A few years ago when I was having a profound spiritual experience, I had so much love and joy inside of me.

It was just pouring out, shining outwards. I felt like I was just 'beaming' it out of me like an intense flashlight, shining onto everyone.

I felt that I had no needs, and no lack.

I just felt tremendously loving, tremendously broadcasting, just all this joy was shining outward so brightly.

It shone so brightly that I became able to look people directly in the face without flinching, so intensely that they were always the first to look away.

The love in me shone so brilliantly, and was like an intense radiation outwards, extending outward and flowing only outward.

In this state, there was no sense of anything coming into me. I did not feel that I had any needs whatsoever. Nothing was coming in from outside, it was only extending from within.

In fact, that day I did not feel like I needed to eat food. I tried to put food in my mouth but it felt completely alien, like I was just shoving these lumps of stuff into my body for absolutely no reason, that it was not going to do anything to me or for me that I needed at all.

I didn't see myself as needing to get anything from outside of myself for any reason. I didn't need anyone's help, I didn't need anyone's advice or opinion, I didn't need food or water, I didn't need sleep, I didn't need anything.

The love was in me. All it could seem to do was shine brilliantly and to go outward. This simultaneously gave me a perception that absolutely nothing COULD come into me, and that therefore I was very safe and protected. The light was so bright that it shone away all darkness and kept all ego illusions away from me. I could not take anything from anyone and did not want to, and as a result did not perceive that anyone could do anything to me whatsoever.

Not only did I not want to get anything from anyone, I could not. There was such intensity in what was going outward that it was impossible to bring anything in from the outside. Ego illusions, fears, whatever it was, could not come into me. I had everything I needed. I had the love and presence of God.

To some degree, because I was in a very different state of mind, people thought that I needed help. And they started trying to help me. But their help was, from my point of view, completely unnecessary. They thought I needed help, and were offing all kinds of advice and shit, but not one single bit of it was needed, or wanted, or necessary. There was nothing wrong with me. They were the ones who were upset and afraid.

Love has to be in you, coming from God, first, in order for you to extend love outward. And when God is in your mind, FIRST, you will see God in the world. You can't see God in the world unless God is in your mind. You can't see Christ in others unless Christ is in your awareness, first.

When it's in you, you will not need love from anyone because you will have no needs. Because you will have no lack. When there is no lack of love in you, you become invulnerable and strong and fearless. You become fulfilled. You want for nothing and need nothing. You are sustained by the love of God, literally, to all degrees on all levels. Even physically.

You cannot get this from another person. No-one can make up for a lack that you believe is in you which you put there and think is real. The only lack you need correct is the absence of God. The only need you really have is His love, without which you will see yourself as in need and go trying to steal what you lack from other people. This turns you into a psychic vampire. Everyone is doing this, feeding off each other.

Love is all you need. You have to undo whatever it is that has come between you and God, whatever it is that made you believe you lacked His presence, and whatever it is that blocks you from having Him in your awareness. Whatever that block is, it is the sole foundation of all neediness, all ego seeking, and all vulnerability. Lack is a state of victimhood. You cannot be a victim when have God in you. You are invulnerable. You are literally immortal. Nothing can assail the Kingdom of Heaven.

The book, is an expression FROM truth, attempting to point to truth. It contains SYMBOLS of truth, twice removed from reality.

Because truth expressed the book, the symbols in the book are not necessarily all possible expressions from truth. Truth could conceivably express a million books, all from the same source or mind. They could all appear to take on different forms and use different words, yet essentially say the same thing.

The form of the book, the words used, the sentences, the sections/chapters, is only one collection of symbols, all coming from the same source.

It is entirely possible for that source of truth to continue to express itself in many, many more forms. It is possible that the Course could in fact be 1000 times larger, or a million. There is basically no limit to how many "forms" it could take, provided those forms express or symbolize a consistent source.

This is why it is then important to recognize that, of all the FORMS in the book, all of the words, you are not necessarily getting ALL words that can ever be said about truth, and you're not necessarily hearing every possible clarification.

For example, in the main Course itself Jesus doesn't really explicitly talk about making his body disappear. Yet, in the notes given to Helen later, from the same source/truth, he clarified further by adding extra information. That information is clarifying as to the meaning of various other parts of the Course, especially surrounding resurrection and how we might leave the dream without death being involved.

There are also times when Jesus says one little phrase somewhere in the Course and doesn't really expand upon it, and yet it's a very key phrase which puts many other things into perspective.

There are also times when I really wish Jesus would've gone into much more detail about certain things, especially miracles and some of the aspects of the end of the universe. In other words, if Jesus were present, there would be a lot of questions we could ask Him which would clarify many things. This is why it is VITAL to get in touch with Jesus/Holy Spirit and develop a relationship with them, so that you can learn from them DIRECTLY.

It's important then not to get too hung up on the specific exact WORDS which Jesus expressed, thinking that the FORM of those words is the truth. The form is not the truth, it's just one of MANY possible symbols and expressions. Further additional forms might possibly change your perception of those words and what they really mean.

If for example you will only accept something as correct if it has an explicit quote in the Course that you can point your finger at, then you are getting bogged down in form and are not seeing the metaphysics.

The form of the words of the Course are twice removed from reality. Once removed from reality is the metaphysics, and/or the symbols in the dream. For example, outer space, filled with seemingly nothing but emptiness, is symbolic for the ego's attempt to make God as absent as possible. Bodies are symbols of having an identity God did not create. etc.

When you look at the words and learn from the words, you should learn, or be able to infer/imply, what the metaphysics of the truth is. Stuff like the structure of the dream, the levels, what certain things mean, where they fit, etc... is not always necessarily 100% spelled out in words. You have to look deeper. As you "generalize the teaching", you will gradually build a clearer picture for yourself about how everything fits together.

Some of those clarifications will bring you insight into how, sometimes, Jesus uses words in certain specific contexts which, if taken verbatim, might imply or infer something which is incorrect. Also sometimes He speaks at certain "levels" and confusing those levels produces a lot of confused metaphysics. Some things apply at certain levels and not others.

Also sometimes Jesus uses words which He seemed to have build up quite a specific definition of elsewhere, but uses them quite loosely in "general conversation" in such a way that people then take this and think it's some kind of metaphysical fact. Sometimes Jesus is just simply talking casually and using normal language, how most people would, and not necessarily teaching doctrine in every word.

With enough exposure and learning you should be able to transcend the Course's words and get more in touch with the "core metaphysics" which is kind of hiding somewhat behind the words. The structure of the dream, the proper location of certain levels and their meaning etc, becomes more apparent when you go deeper into it, and Jesus hasn't necessarily "spelled it all out" directly.

We have to be careful not to get hung up on "where does it say that in the course" kind of approaches. Not everything IS said in the course. And yet, some things are true/logically consistent which may never have been expressed.

We also have to beware of thinking that only what is said in the Course is coming from Jesus's authority and therefore no-one else can say anything that Jesus hasn't said. As you transcend the words and get more of the metaphysics you'll be able to extrapolate it and come to conclusions which are completely consistent with Jesus's teachings.

That makes it possible to write additional content, additional words/symbols, based on the same metaphysical foundation, in order to be consistent with Jesus and not contradict his intentions. You don't need to be in his mind of authority to do this, you only need to grasp the basic logical structure of the separation.

There is a lot of material in the Course and it can become quite blinding through its sheer volume and seeming complexity. But we need to learn, in a sense, to forgive it, by learning to overlook its appearance and look deeper to see a closer or more accurate truth. The truth is simple, not complicated, but the ego has a field day with getting caught up in the form of things.

I'm having a really hard time trying to put a simple truth into words. So... for now, an analogy...

If it's dark and there seems to be a scary shape behind the door, you might think there is a monster lurking.

You turn on the light and realize it's just some clothes hanging there.

This is the same as the transition from believing that the ego is real, to recognizing it was just a harmless illusion.

It simply was not true that it was a real monster.

You did not need to do anything to the clothing in order to make it not be a monster.

All you needed to do, was switch on the light.

Because it never WAS a real monster to begin with!

Light is ALL that you need in order to be awake to the truth and free of the ego. That's all. Absolutely nothing else.

When there is light, you can see correctly. You can see everything as it is, without having to modify the scene at all.

You did not need to defend yourself against the monster. And you did not need to fight it off once the light was turned on, even though you might've been afraid that turning on the light would prove that the monster is real ;-)

All you had to do was turn on the light so that you could see correctly. So that you could have True Perception. Vision.

The light itself shows you, by comparison to the light, that what you thought was a real monster, was just an illusion. There wasn't anything real there at all.

It is this way with the ego and the entire world. It is an illusion that isn't real. You think there are real monsters and real tragedies and real death. That's because you are not seeing clearly. You are in darkness. You just need more light.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM

"You are only afraid of darkness because you believe it has the ability to hide the truth." - ACIM

So you actually don't need to defend yourself against the ego, or against illusions, or against attack, or against death. You ONLY need to be in the light, and all of those things will be very obviously shown to be NOT what you thought they were.

You will see that death was just a weird illusion. Attack was not really happening. Sin wasn't true of anyone. There wasn't any real suffering. And even what you thought was a "real ego" was nothing more than an illusion of an ego existing. There WASN'T a real ego at all, it was just smoke and mirrors looking like one!

It was all just a trick that your mind played on you because you were in the DARK and could not see the whole scene properly.

Taking vision out of context and focusing on only parts of the scene, unable to see the whole (the whole is God), produces insane fears that objects are really monsters, that inanimate objects are out to get you, and that you are not safe.

Turn the light on!

Light is all you need. God is all you need. Be in God and everything else will become clear and obvious as day. There is no ego, there is no death. They existed as hallucinations in the dark while you didn't have enough light to see what was REALLY going on.

"Now the light has come." - ACIM

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and your way will be made straight" - ie, be in the light, and you will KNOW that there IS nothing that can ever be against you. There IS no real enemy, no real attacker, no real war, no real sin, no real sickness, and no real death.

SURPRISE! It was all a wierd dream trip you had while you could not see the big picture, conclusions you came to that were false, and made-up explanations for things you only had partial evidence for.

This is awakening. Waking up to the awareness (light) which allows you to SEE (vision) the truth (God - the whole picture), which shows you that you're just hanging around in an illusory room that isn't really anything at all. You thought it was a scary place, it's NOTHING!

You will just laugh when you realize all that fear and pretend suffering didn't happen at all, and all that's left is you hanging out with God in love forever! Perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly safe :-)

In the course there is a lesson about how God is in everything I see, and later ... because God is in my mind etc. And it talks about seeing God "in" things, like in a waste paper basket. This is often misunderstood to mean that God IS the waste paper basket, when in fact it means you project God's meaning onto it because He is in your mind, not because He is outside your mind. Essentially, if you were to see God, you would not see the basket at all.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

So there I was, sitting on the toilet. Pondering life's mysteries, like you do. And next to me was sat a wicker basket which we use for the laundry. And so I looked at the basket and wondered in my mind, "is God really in this basket?". Jesus then took the opportunity to immediately show me the truth about this.

I noticed that I could not seem to feel my hands, as if they were barely there. I seemed to be "out" of them as if out of my body or something. This was slightly disorienting, but they felt like they barely existed and weighed nothing. At the same time, I felt what seemed to be "my spirit hand", passing through the basket, and waving around.

As it did this I was aware that the basket was nothing but air, or like a puff of smoke, which was being wafted and displaced by the movement of my spirit-hand. It was very interesting, because it was like the basket didn't even exist. It had no barrier, it was not solid, it put up no resistance, and there was no physical collision with it. Instead it seemed like the lightest, faintest, slightest hint of a whisp of air, dispelled and moved simply by waving. As if just a cloud of particles that could effortlessly be blown away on a breeze.

This ended after a few seconds. But it was enough to reveal to me the quite surprising and "real" truth about the basket. As my physical eyes feasted once again on its solid form, its structure, its shapes and colors, its firmness to the touch, I couldn't help but remark that all of this must be an illusion. In comparison to there being literally NO BASKET, all these seemingly real properties must be some kind of fakery. Without that sense of a boundary, that sense of colliding with it physically, and not being able to pass through it, the basket is nothing but a whisp of smoke. A thin veil.

And so beyond the basket, if God were to be seen, it is recognized that there is no basket at all. It is easily and effortlessly dispelled. Dismissed with the simple waving of a hand, as if it were made of the lightest air, and really nothing at all. Only the spiritual sight could really see this. And clearly spirit is capable of anything, instantly, with no effort at all. Because Jesus showed this to me as if it were the easiest thing in the world. My physical eyes could not see this at all, and my body still reported the solidity of the basket. I wondered then what it would take to recognize this about all the world.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"There is no world."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. "

"Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

Lately Holy Spirit has been starting to push me to do things I don't think I can do by myself, or that I don't believe would be a good decision.

I was not going to eat pizza, claiming that it would congest my sinuses too much. He said, eat the pizza. I ate the pizza. It wasn't a problem.

I was not going to buy a dairy ice-cream for similar reasons, and he suggested it was okay, so I did it, and I had no symptoms.

Today, I was tired and emotionally wrought after some release and healing, and I didn't want to go to the store, but needed some stuff. Holy Spirit said, "go!". So I went. And I didn't go based on my own belief that I would be able to rely on myself, but based on the belief that because He supports it, I WILL be able to go. I had FAITH!

And as I went, I exclaimed that I will go and I will shop and I will be fine because I will be infused and sustained by the power of God, I will be filled with his strength, and I will have no problems. And as I got to the store, I could FEEL the presence of a strong, light, joyous energy in me, and not only did I have no problems with tiredness etc I even felt open with other customers, seemed to attract people who were laughing and happy, and generally felt supported. I even believe there was an angel there who showed up as a man... sometimes I can tell, and that man spoke to me about bananas, and it was funny and it was all good.

So this is what I am finding now. There are certain things that I believe are true of the "natural world" based on the ego's natural laws. But then, there is God's will, God's power, and His SUPERNATURAL strength. And as you step out to do things which push you beyond your natural boundaries, and which go out on a limb, and which you could only do IF you had God's strength to support you, then knowing that you do and inviting it to do so, God DOES come to support you in supernatural ways! That means you are walking with God.

And so I am learning, more can be done through me and by me IF I have God with me. There is a power that can work through me. There are goals that I can achieve which I could not achieve alone but which are achievable because God rushes in to make them so! Ahhhhhhhhh.

"I am sustained by the love of God" - ACIM

"God goes with me all through the day" - ACIM

This doesn't just mean I have a buddy to talk to, it means if I will step out and take a risk and go beyond the ego's laws, God's Will be done!!!

Can I get an amen?!

Space suggests, something exists over here which does not exist over there. Everything in space is not whole, and is not the whole, and does not exist everywhere. Therefore it doesn't fully exist anywhere. Space is in fact the idea that nothing (illusion of something false) exists and everything (God) does not exist. It's the idea of God's absence, opposite to reality in every way.

Time suggests, something which existed just now, no longer exists. Nothing exists forever, everything is always changing, nothing is reliable or constant or permanent, and everything ends. It is the idea of death. It the idea that nothing last forever and therefore reality is in constant flux and HAS no reality. It is the opposite to eternity and the notion that Heaven, God, and the Son of God, have all stopped existing as they were and have been changed into something else. In time, nothing exists at all times, and everything (God) never exists at any single moment at all. It's the idea of not existing.

Some people seem to have great difficulty understanding why this makes sense and why this is true. Or rather, have trouble accepting it.

The reason being, there is great special value placed on all things that exist in space and time. The world, the universe, animals, trees, sunsets, mountain ranges, oceans, favorite coffee houses, buildings, cars, etc. None of these things exist outside of space or time, and none of them can exist without space or time.

If space were to end, it would become impossible for anything to exist in a specific location. Nothing could remain separated off as an object. There could be no individual trees, no planets, no stars. And if time were to end, nothing could move, change, grow, or die. Physical planets cannot be maintained without space and time. The solar system cannot move without space and time. And the human body is totally dependent on spacetime to exist and seem to live.

Without spacetime, there is no world, there is no solar system, no stars, no galaxies, no bodies. They cannot have a form of any kind without spacetime. It's not merely a matter of these things continuing to exist but being joined together by some kind of oneness. That's blatant confusion and a denial of the facts. Even the form of the atoms and particles making up the objects cannot continue existing at all without spacetime. All the atoms would disperse into everywhereness. All the molecules would disappear.

This is the central message in ACIM, that "there is no world". It's a dream, a fictional fantasy place, made of illusions, a denial of reality, a complete opposite to reality, and an attack up on reality. Space attacks Omnipresence. Time attacks eternity. They are completely diametrically opposed and nothing alike. This world is nothing like heaven. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

There is no spacetime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In ACIM, mistakenness is not the same thing as how the world generally thinks of it. If you go into the women's toilet instead of the men's, it could be a mistake. A mistaken action. If you pick up the wrong set of keys, it could be a mistake. If you leave your lunch box at the workplace, it could be a mistake. Something you intended that sort of went wrong somehow.

You could then try to turn these mistakes into sins and say that the person is guilty for going into the wrong bathroom, or a bad person for forgetting the proper keys, or stupid for leaving their lunch at work. But a "forgiving" reframing of this that says like "oh well they just made a mistake because they were supposed to go into the other toilet", isn't forgiveness. It just recognizes a horizontal worldly error within this system.

Forgiveness is higher than this. True mistakenness is a recognition on a vertical axis. It's a view from above, from a mindset of sanity and truth and light. It looks down and sees something impossible, something which cannot be true, and recognizes it as not true or real. Something false. Like a lie. And because it recognizes it as untrue, it is not attracted to it, and it doesn't turn it into something to be punished for. Instead it recognizes that the error just needs to be corrected. It was just a mistaken view, a mistaken belief, which can't be true, and the mind needs to be restored to the truth.

So if in the world, say, we take something that someone is believing or doing, based on a mistake. Let's say that they're having a sickness and coughing all over everyone. You could take this mistake and turn it into a sin. Sin does the opposite of see correctable errors, and sin doesn't recognize a mistake AS a mistake. Instead it thinks of it as a TRUTH, as something real and valid, and actual. The person really is coughing all over the other real people, how horrible. What a sinner.

To move to forgiveness then, we need to shift away from "it's a sin" to "it's a mistake". But not in worldly terms. Not in social preferences or rules about how to act around people or other made up stuff. True mistakenness would recognize that a) the person is not a body even if they think they are b) they are not really sick because they are immortal c) no-one is really suffering d) contagion is a lie e) nothing real can be threatened etc... that sort of thing. In effect that ... this whole show, this body person, this coughing, this spewing, is all FALSE. It isn't true, it isn't happening, it isn't POSSIBLE in God.

If we can see that this event isn't possible, is false, isn't true of the person, they are not really doing it, its having no effect, etc, then we can recognize that the person is in a sate of insanity and is just simply mistaken about how and what they are. They're showing a lie. They're trying to convince you sin is taking place. It isn't. We recognize there are just a bit insane, a bit mistaken, calling for love, in need of healing and correction. None of what they are doing is possible, none of it is true, none of it is happening but in a dream.

That's the kind of mistakenness that the Holy Spirt recognizes. He sees errors and does not mistaken them for sins. The ego on the other hand tries to take mistakenness and hold it against people, narrows down to focus on it, judges it, makes it out to be TRUE, believe it is HAPPENING, believes it is POSSIBLE, and is HAVING EFFECTS ... and that's all basically a definition of "sin". The idea of an attack which can have real consequences against real things.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects." UrT27I6

It's kind of all about recognition. If you recognize what is possible and true in God, then you recognize when someone is MISTAKEN. Their mistakenness calls for correction not punishment. You recognize what they are presenting is NOT POSSIBLE, and can't be true, so is not actual or real. So you can't hold it against them.

If you FAIL to recognize that the person is just mistaken or "being false", you make another mistake, by mistaking a mistake for NOT a mistake..... you turn the mistake or falseness into a TRUTH, and now because it is true it seems REAL to you. Or like a fact. The person really is coughing all over everyone. The person really did go into the wrong bathroom. The person really did leave their lunch at work for the 5th time.

"The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all, as God entrusted Him to do. But SIN He knows not, nor can He RECOGNIZE mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is MEANINGLESS to Him. Mistakes are FOR correction. They call for NOTHING ELSE." UrT19D4

Largely such mistakes are easy to mistake for sins, rooted in physical stuff. All the things we do with the body, all the things in the world, are all IMPOSSIBLE. ... and they present temptations, and illusions that you can do things which CANNOT BE TRUE in God, such as being sick. If you take those illusions AS TRUTH, you believe they are real, and now the physical act is interpreted as a sin. You lock it in place as though it can't be reversed or forgiven. And now in unforgiveness you "accuse" the person of "really doing this", and justifying punishment. Who moved my cheese?!

So basically we have a mind full of illusions and insanity which is just a state of making a lot of mistakes and believing untrue stuff. That only calls for correction. But if you take that stuff and do not recognize it and do not realize it is untrue, you will MISTAKE IT for truth and now it becomes SIN. As though you're really doing it. That's the little shift the ego insanity makes. That little shift from "it's just an illusion" to "taking that illusion seriously because you're actually really doing it." Ego grabs ahold of mistakes and corrupts them into punishable acts of evil. As if you intended it on purpose.

We are just mistaken. And we are mistaken about being mistaken. And when we lift away the mistakenness about being mistaken, we'll recognize we are mistaken, and then stop being mistaken. And that is forgiving.

Belief is an artificial tool that we use in place of knowledge. Belief attempts to establish something as true. Belief is a concentration or focus, a separated off state, in which that which has been "accepted as true" is allowed into the mind to be experienced as desirable, while that which is "outside" of that box is experienced as unwanted, wrong, false, to be rejected.

So then once we're in belief, we have a bias. We will only seem to accept a certain portion of the world, while rejecting the rest. And we'll then use this belief as a barometer for "reality testing" to determine whether things line up with it or not. If they seem to be in the category of acceptable or complementary, they are accepted as true. If they seem contradictory or outside the belief, they are considered false.

The problem with this isn't so much how beliefs work but that we actually use belief to believe things which, in the big picture, are simply not true. We side with lies, buy into illusions, take on beliefs and models and concepts which are incorrect, and then defend them to the death believing they are correct. But this then blinds us to the actual truth.

When we encounter the real truth, holding onto false beliefs, we're going to reject it and see it as wrong, false, evil and attacking. Unwanted and incorrect. Our allegiance to our belief will act like a defense mechanism, shutting out what we deem to be incorrect. But what we're shutting out can often be what is actually true, and now our belief is actually hurting us and keeping us away from the truth, all the while under the guise of having no reason to suspect it is flawed.

Particularly when we are confronted with something which is true, but which we don't believe in, we will simply deny it. It doesn't matter how clear it is, how true it is, how obvious it is, how much sense it makes, how reasonable it is, or anything else. Due to the fact we have this distortion in the mind steering us away from and towards some other truth, we'll keep defending our existing position against this new idea. And we'll see it as threatening and wrong.

The ego is doing this all the time. It's a belief system based on lies and denial of the real truth. So as we have these chunks of bullshit in our mind, which we believe are totally true and we are convinced of them, perhaps having spent a lifetime supporting and bolstering them, we will not be ABLE to WILLING to accept a larger truth WITHOUT letting go of the old belief.

Wrong beliefs HAVE to be questioned and recognized as being mistaken, before you will be willing to let them go in favor or something else. You won't be able to accept into your mind, what seems to be a truth which contradicts what you believe, unless you are ready and willing to let go of what you used to believe.

Your old belief will nag at you, tug at you, remind you of itself. It will pop up into conscious awareness asserting itself and saying "but what about xyz". It will try to continue to get your attention and keep your allegiance to it, because now as you threaten to abandon it it's going to come out of the shadows and be up for examination. It's like a little part of your mind, that's committed to this belief, worried that you are letting "it" go in favor or some other truth.

You can't accept the real truth WITHOUT letting go of false beliefs. The false beliefs will pull you away, make you doubt the truth, make you feel like you can't trust it, that there's something wrong with it even if you don't know what it is. False beliefs makes you suspicious of the real truth. Beliefs distort your perception and actually make things appear to be "wrong" even if they're not. They act as a filter and a magnet.

You could be presented with reality at all times. You could be surrounded with love at all times. You could be in heaven right now. You could be in the real world. You could be faced with the simple truth that nothing real can be threatened and the world is not real. But you will not see it, acknowledge it, accept it, or allow it to be true for you, thus welcomed, without your willingness to recognize it as correct. And the reason you don't believe it's true is because you believe SOMETHING ELSE which contradicts it.

So what you'll find happening is that very often as we come to the course, there are things the course says which are true, but which you do not believe. You will be presented with these things and will deny them. You will be like, no, that's not true. Even if it is explicitly spelled out, you will say "i don't believe that". You will hold up models and concepts that other teachers have come up with that are wrong, and believe them MORE than you will believe what the course is saying. You'll take your own conviction in your own rightfulness over Jesus's authority. And you'll reject the atonement on this basis.

Our false believing, our mistakenness, our confusion, our siding with things which are not true believing they are, all needs to be corrected. The mind's acceptance of what is true has to be brought in line with God's established truth, which you have NO SAY IN. You can only accept it as is, or reject it. But in order to reject it you're going to have to come up with a belief, which makes you feel that something ELSE is true. And that therefore, God's truth is not true.

All beliefs pointing away from what the course says verbatim must be mistaken. It does not matter who came up with them, who taught them, how convincing they are, or how many people believe it. If it says something that the course DOES NOT SAY, it is wrong and is taking you away from the truth. If you believe something that explicit statements oppose, it is wrong and needs correction. And so we have to learn to be willing to put Jesus's truth above that of ourselves, other teachers, and anyone's opinion, if we are to listen and truly learn what it is trying to tell us.

We have to throw out all false models and concepts and all archaic interpretaitons. We especially need to beware of taking an interpretation over facts. If we want God's truth, we need to learn what it is, recognizing we do not know.

From lesson 261...

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHO PUT THE BODY THERE IF NOT YOUR MIND?

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

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

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

2) It was us who made the bodies.

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

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

So who is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's what miracles are for!

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