend itself at all because it is not really a creation.
This is why "only the creations of light are real." The creations of light produce creations of light. All such creations are perfectly like God. All of them exhibit all of God's qualities - permanence, immortality, perfection, invulnerability, innocence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotency, happiness, love, eternal life etc. Every single creation of God has ALL of this. Anything which does not have ALL of this is NOT a creation of God.
I'm sorry but when was the last time you saw a fire hydrant that was loving and creative? When was the last time that you put aside your ego perceptions and saw with the eyes of christ and found that fire hydrants suddenly had offspring? When did you last witness a car giving rise to a continual line of creation of more cars? When did you last see a house which got up and testified to being EXACTLY LIKE GOD, meaning that God is a house? These ideas are nonsense.
Regardless of how you see, regardless of how much ego you do or do not have, regardless of what you believe, nothing will ever change the fact that anything you can identify as an object LACKS the ability to EXTEND FULLY. No amount of spiritual awakening will change this fact. Nothing will ever stop the world from being a dead end. It is MADE, not created, in an unwilling attempt to NOT CREATE, which is why it takes on forms which CANNOT create.
Even the reflection of God seen in the world, even the face of Christ, even the real world, even the forgiven world, is never going to change the fact that the WORLD YOU MADE IS FALSE. It is false because it is NOT LIKE the truth. Even when you shine the truth onto it is it still not the truth. Even seen with perfect vision, it is STILL not able to operate like God. No human body will ever produce an exact replica of itself.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.
This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
With A Course in Miracles, for most of us the journey starts in darkness. The lessons are designed to gradually lift us up out of the darkness into the light. As we read the text and learn of its instructions, we gradually piece together a clearer picture of what is true and real. Our learning begins to generalize. Things which made no sense before become internally supported and consistent.
Over time you move from the state of an intense focus on the form of the words, the surface layer, to the much deeper messages. You start to see the correlations between passages spread across different chapters. Gradually you get in behind the words and the clear-cut metaphysical basis for the course's expression comes into focus.
At that point you'll start finding yourself becoming more of a authority and more able to base things you express on the truth. As your intimacy with the truth increases you begin to come from it, built upon it, and start to act from the top down. That means you're beginning to shine your light and remember who you are, expressing from the inner awareness of love and from the higher plane of sanity.
Particularly if you look into the metaphysics of God's Kingdom you'll find there not only clarification about the end goal, but also clarification about where it all started. And as you understand better the mechanics of heaven you can really start to grasp the underlying basis for the entire systems of thought - both that of God and that of the ego. Seeing where it all originated and how it progressed and how it is then reversed gives you great perspective.
You're then able to let go of the "bottom up" approach and begin to fulfill your function more from the top down, acting on a basis of guidance and trust, remaining in the light, holding true to what's real, overlooking the lower rungs of the ladder through forgiveness. The mind and perception are stabilized and the root of your being begins to reveal itself.
You can now utilize this intimate knowledge of the underlying immortal Kingdom as a foundation on which ti build. On which to extrapolate. On which to base your expressions. And then once it has all become so much simpler and refined you are able to express in countless ways and words all of this stuff that emanates out from a forgiven mind, from a state of simpler love and wholeness and clarity.
What that essentially means is you have become the truth, aligned yourself with it, are expressing from it. Both through a metaphysical logical basis and through the extension of love and miracles. A mind that has aligned itself with its Creator now possesses the power of authorship, and that means you now speak for God just as the Holy Spirit does. This is where you have become a teacher of God, able now to be a representative of His Word and the light of the world. Heaven's emissary. An ambassador for eternal life. A messenger of peace. And a holy influence.
Change the world? Well. As it turns out, its not possible to immediately materialize changes with the mind, unless of course you are more spiritually advanced. In this world, all things tend to be governed by the ego laws, and everything is difficult. To bring about any kind of alteration requires effort and a lot of time. A lot of work. You have to go through the proper channels and processes and plans and all the steps that it takes to go from idea to creation. It's a very long, laborious, slow process, no matter what you do.
Such a scenario is unnatural. It is our God-given ability to create life in an instant just by willing it. But in this world we've become severely limited, stripped of our powers seemingly and able only to affect change through physical brute force. Someone somewhere has to use the tools or move the objects. And then that leads to entire segments of activity like skills, the arts, craftsmanship, construction and assembly etc, all the efforts we make to "make stuff happen". To bring about a change. Long and slow and effortful and difficult and fraught with problems.
I thought it was maybe just me, some failure on my part or some inability to get things done. Or some procrastinating attitude. But really the difficulty and hurdles are built into spacetime. It's just the nature of the place. We literally made things difficult for ourselves and embedded orders of difficulty into just about everything. And now either you just do nothing and be a lazy bum or you are going to have to put in effort and struggle to make anything happen. And then this struggle is spiritualized and lauded as a valuable thing in its own right. And those who make bigger waves or create within the confines of the laws of spacetime become idol worshipped.
Change... on this level, is not an easy thing. And any amount of "getting stuff done" or trying to bring about a goal, takes a lot of constant efforting and striving and expenditure and loss and frustration. Those who become good at it can turn shit into money. Those who are bad at it end up with few abilities and a lot of limitations and poverty. And all of it is an attempt to "make something" out of the world and convert it into something else, some kind of magical transformation to some supposedly better more desirable form. Because otherwise it's a turd waiting to be polished.
So excuse me while I just take a lazy break from efforting and accomplishing, and just sit back and laugh at how broken the world has always been.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality. Miracles are NOT in competition, and the number that you can do is LIMITLESS. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. "
To ego, "having a self" seems to be what it's all about. This suggestion that ego is a "self you made" or some kind of a thing.
But this is actually completely backwards.
The ego is actually the idea of the END OF YOURSELF. It is a DENIAL OF SELF. It is an attempt to DISOWN YOURSELF.
What then "looks like" the formation of a fake self, a lying self, a self built from imaginary images, is in fact the opposite of what that illusion suggests.
It's not that the "ego exists" and you have to undo it, thus throwing out all "individuality" along with it.
The ego IS NOT INDIVIDUALITY. The ego is the END OF INDIVIDUALITY, masquerading as the illusion of "self" being created. This is because the Son of God is dreaming that He created Himself, which requires the SUPPRESSION of HIS SELF using denial.
So the ego is not a self. The ego is the ANTITHESIS of self. The ego is ISOLATION away from Self. The ego is the collapsing of identity, the undoing of what God created, and the attempted DESTRUCTION of Self.
So for anyone to say, well, if you wake up from the ego you will no longer have a self... they have not seen through the ego's lie. Waking up means you REGAIN YOURSELF, you RETURN TO YOUR REAL SELF, you RECLAIM your individuality, you RESTORE AWARENESS that you have always existed. The only thing that "ends" is the fiction that you do NOT exist as God created you.
So don't buy this EGO IDEA that waking up or returning to oneness will make "you" cease to exist. That is the EGO TALKING. *IT* will cease to exist, in the sense that, it always was the idea of not existing, and the idea of NOT EXISTING will end, to be replaced with the awareness that YOU DO EXIST.
So this fictional fuck-off idea of "you have no self", masquerading as spirituality, masquerading as nonduality or acceptance of oneness. It is UTTER BULLSHIT. It is an ego-driven lie.
You are NOT going to end when you wake up. YOU are going to WAKE UP to HAVING A SELF. A self which is driven by love, designed by love, and filled with love. A self which wants to SHARE AND EXTEND ITSELF, in order to exist. A self which is REAL and is PART of GOD.
You, who God created, as permanent, to exist forever, as one of His many sons, as part of his sonship, will ALWAYS EXIST, have always existed, and ALREADY HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.
All this other "you'll stop existing" bullshit is EGO FEAR and a device to turn you away from God and deny His creation. That is not spirituality, it is a lie. Getting rid of yourself is suicide and sacrifice!
God created you. God loves you.
It is critical to recognize this fundamental truth about the world. It is true of the world, it is true of every part of the world, of every world, every planet, every galaxy, and every part of space and time itself.
Time is change, and change is death.
Space is separation, and separation is death.
Space and time are systems of death.
There is no escaping this. There are no exceptions.
If something can change, it can stop being the way it is. Fundamentally it doesn't matter how perfect something seems to be, how new it is, how long-lasting, how impervious, how hard or solid, how much vitality it has, how much time was put into it, what it's made of, who made it, what brand name is slapped on it, how ancient it is, or how slowly it seems to change.
All things in space and time are constantly in a state of dying. We call "cell division" life. It is SEPARATION. It is death.
ALL THINGS HERE DIE.
"There IS no life outside of Heaven."
That which is immortal lives forever. It remains constantly the same. In order to be immortal it cannot change or be changed. It has to be invulnerable and impervious. It has to last forever. It cannot have any quality of modification, change, alteration or effect. It cannot be influenced, moved, transformed, attacked, made different, or questioned. It has to be always rock solid, the same, permanent, true, real, everlasting, and endless. Reality is ABSOLUTE.
That is true of all things in heaven's reality, in God. It is not true of ANYTHING in this world.
EVERYTHING in this world changes. Time forces it to change. TIME IS CHANGE. Time is a seeming force that takes whatever exists, and does not allow it to be permanent. It takes whatever is there now, and converts it into something else. It does not allow anything to stay the same. It does not permit permanence of any kind. Time is destructive. It is fundamentally a process of making sure NOTHING can last. NOTHING.
Time is death, and it is only a matter of time.
This means all things in space and time will end.
"Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end." "The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."
Think not that there is just some small PARTS of the world that do this. Think not that there are some places you can go, people you can meet, body types, vocations, objects or anything at all anywhere in this whole system which escapes this law. It is the law of death. It is the law of NO freedom. It is the law of punishment. It is the law of sin and payment. Everything has a cost. Nothing is without sacrifice. And there is loss everywhere. Welcome to hell.
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."
Time DEVOURS.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
You cannot WANT this. But if you are not willing to look at its nature, you WILL want it, because you will be in denial. You will think the world is not like this. That there is hope. There is NO HOPE in the world. It has NO HOPE of ever succeeding at escaping death. It has NO HOPE of ever ceasing to disappoint.
It always falls short because something always changes. Everything always comes to an end. Every physical form transforms and decays and is no longer like itself. And nothing has any sense of any permanent identity at all, so there is no knowledge or anything trustworthy. You cannot rely on it. You cannot depend on it. It lies to you constantly. It is not your friend. It gives only to take away, and it never really gave in the first place.
You can only want the world if you are not willing to look at this. You can only want it if you think this is not true of the world. If you have the rose-tinted glasses of selective perception, in which you fake a sense of positivity and try to dress the world up as great and valuable. You invest time into it. You assemble its objects into pleasing configurations. You try to make it look new and shiny. You clean it and polish it. You make it appear never before seen as if it has given birth to something utterly fresh and interesting. And every single time it is a decoy to tempt you to stay in hell.
You cannot want the world because it was not MADE with love. It was not made through an act of wanting. It was made of rejection. You made it by rejecting the shit in your mind that you did not want and hated, by projecting it out. And thus your unwanted garbage turned into a dumpster pit filled with lies about external salvation and valuable treasures. You do NOT really want the world, and that is the underlying truth.
You cannot want a world which fails. You would be insane to do so. You cannot want a world which offers nothing of real value. You cannot want a world that does nothing for you and everything against you. You cannot want a world whose offerings are always death wrapped in a picture frame of sparkling jewels and special love. You cannot want a world that fundamentally can only die and can never sustain anything.
"You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."
You cannot want a world that denies its own existence, hates itself, destroys itself, is completely disinterested in you, and attacks you at every turn. You cannot want a word that does not want you, and instead rejects you and abandons you. You cannot want a world that wants you to be destroyed and ignore who and what you are. How can you love something that is so utterly unloveable? To love it would have to be to completely overlook it.
That's what forgiveness means. "To forgive is to overlook." It means to NOT SEE the world. To look past the bodies and not see them. To look past physical matter and beyond the veil. To NOT SEE the world. That is forgiveness. Because your focus on the truth and the light of God BLINDS you to hell and makes the world of form turn transparent. You cannot look upon hell with love and expect the darkness to remain. Shine upon it and it will be dispelled from your sight.
"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances. It keeps its steady gaze upon the light that lies beyond them."
"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred." "What fear would feed upon, love overlooks."
"For, at its center, Christ has been reborn, to light His home with vision that overlooks the world."
"Forgiveness RECOGNIZED as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to OVERLOOK illusions."
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS."
"For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."
"It is impossible to overlook what you would see, and fail to see what you have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD."
"Is he (Jesus) the Christ? Oh yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of us. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but ****has the mark of death upon it****. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
Jesus here tells us that this world, Earth, which comprises homes and cities and roads etc, has the mark of death upon it. That even from the start, even when it was made, it already had death and disappointment infused into it. It was made in an idea of death, being the idea of the opposite to eternal life. This is because "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." and so an illusory world is really a dream of death.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it ****are the laws of death****."
Recognize then that by death he's talking about the fact that everything in spacetime, including spacetime itself, is founded on the idea of an interruption to life, or an attempt to change the eternal into the temporary. Things coming to an end. Things changing over time. Things decaying and rotting and dying. Things becoming sick. Things lacking and sacrificing and losing. Even things growing and transforming. All various forms of limitation. A limit on life and on eternity. A notion of "not forever".
One thing that I've been doing lately is just accepting the fact that this world's laws, the laws of physics, are just automatically set up to fail. Chaos becomes possible because of the way that objects interact with each other seemingly randomly. Your car breaks down. Objects fall on the ground. You bump into things. Stuff breaks. Your new toy has a mark on it. Your clothes wear out. Your food rots. Your house needs repairs. Your kitchen smells bad. And your clothes are all dirty.
We could struggle against such things as if we have an expectation that the world can be perfect or free from defects. And some people try to control the world and twist it into an illusory palace of perfection. But the problem is, it can't be that. It is fundamentally rooted in the idea of death, of interruption and inconsistency and difference and change and transformation. All the royal castles crumble. Always there is the drive to become something it's not now.
If we try to expect that we can make a life where these things are avoided, or you can make a little oasis or illusion of safety and security, you really are in denial. Sooner or later the grim reaper is coming to look for you and yours. Either in terms of bodies dying or in terms of melting your phone or sickening your pets or scorching your grass or breaking your flowers or freezing your toes or puking in your shoes or whatever.
"Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
It's better to recognize this is the way of the world, based on its laws. It's just how it is. It's how this whole system, this whole universe, functions. There's no point in being mad about stuff breaking, or things falling on the floor, or stuff getting trapped in the door, or physical objects doing their quirky strangely annoying things, especailly when you're in a bad mood. They kind of can't help it. They are governed by rules that force them to "behave" this way, like they always will. Even in a forgiven world, the cookies still crumble.
I've been finding a lot more patience and forgiveness in just accepting that this is the functioning of this whole world. It just is broken from the start. The laws of physics are simply "at it again". Gravity is messing with you. Forces and energies are messing with you. And none of it is really "personal" because it's just doing what it does blindly and mindlessly. To expect it to ever not be like this must be some kind of insanity because a separated world cannot help but act this way.
We do need to accept that we did in fact make a fundamentally broken world. A world that does not really function properly according to the laws of God. A world where stuff is pretty much destined to change and break and grow old and die eventually. Where things collide and conflict and seem to attack, and where you can seemingly even be hurt - a notion which is utterly impossible in heaven's reality.
"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."
Jesus is clear that you cannot really want this world, because it is not a perfect world. It is not heaven. It was made in a mad idea of rebellion against reality. It is a protest against harmony and peace. It was made to attack God and to attempt to depict the death of his creations.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love."
"Here is the world you do NOT want"
We have to be willing to look at this. The world is not EVER going to satisfy you and make you happy. It is not ever going to give you what you want. It is not ever going to feed your properly. It is not ever going to make you well or heal you or fix your problems. It has a neverending supply of madness and problems and difficulties. ALL its roads are pointed towards change, dissolution and death. Even planets and stars and galaxies die off eventually. And problems are completely built into its chaotic systems.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."
The world does not really give you any real choice, because ALL of its options are rooted in death. This isn't a pessimistic or negative view either. It is an honest and truthful view. The entire system was set up on a basis of separation and attack. Everything about it is aimed towards punishment for original sin, trying to bring about the death of life and the end of God.
"The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore, give no obedience to its laws, for they ARE laws of punishment." "The laws of sin DEMAND a victim. WHO it may be makes little difference. But death MUST be the cost and MUST be paid."
"Sin calls for punishment"
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
Can you accept that everything in this world was set up to die, right from the start? That this its inherent NATURE? Because only by looking at that and recognizing "there is no way out", on its terms, can you be willing to seek for a better way.
This is just how the world is set up. There is no point in denying it. There is no point in expecting it to behave differently. The laws of physics work how they work. The only reason we become angry about stuff breaking and things failing and attacks happening and so on is because we have an unrealistic expectation that the world isn't going to be like this. That somehow in the world we can make a little safe corner where the bad things don't happen, to fend off death and keep attack at bay. Good luck with that delusion.
Now, of course if this were the only state of affairs then we would indeed be screwed. But fortunately we are not stuck inside this closed-loop of hell. There is another way. There is another perception and another belief and another reality. This other way, however, isn't a rose-tinted glass of pretending in denial that the world isn't a world of death. Nor is it a form of denial that says it's okay that things die and suffer. Or an attempt to dress up the world or to expect it to be something it's not. The world can't work because it began with an impossible goal.
We can become miraculous, in that we can in fact override the laws of death. We can overcome the laws of physics. We can see past what the world was made to see. We can see with a mechanism of vision that doesn't depend on the physical eyes. We can overlook and not hold the world against itself, or condemn it for its shortcomings. We can recognize that a world made in error cannot help but be mistaken. And we can disregard notions that the world is real in its sin and attack. Indeed we are supposed to do this in order to be forgiving and to be set free from suffering.
For me lately, I have been doing a lot of physical stuff. Rearranging the house, buying and assembling new furniture, throwing out old stuff, cleaning, organizing, moving things around, and to some extent enjoying new stuff. But I've also become aware that all of these things are already fundamentally limited in what they are and can be. I'm not in denial or pretending that they can be perfect.
The furniture with the dents in it, the gaps between the planks of wood, the poorly written instructions, the missing parts, the slightly wrong color, the stuff that doesn't fit, the wrongly shipped item, the misunderstood specs, all the ways that there is shortcomings and failures and forms of death. Lacks of perfection and order.
But I feel mostly unbothered by all these things because I am no longer expecting the world to be capable of better. It is not capable of being perfect, so I now accept that "good enough" or "less than perfect" is the best it can acheive. And then I can let it go instead of trying to find perfection where it is impossible.
We made a broken world. It can't fix itself. And it's not capable of taking on a form of perfection. It will not ever fully satisfy us. And even in forgiveness where it is seen beyond and reflects heaven, even then it still falls short in its forms and its functioning. Ultimately, the world cannot make you happy. It cannot give you peace, or take it away. It cannot be the cause of anything. Nor can it really have any meaning of its own.
At best it can reflect meaning you give to it, and that is all, because by itself it is an empty void. We made a meaningless, chaotic, broken world, and we need to simply recognize this about it. The world is not our home.
"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
The sooner you realize this the better, provided you also realize what CAN make you happy. What makes you happy is to laugh at the fundamental brokenness of the world. To realize the WHOLE THING is limited and false and can't do what you hoped it could do. The whole world is handicapped and disabled, falling short and incapable of eternal life. That's all it can be. And yet there is another world, a world we want, where this need not be.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."
"But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?
Your whole mind is supposed to be everywhere.
The mind inside your body seems to be your conscious mind. The mind outside your body seems to be your unconscious mind.
While what is within your body seems to be different and separate from what is outside your body, you will see yourself as being the limits of your conscious self. Parts of you which are unconscious will be seen as outside of you.
Guilt which you put into your unconscious, so that your conscious mind can pretend to be innocent, will come up as seeming "events" in the outer world which come to teach you lessons. You will see them as attacks on your identity, at least at first, depending on your willingness to use them differently.
When what is within you is the same as what is outside of you, and when there is no further need for a separation to keep the two apart, the body will have no purpose and will disappear.
When what is within you is seen as also being within others, whereby what is in both of you is the same Christ mind, the same Self, your whole mind will be experienced as everywhere. That's because, like God, you are omnipresent.
The body was made only to create a sense of separation in the mind, a split between what hides within it and what hides outside of it. Its only purpose was to maintain an illusion of division so strong that it suggests the limits of your conscious self is the confines of the body.
You built a wall around the conscious self which, through a condensing of that idea, formed the illusion of bodies. Bodies are a barrier between what has been retained - the little innocent self - versus what has been rejected - the larger body of unconscious guilt which is disassociated from and appears to comprise "other people", i.e. "not self".
What is happening outside of the body is just a drama being orchestrated and run by the unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind. Events which happen in it represent the content of your own mind coming up into awareness to be reconsidered for forgiveness.
Forgiveness must entail a repair of the inner joining with the outer, of the separate embodied self rejoining with and beyond the embodied selves of others. What is in you is in them. What you are is what they are. You are one.
Joining of minds, which is miraculous, causes the body to be healed, because the body temporarily disappears. Its shift into invisibility, in light of the truth of oneness, heals it of its use as a device for separation.
Attempting to anchor self more heavily into the body and to tie the self to the body, simply makes the body more real and reinforces the separation between yourself and yourself. Such is the purpose of sickness which defends against unity by reinforcing separation, i.e. reinforcing the reality of the body as a wall that comes between you and your brother.
Your brother IS yourself. Those "others", those "not me"'s outside of you, ARE you. They are parts of the split mind of the sonship. You are to be reunited with them and share with them and join with them. This overlooks the body and it becomes meaningless and non-existent. It must disappear as inner and outer, self and not-self, become One.
In oneness there can be no separations.
You are everywhere. You are the whole sonship. You are the One Omnipresent Son of God.