The below quotes are from sections about true perception and how it works while still in a body.

It speaks of how the body's eyes STILL see what seems to be an "outside world" of differences, forms, bodies, places.

However, the mind is responsible for INTERPRETING, the messages which come in FROM the body's eyes. The body's eyes can ONLY look upon the physical world of form and never has real vision. The body's eyes cannot look past the world of forms and differences. So it is up to the mind to determine whether the "signals" coming to it are TRUE, or FALSE.

ONLY THE MIND PERCEIVES, not the eyes! Perception is not about what the body's eyes see AT ALL. The body's eyes just collect "data" and send it to the mind to evaluate. The body's eyes cannot ADJUST to anything. They cannot "see differently". They cannot change perception.

They can ONLY LOOK AT the world you made as hell. The physical form of the Earth. They cannot and do not INTERPRET what they see, because they were made to FIXATE ON FORM. They are neutral. They do not "see lovingly" nor do they "see hatefully" or fearfully.

A healed mind will put all such signals into a category of "false", *recognizing* that *everything* the body's eyes "see" is an ILLUSION. It recognizes they are ALL UNREAL.

The body's eyes at this point are still "seeing" the forms of the physical world. But the MIND, which is responsible for SEEING, is now seeing with forgiveness and recognizing that the physical world is ENTIRELY illusion. That every signal coming from the body is FALSE, and therefore totally unreal.

This is why in TRUE PERCEPTION, you STILL SEE the world, the bodies, the world events, all the same as before, but your MIND interprets the whole thing as FALSE, because it sees with the whole truth.

As stated below, reality is without size, shape, time or place and differences DO NOT exist in it. Heaven has no forms. And so in comparison to this, a mind aware of the truth knows that all forms, shapes, times and places are NOT reality. And so such a a mind perceives that the physical world of forms is NOT REAL.

Note it is also clear here that PERCEPTION is not about what the BODY'S EYES SEE, it is a function of the mind which either mistakenly interprets those "visual" signals and thinks that some of it is real, or correctly interprets those signals entirely as unreal. This is why you must not "believe your eyes" at all.

"M-8.3. Where do all these differences come from? 2 Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. 3 Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. 4 It is the mind that interprets the eyes' messages and gives them "meaning." 5 And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all.

What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. 7 Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. 8 The body's eyes will never see except through differences. 9 Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. 10 Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. 11 It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful."

"M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

Notice also that in terms of "projection makes perception", the quotes above state that the mind projects its hierarchy of values and preferences outward, THEN it sends the body's eyes to try to "see" that, the body now looks only at the FORM of the physical world, sends back signals of its physical nature, the mind is now FILTERING that signal through its belief system of values/hierarchy/preference, and only SELECTS what it wants to allow into awareness. This is described here:

"What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real....When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."

Remember that perception is a function of the MIND, not the eyes. So here, the mind is filtering through its perception, its interpretation of body signals, what it wants the signals to mean. It only allows into awareness, the root of the perceptual system, that which makes it through the filter.

Therefore if the mind has false perception ie false interpretation and projections of filtering beliefs in attack etc, it is now MIS-perceiving and hallucinating a distorted version of the visual signals it's getting from the eyes, and READING INTO them, and EXCLUDING what it does not want to look at, in order to make it SEEM as though it's seeing the reality it PREFERS. "Perception SELECTS and makes the world you see." But the "world you see" is happening in your MIND, in your perceptual interpretation function, regardless of the world that is "out there".

Here is some additional material:

"Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. 2 If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but not to see? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. 6 Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. 7 Nothing so blinding as perception of form. 8 For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."

"Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. 2 You can change form because it is not true. 3 It could not be reality because it can be changed. 4 Reason will tell you that if form is not reality it must be an illusion, and is not there to see. 5 And if you see it you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. 6 What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must perceive illusions as the truth. 7 Could it, then, recognize the truth?"

Lately what I've been trying to focus on is what can be *experienced*. The truth can be described in thousands of words but really it is an experience. We're really talking about you getting to the point where you can experience happiness, experience love, experience peace, experience God. God is an experience.

So what this means is looking at what you are experiencing NOW, and looking at what tools you can practically USE to actaully shift your experience to a happier, fuller, more truthful/authentic one.

And this has nothing really to do with what you are thinking about what you're experiencing or what's going on around it or what you should be experiencing, but the actual direct immediate experience - your feelings, your psychological reactions, your perception of reality, your union with God. What is reality to you right now, in honesty and not trying to 'please' Jesus?

This isn't done on a mental level or in terms of theory or discussion. What you really need is practical tools that WORK that bring about a real TRANSFORMATION of what you are experiencing. You are meant to LIVE the truth, not just talk about it. You're meant to actually feel God's love, live in God's love and be God's love.

What I've been seeing also is that when you try to be or attain a goal or theoretical truth that is too far beyond what you can actually EXPERIENCE, all of your energies start to flow into the intellect because they aren't grounded or rooted in what is real to you. You try to grasp at it and affirm it and think about it and make it seem like you understand it but you're not actually *experiencing* it because it's outside your envelope. It's very easy to conceptualize 'oneness' but, are you actually fully omnipresent and experience absolute unlimited psychological access to every part of existence? Nope.

I can testify that I went to great lengths in my mind and intellect in understanding the Course and the metaphysics and the high-level statements of truth and how it all fits together and all that. I was looking for some kind of a way to experience truth by having the biggest or best thought about it, or the widest grasp of where it fits, or the most abstract or subtle aspects of what Jesus has taught about the truth.

But even when I thought I really really really was getting it and understanding it, mentally, it was NOT followed by a result of experiencing love, or experiencing God. It did not bring peace. And it was like getting to the end of a path that you thought would lead you to the truth or to God only to find out that it does NOT lead there.

It doesn't lead there because its a journey in thinking and intellectualizing rather than the much more real, direct EXPERIENCING of truth. So I had to learn this, the hard way, that it can't be all about the talk or all about the theory or all about the metaphysics. It IS okay to seek for understanding (ACIM says understanding is appreciation of the truth), but you can't EXPERIENCE it on a purely theoretical level.

When we're not actually dealing with what we are experiencing - the immediate interaction of you vs what's in front of your face right now and how your mind is having a RELATIONSHIP with it - then it moves away from here-and-now and becomes removed and distant, turning into just a theory or concept.

Your head, your intellect, is quite capable of handling concepts and theories and thoughts about them, but its as though the intellect is an artificial ego device to be separated from reality, from the here and now. I would find myself tending to even intellectualize my feelings, transferring emotional energy into my head and trying to process it there through thought. Instead of feeling. Instead of experiencing.

I've also seen people get caught up in what they 'should' be doing or are supposed to be believing, launching into 'trying' really hard to force yourself to be those things, without ACTUALLY being able to do so. It creates the spiritualized ego. And when asked questions about what they are experiencing now or what they are really feeling, they are disconnected from it.

They will respond about what they think of it or what it means or what they think they're supposed to say or what lofty course idea they're meant to believe, but they don't REALLY believe it. They don't REALLY mean it. And they're out of touch with where they're really at, cut off from FEELING. Feeling is much closer to being than intellectualizing. But people don't want to feel. They don't want the immediate experience of reality, preferring to be buffered against it by all of these intellectual walls of thought and guilt and shame and force and pressure and ... using the wrong tool for the job.

What you may find as I have, as well, is that what I can experience has certain boundaries that prevent me from experiencing anything too far outside my 'comfort zone'. My mind won't stretch that far. If there's a suggestion to be or do something that I'm just not ready for, there's no way I'm going to be ABLE to do it yet alone willing to do it.

You can be willing enough to take small steps from where you actually are to where you want to get to next, but giant leaps are next to impossible. And when you try to make giant leaps before you're really ready, you will BYPASS, which means you're in denial about what you're really believing and experiencing and are pretending to be further along than you want to admit to. It's the ego that tries to throw you into 'advanced spirituality' before you are really ready or willing or able to actually BE it, because it wants the prowess of 'mastery' without ACTUALLY letting go of enough ego to experience it truly.

So you need to stop, go within, and look much closer to home, much closer to where you are realistically at right now. What are you experiencing right now. What are you feeling. And this is where you have to be really honest. Do you REALLY believe what the course is saying? Probably not. What do you believe instead? You have to work through this stuff. You can't pretend not to have blocks to awareness, you have to ACTUALLY look for them and acknowledge that they're there and then work on transforming your beliefs/viewpoints/attitudes so that you can ACTUALLY be free of these blocks.

They don't go away by sweeping them under the carpet, or by using denial, or by shutting them out, or making yourself unconscious, or bypassing to a level of advancement you're not ready for. There is nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you are NOT the advanced spiritual successor to Jesus just yet. If you don't acknowledge what you're actually experiencing then you aren't going to be able to change your experience. And I think that's what this is all about - transforming what you are experiencing so that you can experience something better. And this means dealing with the 'reality' of your situation, not some ACIM-driven fairytale about how spiritual you are or how lofty the concepts are or what you are 'supposed' to be like.

How do you feel? Where are you at? What is honestly true for you right now? Have the courage to look at it, feel it, experience it, be with it. Acknowledge how fucked up you are. Then re-interpret your evaluation of yourself and transform your experience of yourself into a genuinely higher version of yourself.

Authenticity.

Separation HAS occurred? Sort of.

Some people claim that it is impossible to explain the "tiny mad idea". It seems logical at first, because when the ego asks a question like "what if", it's not really a question, and the tiny mad idea hasn't "really" happened in reality. It has no real consequences in reality, and it's just a dream.

But the tiny mad idea HAS happened in IMAGINATION. It HAS happened in your mind, and you've "made it real to you". That is why you are sitting there right now reading this on your screen, which *seems* real. A dream "at all" wouldn't even be possible unless God gave you free will to choose to mis-create and dream.

"Whatever is true & real is eternal, & cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

Your mind has FREEDOM, and therefore can be used to choose EITHER to will with God's will, or to will against it. Either in service to the soul/spirit, or in service to a fictional ego. This freedom granted you the very REAL "possibility" of being ABLE to make this choice, to use will against will, and to mis-create. God would not give you an `option` that could *actually* hurt you at all, and it has not, but this freedom HAS given you the ability to OPT not to laugh at the idea of separation, if you choose.

Jesus also describes below how while you have free will, it is necessary to choose both FOR (toward) God and AWAY from the option of ego/dreaming.

"While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting ALWAYS entails both election AND rejection. If two candidates are voted for for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.

This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent ANY REAL allegiance.

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

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

So you can see here that the mind actually has the freedom to "choose to dream" if it wants to. It CAN place itself under tyrranical rule and seem to "sleep". Of course this dreaming is FICTIONAL and it is not REALLY happening in reality, it has no real consequences in heaven, but it IS still a "valid option" that you are free to entertain or ELECT.

This essentially means that, the tiny mad idea is a POSSIBLE CHOICE, but it is not a REAL choice. That's a vital distinction. You COULD choose to dream if you want to, to mis-create, to opposte God's will (or try to), but it's not a REAL option. It's an option of unreality that the mind is quite capable of making if it chooses to. This is why "heaven is a choice I must make" - the mind HAS to freely, willingly, elect to choose heaven, ie the only real option, and not the ego, which is an imaginary option you've tried to MAKE real.

Does this mean the dream "has happened"? It has not happened IN REALITY, but it HAS occurred within the context of the mind's freedom to dream. It doesn't have REALITY to it, but it IS something you are CAPABLE OF PRODUCING through mis-creation. And when you DO freely choose it, with your free will, it will become seemingly real to you because what you accept into your mind becomes your reality.

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

The mind has to ELECT (choose) to be under service to Christ. This IS a free-willed choice, not something forced upon you. God does not create slaves.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea"

There DID creep an idea, a thought, an imagining, into the mind, because IT COULD. The mind CAN DREAM. But the dream that it produces is not real or like God. Elsewhere Jesus refers to it as "an order of reality", meaning that you gave reality TO it to try to turn it into reality, through belief, but the belief is based on a false premise, so it is ultimately unfounded and fundamentally unreal at its core.

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

I will leave you this statement by Jesus:

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

What he means here, is not that the separation is REAL, but that in the MIND, it HAS OCCURRED as a thought, an idea, an IMAGINED possibility. There HAS been an attempt to usurp God's will. There HAS been a "dream". Not REALLY, but ... in the proper context, in the mind, this IS something that we CHOSE, something we TRIED TO MAKE REAL, something we tried to DO, to will it, to mis-create. We DID mis-create. That's the ONLY reason that you are able to be sitting there seeming to be a body reading this text right now. But the ultimate truth is, this is a dream, an unreality, it's ultimately based on a false foundation or premise - that there is an alternative to God's will, and because that is untrue, it is not REALLY REAL. So it hasn't REALLY happened in truth, in the biggest picture.

You DO, in a sense, dream a dream. But you CAN stop dreaming, by changing your mind. Dreaming is a state of MIND, of insanity, believing that time can replace eternity and space can replace God's presence. Effectively, there HAS been a "fall of man", but the fall is imaginary. It is ONLY an idea, but it IS an idea, not less than that. The "existence" of this idea, however, must be temporary, because it is an idea of being temporary, and is naturally limited and finite. It is therefore INEVITABLE that the dream will end and the IDEA - in which this entire physical universe dwells - will disappear.

You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"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."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

One time, I was exploring my relationship to the holy spirit and it occurred to me that perhaps I was misunderstanding by presuming he was "separate from me", since I always heard him as a separate voice. And this idea came to me that maybe he was not separate and that this separation between us wasn't there. This seemed harmless enough but this opened me up to the idea that I was now "exposed" to the holy spirit without any defenses or blocks or separations or walls, and my ego did not like that one bit.

The ego in me, which was playing with this idea but not really dropping the deeper walls, interpreted this to mean that the holy spirit had "access" to me (to my ego-identified self) and that this meant he could do anything to me and I would have no defense or way to stop it. I wasn't ready to accept this level of openness without the trust that's needed. I felt that if there was nothing to stop him, the fact he proves there is no ego would dissolve me and was therefore *perceived as* an attack or threat. Of course the holy spirit wasn't doing anything of the sort but that's how I interpreted it.

Instantly, within a split second, and without thinking of it at all, my mind attempted to push him away, or rather, to recoil. To distance myself from him by trying to increase the "gap" between us, trying to hide deeper in the body, and to try to go into denial/resistance/blockage to shut him out. The only defense really was the attempt to block my AWARENESS of him. This happened really quickly and I could really feel this recoil in fear. It's not something I "figured out" it's just something I did automatically. I saw the need for a defense to keep me (my ego self) "safe" from this threat of unity. I actually felt scared of what the holy spirit was going to do to me.

Within an hour, my head became congested, my ears started ringing, they became quite blocked, I was starting to get sinus drainage etc. This came on really quickly. Of course, I did not recognize that I had induced this myself, or chosen it. I was doing what is described here in "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

So by the time the hour was up, my BODY was sick. I was not aware I'd caused it or the cause-effect relationship of the event with holy spirit versus what the body was doing. I just thought I was getting sick out of the blue. I started looking ELSEWHERE for causes, wondering if it was something I ate, something I contracted, some emotions coming up, whatever. I then proceeded to suffer with blocked ears, trouble hearing, ringing in the ears, headaches, sinus congestion, for the next couple of days. And you can bet not one single idea of what caused it was related to that event. In effect, the defense is put in place to shut OUT awareness and this blockage causes you to not be AWARE that you CHOSE the defense for this exact purpose to try to make the threat go away.

After a couple days of suffering - and my hearing issues were basically a symbolic representation of "I don't want to hear this truth", I started trying to figure out when it started. I realized that it started right around when I was having that interaction with the holy spirit. And then fortunately I remembered that it had frightened me. And so then I was able to put two and two together and realized that, or at least was open to the possibility, that maybe I had chosen this as a reaction to him. I also was not on "speaking terms" with the holy spirit at this point because I was feeling afraid and did not feel safe or trusting of him, so he hadn't been saying anything.

I started to tentatively realize that I needed to get past this fear. I needed somehow to find a way to re-approach the holy spirit again, without being afraid, having some kind of TRUST, and to find a way to relate to him in terms of that openness to him without it MEANING that I was threatened or under attack. I needed a different way of looking at it so that I wouldn't misperceive our "unity" as a dangerous thing. So I became willing, and I started to try to deliberately trust and to take baby steps towards communicating with him again. And as I did, I was willing to put aside the fear that had been induced.

When I did this, I saw clearly that I had created this defense as a way to try to protect myself and out of fear. And since I could now be willing to more carefully trust the holy spirit and not fear him, it became obvious that I had NO MORE NEED for this protection. Like, it was okay to let down my guard.

Within an hour, all the symptoms vanished completely.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. "

"There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

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

"No-one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

When we are greatly distracted by, tempted by, and lost in the world, it is hard to recognize the secret of salvation.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."

But the real key part of this isn't just that you are doing things to yourself, rather than it being others who do it. It's that it can ONLY BE YOU who can hurt yourself.

Jesus describes many times that you have hurt yourself. You have hurt your mind. You have attacked yourself.

"Because you had attacked yourself, and BELIEVED THAT THE ATTACK WAS EFFECTIVE, you behold yourself as weakened."

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that NOTHING HAPPENED. Therefore, by attacking, you have NOT DONE ANYTHING."

"By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

"You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first."

It is easy to place a lot of focus on other people. On forgiving the world. On healing the body. On world events and problems. It is easy to spend a great deal of time caught up in relationships and dramas. But all of these forms of suffering are really quite far down the line in terms of what came first, and where the real power is.

What comes first happens quickly and so close to home, that it is easy to miss. YOU .... attack yourself....... BEFORE. ... the entire world happens.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

You accuse yourself FIRST. You attack your invulnerability FIRST. You try to undermine your immortality FIRST. You position yourself as afraid FIRST. You make yourself a victim FIRST. You see yourself as lacking FIRST. You condemn yourself FIRST. You accuse yourself of sin FIRST. You do everything to yourself FIRST.

THEN ..... having attacked yourself, the whole thing starts to cascade into projection and blame and dissociation and denial and displacement and various other ways to "disown" responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

It then becomes possible to become confused as to WHO did this to you. You deny that you did it to you. You pretend that someone else did it to you. You shift the responsibility. You hide from your own self attack. You don't want to look at the fact that YOU are trying to self destruct. All self attack is an attempt to kill God's son - which is YOU - which is suicide. And eventually this results in suffering, sickness, and death, ALL OF WHICH are self inflicted.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness." "YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF. This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

This doesn't have ANYTHING to do with anyone else, or the body, or the world, or spacetime. It's entirely to do with. ... do you love yourself or not? Do you accept and live in your IMMORTAL nature which is given by God, or do you DENY that you are immortal and TRY to make yourself mortal? The only ambition of trying not to be mortal, is that you try to destroy (kill) yourself. But since your immortal self cannot die, you confuse yourself with a body and kill it instead, as a representation of yourself dying.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves"

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die"

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

The attack upon YOURSELF, is all the only problem. You thinking that you attack others, is YOUR problem of being confused, and you are mistaken. You thinking that others attack you, is you being confused, and you are mistaken. NO ONE has ever attacked you against your will. You have never suffered against your will. You have never been sick against your will. You have never died against your will.

"Would you not rather live than choose to die?"

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

Salvation, and the secret of salvation, is simply that ANYTHING you experience other than immortality, YOU are doing to yourself. You are the SOLE cause of it. There are no external causes of suffering. There are no external causes of sickness or death. "There are no accidents in salvation." Nothing in the world can do ANYTHING to you against your will. No one can vioalte you or offend you or hurt you against your will. You CANNOT BE A VICTIM unless you deliberately decide to be one.

So this really has nothing at all to do with anyone else. It is entirely to do with .... are you going to forgive yourself, or not? Are you going to love yourself, or not? There is another subtle part to this though. Your soul and your mind are two different things. Your soul is your self, your identity in christ. But your mind is a medium that your soul uses for expression. Your soul does NOT need salvation because it is permanently immortal. It has never been attacked and never will. But your MIND is confused and HAS tried to hurt itself. It DOES need "healing" or correction.

This means that, even your own self attack, even your mind's efforts to destroy you, even your belief in sin and evil, even your death wish, in truth has NO EFFECT on your immortal soul. Nothing changes about the truth of you. Even your self induced suffering is not REAL suffering. Even your self inflicted pain is not real pain. And as you try to kill yourself off, you as the son of God is totally unaffected.

This means that EVEN IF you attack yourself, you are not REALLY attacking yourself. You have not REALLY ever done anything to yourself. "I am still as God created me."

Recognize first that ALL attack is SELF attack. This is not easy when you have slipped down the slipper slope into projection. It has to all come back to YOU being totally responsible for sin. BUT, you must not stop at being responsible for sin because it is not real. You need swift correction, so that you will recognize you HAVE NOT even sinned against yourself. You must admit that YOU are the ONLY cause of ALL your suffering, and decide to STOP HURTING YOURSELF. And then you can receive healing.

This simple truth, that YOU are the only one hurting yourself, and YOU can decide to love yourself instead. .. is the CORE of A Course in Miracles. Once you love yourself, or. .. seek first the Kingdom of God (which is you) .... your way will be made straight. Everythign else will fall into line naturally, including performing miracles, healing the body, and undoing the world.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

All that I do I do unto myself.

If I attack, I suffer. But if I

forgive, salvation will be given me."

"As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him."

"I repeat again that if you ATTACK error, you will hurt yourself."

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

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

"When he thinks that he is hurt in any way, it is because he has forgotten who he is, and that he is as You created him." "If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"I will not hurt myself today."

"His thoughts can frighten him, but since these thoughts belong to him alone, he has the power to change them, and exchange each fear thought for a happy thought of love. He crucified himself. Yet God has planned that His beloved Son will be redeemed."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

It's difficult to put this into words, but here goes.

To understand letting go, you have to first understand what it means to "hold on". What is it you are doing with your mind?

Before the separation, you knew you were love. After the separation, you believed you were not love, and that your self/love was separate from you. You perceived this as outside of you, disassociated and projected onto others.

You believed other people had stolen your love/self and locked it up inside themselves. You simultaneously valued what seemed to be in them, but wanted to steal it back. You see this as "specialness" which you value highly and is what gives value or reality to illusions - you believe in them. This is all described is "the laws of chaos."

The ego mind then "makes illusions real" and assigns special value to external, separate things. This is idol worship, and part of "seek and do not find." An emphasis on external salvation, believing the body, objects and the world are important, valuing special relationships and so on.

If you place "reality" and "value" outside yourself, you will put something on a pedestal and worship it. For example if you associate a person with their body, you will think their body is part of what's valuable about the person. If you value a car and have a psychological "need" for it, you become attached to and dependent on it as your savior. You see it as having power to do something to or for you, which makes it capable of saving you, makes it able to affect you, and makes you *dependent* on it.

Perceiving an external "cause" of you puts you at the "effect" of that cause. This happens in level confusion and reversal of cause-effect. This external cause now represents your "creator". If it is lost, the cause of you is lost and your savior is lost, and that's symbolic of the idea that God has died.

Your mind in a state of believing in special value, or the reality of external things and people, shifts some of its own sense of identity onto those things. You displace your "self" externally and see it as value/meaning within people and objects. If there were to be a perceived "loss" of those objects or people, you experience it as the loss of your own self.

Now, let's say that you mis-identified that you are a body, and thus saw other people as bodies, and valued them as body-people, and then one of these bodies dies. Because you made the body seem real/valuable, you cannot help but perceive there has been a "real loss" or loss of value. In what you think is reality. This will be experienced as "loss". And this kicks in all kinds of layers of denial, which show up as "stages of grief."

At first, you may not even be able to accept that a loss has happened. It seems pretend, impossible, unreal. You may be what they describe as in shock, but really it's that your mind is still psychologically attached to this external value and even though the valued thing is gone, it still believes in it strongly being there. There is a mismatch between expectation and reality. Really strong belief in specialness can produce very strong denial that a loss has even occurred, and denial that the person died.

If a person can `process` the fact that the person died, they might start to shift perception towards at least acknowledging that "it happened". However, this will at first be a cross between acceptance and denial. The mind still does not WANT to let go of the specialness. It's like the mind forms a "bridge" that connects its psyche to something external like a cord of attachment, which is like "holding on" - like you would with a hand, but using a psychic hand. The mind latches onto the external special thing and doesn't want to let go of it. You can actually FEEL this sense of "attachment" and external connectedness if you are observant.

Acknowledging that a death "happened" is a step in the right direction because it at least admits that, to some degree, the person/value doesn't seem to be there any more. But this also is met with another layer of denial. The denial says, "I do not want to let go". This is partly because the mind in its "belief in" things believes it gives reality TO things, and makes them be there, and gives them value, and so if it will just keep believing in those things, it will "keep them alive". There will be active resistance to actually letting go, and reducing your belief in their specialness means you are trying to destroy them or contribute to the perception that they are lost. To let go, to the ego, seems murderous, which induces guilt.

The mind in this state is not fully conscious because, by projecting specialness outward, it made itself unconscious. To "let go" would have to mean stepping backwards in the mind and getting "behind" the attachment and projection and becoming more aware. This seems insurmountable to a mind that is sleeping, that it needs to somehow tap into a greater awareness that underlies where it's "at". The only way to do that is to actually let go of projection of specialness. But the mind doesn't want to do that yet.

It takes a lot of willingness to "admit the truth" that you do not want to let go. This is because you think, if you let go, the thing will stop existing. If you let go, it will be your responsibility that the thing is lost. If you let go, you will have to admit that there HAS been a loss and that the person isn't there any more. You won't be able to delude yourself that you are maintaining their existence with your belief in them. Admitting that you do not WANT to let go is good because it at least lets in some truth. This is one step away from looking deeper at WHY you don't want to let go.

Not wanting to let go is really a layer of denial which covers up the "fact" that the thing HAS GONE. That there HAS been loss. I struggled with this step a lot in relation to grieving for the loss of someone because I didn't want to admit that I didn't WANT to let go of them. I wanted them to NOT be gone, because I wanted to keep what I valued as special. My letting go would somehow mean they are "even more lost". To admit it removes denial. Once I admitted I wanted to keep them, I was able to move past that to admitting what's underneath - an actual sense of loss - that something HAS been lost and isn't coming back. The ego doesn't like this.

Now, this sense of something being "really lost" is still actually another form of denial, and a layer of delusion, because in truth nothing real can be lost. Real value is not lost. Nothing real can be threatened or die. So if the body dies, it's only a body that is "lost", not the person's immortal spirit. Confusing the two things makes you think there has been a loss of something important. Valuing the body makes you believe ITS loss is important. It's nothing. So in truth, although you have to process the sense of loss, underneath the loss there is a deeper truth: you cannot lose what never existed.

And so at some point you have to realize, the thing you think you couldn't let go of, wasn't even REALLY there to begin with. You were actually letting go of NOTHING, and you stood to GAIN EVERYTHING by letting it go. You thought you'd lost real value, but in the BELIEF in its loss was an illusion of it being lost. Real value isn't special value. And so the loss of the specialness was not actually loss of anything REAL. So there hasn't REALLY been a loss. Getting to that point is what allows you to enter into the "acceptance" state and truly the LETTING GO, which is a state of allowing, surrendering, accepting the truth, and finally "detaching" your mind from its dependence on the illusory external thing. Nothing real can be threatened.

So this letting go thing, it's a process typically, and you go through stages and gradually come to accept that the thing you thought was lost is not really something worth losing. It was not even really valuable to begin with. That's where you become set free from grief and loss and have no more need to grieve. An unwillingness to let go is only based on the belief that you're letting go of something you need, letting go of something special, or letting go of the part of your self/love/salvation that you see as separate from you. All experiences of loss are really experiences reflecting your belief that you have lost yourself and God, which you cannot really do.

You won't let go of something while you think it has special value, or while you think it's real or important. And if it should happen that your ego mind is still valuing it WHILE it is being denied to you - such as when someone dies - your mind WILL experience loss and grief. This is because the mind is still trying to depend on that thing as its salvation and truth, something it values as real, and its absence is experienced as "loss". This loss will induce grieving. Grieving and loss are not NATURAL. You do not need them. But they are generated by a sick mind that believes love is outside of itself and can be threatened.

So it's really all about letting go of psychological attachment, which means your "belief in" the special value of things which don't really exist. Ultimately you are letting go of something that never even existed. You're letting go of holding onto an illusion, which never really had any value other than what you gave it. And in that relinquishing, you are shifting to what is really valuable and accessible - inner love. The re-integration of your self. Letting go of false beliefs by learning to recognize that they ARE false, recognizing them as illusions, and thus giving them no value or credit. Illusions recognized must disappear.

Quite often Jesus says to me, "let them". He is telling me to let go - to allow, to let other people be free, and to stop controlling. That means accepting that they are free to do whatever they want, and it doesn't matter because it's an illusion. They can't really hurt their real self. He has also been telling me "let go" through various waves of grief recently and I just couldn't see to gain the awareness to let go. Not until I could admit that I didn't want to, which opened up the door to a sense of loss, which eventually cleared away to reveal that nothing real had been lost, and thus acceptance and peace returned. Letting go, especially at an emotional level, is hard. It takes willingness, acceptance, admittance, letting go of fake values, removing dependencies, detaching and setting yourself free.

"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

There are many clues in ACIM about miracle working and this is one of them. It says that to perform a miracle, you should BEGIN by perceiving light. What is light?

In workbook lesson 121, "Forgiveness offers everything I want", there is a procedure in which you start by pulling up an image of a guilty person that you want to apply forgiveness to. You start to see light in this person. You look for ways to credit them and see their merits and recognize the good they've done and so on to try to frame them in a more forgiving, charitable, honoring, allowing and respecting kind of way. Gradually you cover the person in this light and it replaces the guilt THAT IS YOURS in your mind.

So then what we learn is that this lesson is taking you from a state of darkness to a state of light. Darkness is guilt and attack/sin and fear. To shift "into the light" as it were, is to basically try to seek out the light, the good, the application/gratitude, the recognition of the light in someone. That the persons not entirely evil, dark, a monster or an enemy. You move towards innocence and away from guilt. Toward forgiveness/miracles and away from grievances.

So if we're not IN the light already, then we need to get INTO the light. We get into the light by healing OURSELVES, through this kind of forgiveness process in which we gradually replace darkness with light, becoming willing to move towards innocence and away from guilt. It's our own guilt that needs undoing at this point so that we can become miracle-minded and miracle-ready, so that later we can get into miracle-doing.

When we've DONE this, and we're got our minds into a state of forgiveness and light, we're more loving toward ourselves and others. It's the state of light that we need to get to BEFORE we can perform miracles for others as EXPRESSIONS. This is why "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." You have to purge out all the guilt and sin and fear and rise up into the light, so that miracles are not blocked by a lack of love. Miracles are always expressions of or FROM a loving mind.

Once you can get yourself INTO the light, now you are ready to perform a miracle FOR another person. This is also described here... "Tell him that the implied lack of love that his version contains is WAY off the Mark, and misses the level of right thinking entirely. He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

So Jesus is saying that first if YOU are not in the light you can't work a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR others, and YOU need a miracle to heal your OWN perception first. You work a miracle - ie you transition from guilt to innocence, within YOURSELF, on behalf of yourself, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This gets you up into the state of light. Then when you're IN the light, you are in a position to "begin by perceiving light." Similarly "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

So we have to first work on ourselves to become lighter and filled with light and filled with the Holy Spirit. It is this light, or LOVE, which forms an ability to SHARE. You can ONLY share love because love is a bridge that joins everyone together in openness and welcome. The love MUST be present in order to perform a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR another person. To GIVE what you have received. You cannot give God's power WITHOUT love.

So we focus on becoming more loving by removing these heavy chains of guilt and lifting our minds up into lighter states of forgiveness and innocence. This gives us ACCESS to the power of God through the Holy Spirit, and activates the LOVE that bridges to JOIN with another person. This is some fairly high-level stuff which is why miracle-working in general is largely reserved for the more advanced "more forgiving" individuals who have purified themselves of ego/guilt. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

Once you "perceive the light" in another person.... ie, see them IN A FORGIVEN STATE first, THEN you are in a position to transfer miraculous power to them as a "creative energizer", which GIVES THEM ENERGY, and thus gives them LIFE, and raises them from death or lack/fear. Once you are in the light, you are also in a position of knowing your function and how you share the Holy Spirit's function, and are now willing and able to ALLOW HIM TO HEAL THROUGH YOU.

Jesus says we are to "continually extend" the light. That's like a transmission of healing love power. He says we should "accept its acknowledgement", which I think means to SEE the light in the other person (the holy spirit effectively) ie forgive them, and thus witness or acknowledge that it IS THERE in them already. The divine spark is in them already. We need to see this light in them - frame them as innocent and immortal - and acknowledge that this is the truth about them ALREADY. ie "there is nothing wrong with you".

Then Jesus says you cannot bring light OF yourself, because you're nothing without God. But the Holy Spirit can bring light THROUGH you and extend through you as you "hold the door open". Effectively you channel the holy spirit's power, and let HIM amplify the life in the other person, through your mind. This also lifts you AND the other person up. You let the Holy Spirit do the healing by you "holding the light" for the recipient and letting him apply healing.

So the main ingredients boils down to:

1) Invite the Holy Spirit to work upon you, then through you.

2) Get yourself healed and into the light first. This takes a lot of purification/forgiveness work.

3) Be in a loving state, either by inducing it or receiving it or imagining it and feeling it.

4) Extend the light and see it in the other person, ie see them as forgiven - see their real immortal unchanged self and don't accept their ego/sickness.

5) Let the love join you with your brother and act as a bridge for sharing/holy relationship. Be in the light together as one.

6) Let the Holy Spirit move "across" (transcend) this bridge and also increase within your brother's mind. Amplify the light in him.

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS.

If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear, but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will UNDERSTAND it. Understanding is APPRECIATION, because what you understand you can identify WITH, and by making it part of YOU you have accepted it with love. This is how God Himself created YOU, in understanding, in appreciation, and in love."

"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him."

So Jesus says there is an absolute nature within you brother which never changes. That is your brother's immortal self, it is permanent and still as God created it. The Holy Spirit reflects that and is one with that.

Your brother THINKS he can change himself and that he has, which is why he perceives he is NOT immortal and is sick. He does not KNOW HIMSELF. But the true nature of him is STILL in there behind his self deception and denial.

By recognizing the UNCHANGED SELF in him, the absolute, you are helping to change his mind about himself FOR him, by holding a different view of him.

By recognizing your brother's immortal self - the holy spirit in him so to speak - you are APPRECIATING your brother in gratitude. Recognizing him for what is true of him. Thanking God for him. Then by appreciating your brother's reality, it is recognized as part of YOUR SELF, and you now join with your brother as one.

It's all about light/love/life, being IN it, sharing it, giving it, seeing it, amplifying it, allowing the Holy Spirit to increase it, acknowledging/appreciating it, recognizing it, sharing it. Through this "joining of minds in light" which we might also call "sharing innocence and immortality", resurrection takes place mentally and physically.

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

"Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING."

Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours.

Read this carefully from ACIM.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

These are Jesus's words. They are correct. It does not say that impossible separation from God has been made possible. It does not say that we in fact DID separate from God. It says that something called "the separation" HAS happened. There is a major difference between THE separation, and the general impossible potential for actual separation.

There is a very popular myth in ACIM circles that we're supposed to just assert that "nothing happened." Jesus is saying this is NOT appropriate and is a misuse of denial. Did you ever notice that for example you actually are having SOME KIND of experience of a world, a world in which you have a body, you type posts on facebook, you respond to people and so on? Technically speaking if these "things" were UTTERLY impossible, in the strictest sense, there is no way that you would even be able to dream of them happening. You wouldn't be ABLE to sit there right now reading these words, whether they're real or not.

There is a view of many people that the separation - confused with separation in general - did NOT happen, and therefore the logical conclusion is that "there is no facebook". This is CLEARLY A DENIAL. It makes no sense at all. It does not explain how it is clearly obviously possible for there to be some kind of a facebook, some kind of a body, some kind of a physical life.

No-one who believes that "it never happened" has ever been able to satisfactorily explain HOW ITS POSSIBLE that we can be sitting here typing little text messages to each other. They don't have an explanation because they believe we're supposed to just sort of turn a blind eye to all this stuff, slap a label of "not real" on it, PRETEND ITS NOT THERE (denial), and carry on trying to assert its unreality.

Jesus is telling you that this is a MISUSE OF DENIAL. Because in fact, per his words, "THE SEPARATION HAS OCCURRED." This isn't a real separation, it is fictional. But a fictional separation HAS occurred. A belief in, a dream of, an illusion of, an impossible separation, HAS occurred in thought, in the mind. It HAS in fact produced a whole other "order of thought" in the mind.

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

Read it carefully. The separation is NOT symbolic. Jesus says it is an ORDER OF REALITY. And that while it "lasts" ie in time, it is PERFECTLY REAL. This is NOT something that most ACIM students are very happy about, do not want to admit to, and will run away from at high speed. It seems to fly in the face of what so many people are saying, that "it never happened". Well, if it could not have possibly happened in ANY WAY, you literally would not be reading these words right now. And you are. Whether its a dream or an hallucination it doesn't matter, you ARE reading.

In the separation we did in fact produce a second order of thought and gave it a sense of reality. "Whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you." It doesn't mean it is ULTIMATELY real, or that it really has permanent existence. It is truly an illusion of a possibility. But Jesus is clear the mind is perfectly equipped to sleep and to dream. These are NATURAL CAPABILITIES.

In fact, God gave our minds free will. And part of that TOTAL FREEDOM, is that you can freely try to use your mind to deny its own freedom. Yes, you have that freedom. It doesn't mean that anything real or possible can necessarily come from it, and it hasn't, but you CAN TRY TO. And when you do try to, your mind DOES SEEM to go to sleep, entering a state in which it dreams. This is entirely WITHIN THE LAWS OF GOD.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

This means God has given you the POTENTIAL, the freedom, to choose, per your own free will, whether to accept reality or not. You are CAPABLE of denying reality. This denial doesn't remove reality because denial is a pretense that you're doing something impossible. But while you are IN denial, your mind IS in a certain state. You ARE IN "the separation." This is why we DID produce a state of mind which Jesus refers to as "the separation". We DID have a mad idea, we DID fall asleep, we DID dream of spacetime, and we DID make bodies and facetime.

Denying any of this is not in line with the course. This isn't to say that these things we dream of are ultimately real, but they ARE real to the dreamer. They don't have permanence because they are denials of permanence, making them temporary, and reversible. But while they are HAPPENING, while the mind IS sleeping and dreaming, we ARE in fact CAUSING the mis-creation, the production, of states of mind, which entail a denial of reality.

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

In order to return TO ultimate reality, the denial has to be undone. But the denial is, itself, an actual state of mind. It's something you're holding in your thought. You are having a dream of being separate. "You are safe in God, dreaming of exile". It is not helpful to claim that you are NOT DREAMING. "you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy."

Jesus does not really ask that we "deny the dream is real" while STILL dreaming it. Because this is an false denial. The proper denial should END dreaming entirely. If you are still dreaming, then you are still giving reality to an order of thought.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

This order of reality is being maintained by the mind and it HAS some reality while it is being maintained. That is why the world seems real. It is a kind of subjective reality but it's still a reality. Jesus asks us instead to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE HAS BEEN A SUBJECTIVE SEPARATION - at least a state of denial and belief, a state of TRYING to oppose God - and that we must admit to this before we can heal it.

"However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

He doesn't say "just assert that it never happened." He doesn't say "just assert that separation is impossible." He says that you are supposed to ACCEPT THE ERROR TEMPORARILY, to acknowledge that your mind is in an unnatural state, so that you can change your mind into a more natural state. Eventually the unnatural state will diminish and be replaced by, or reveal, a more natural state. And by CHANGING YOUR MIND, which is always your freedom, you can revert it back to the service of spirit.

Remember that "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

We HAVE chosen poorly, we HAVE used psychic mechanisms - mind power - thought and belief - to mis-create an illusory world. We did not create a NOTHING. We mis-created a distortion of reality. That HAS happened. But it can be undone. This far more accurately acknowledges your ACTUAL EXPERIENCE that you drive a car and eat food and go to the bathroom. There is SOME reality to this, some possibility to this, otherwise you literally could not even dream of it.

The dream is not nothing, it is a way of thinking that's out of alignment with God's will. That's why we NEED atonement. "Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you NEED Atonement BECAUSE you have DONE something loveless because you WILLED without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its CREATION."

So Jesus is really saying that we did in fact enter a state of mind in which the mind does in fact experience strange illusory worlds as if they are real. A state of insanity. And we have given reality to this and it HAS SOME reality. It is relatively real, but not absolutely real. And because of this entering into a freely-chosen state of denial, a legitimate mind-state that is POSSIBLE because you have the freedom to try to deny your freedom - we DID in fact experience a "separate from God" - the fall of man.

And now we find ourselves in a mental state that NEEDS correction. There is a legitimate NEED for atonement, and we NEED to change our mind by free will in order to return to the acceptance of God's reality as the only reality that truly makes sense. A movement out of a state of sleep and denial, into a state of awakening and acceptance.

That's why the Holy Spirit was created, to guide us out of a state that we are PERFECTLY FREE TO ENTER, but which does not resonate well with our true nature, and so brings experiences of suffering. The atonement legitimately offers correction for this and restores the mind to a more natural functioning. It's not enough to just say "oh it never happened." You HAVE used your freedom and your power to choose something unnatural, and you DO need to choose again.

Consider the idea of a script for your life which you fully planned, consented to, and passionately wanted, before you came into this lifetime. Imagine that you organized and orchestrated every single interaction. You created agreements with every single person you would ever meet and you asked them to do to you every single thing they were to do, with which they would comply. Imagine also that only what you planned would happen and nothing else would happen - except you would also forget that you planned it.

ACIM does speak to this, in that it says that nothing happens to you that you have not asked for, and that you get *everything* you ask for, and that you get *nothing* that you did not ask for. It also speaks to this when it says that nobody dies without his own consent. NOBODY DIES WITHOUT THEIR OWN CONSENT.

At some point, somewhere, whether it's in this life or before this life, but somewhere, for ACIM to be TRUE on this matter, you ****MUST**** have consented to every single thing that has ever happened in your life. ABSOLUTELY ALL OF IT. Not only consented to it but created it, asked for it, wanted it, designed it and even set it in motion YOURSELF. Not by any outside force or coercion or ANY amount of victimhood whatsoever. (this is somewhat described in the "song of prayer" pamphlet as well)

Remember the Course also says the key to salvation is this - that you are but doing this to yourself.

IF the Course is telling the truth (and it is), then everything that has ever happened in 'your life' has been exactly designed by and asked for by you. All of it. So this takes quite a lot of 'fessing up', which also means your life must become totally void of victimhood.

If you look now, and you look back at some things that you recognize as having 'happened' in your life, particularly events which involved people where they seemed to influence you in ANY way, and in particular in what *looked like* any kind of negative way, then you need to now reinterpret that. If you can allow yourself to ACCEPT that you planned and asked for every single detail of what occurred, then a few insights must arise:

1) You have to realize there was a REASON WHY you planned what you did, and that reason was FOR YOUR GOOD. Every single thing that you designed must have been for an intended purpose of, ultimately, leading you to a spiritual awakening. Every single 'lesson' or scenario that you put together, MUST have been intended to HELP YOU in some way.

2) With the information that all events are helpful, this must then shed a new light on all of these tragic past experiences, to show you that SOMEHOW, whatever happened, and no matter how it looked at the time, somehow that event and that person were ONLY doing what was in your script and they performed it perfectly. Therefore they weren't REALLY a victimizer. And you weren't REALLY a victim. At the time, yes, you believed you were, but here's the thing. You only believe you are a victim when you are UNAWARE that you are a script-writer.

3) This now gives rise to the insight that every way you've experienced being a victim in the past, was a result of a lack of awareness on your part, in which you experienced something designed to HELP YOU but interpreted it initially as HURTING YOU. This symbolically is the same thing as being loved by God but believing that you're actually being attacked by God. Ie it seemed against you rather than for you. So all of the ways that you STILL hold onto past events with a grievance, thinking of them as 'wrong' or 'unwanted' or 'bad' or 'unpleasant' or whatever, blaming the other person, all of that INTERPRETATION of events came about ONLY because you did not remember that you wrote the script. It looked like you didn't ask for what happened, which, IF it were true, WOULD justify your anger and hurt and offense. And that means, you need to to be more truly forgiving, ultimately accepting the atonement.

4) This now helps you to see that, ultimately, everyone involved is INNOCENT, because nobody has done anything outside of the contract and nobody ELSE is responsible for having done anything TO YOU against your will. Your will is embedded in your script which YOU WROTE, so even if you now find yourself unaware of this and experiencing victimhood, YOU DID STILL WRITE IT. So you can hardly blame the other person. So now you need to go look at all the unhealed grievances that you still haven't let go of, and which you still interpret in a victim consciousness that says "I didn't want this to happen", "this wasn't fair", "they did it to me against my will" etc.... you HAVE to reinterpret that.

5) This now leads us to TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. This might seem like a step which places a shitload of guilt on your shoulders, blaming yourself for what happened, bla bla bla. That's ego. What it really means is actually a doorway to FREEDOM and RELIEF. You see, if you scripted all this, and you asked xyz person to do what they did, and you can admit that and own that fact, then you can let them off the hook. You can realize they did not victimize you. YOU victimized you. You hired them to carry out your wishes. If you are responsible for writing your script (and maybe you had help on the other side to do this gently/realistically etc), then you can no longer blame anyone else for what happens, in the past or in the future. It also means you can no longer view experiences as unwanted, bad, against you, unhelpful, hurtful, something to resist, as an attack, or any other form of victimization. That means, yes, whatever they did, whatever happened, you wanted it and got what you wanted, FOR A REASON, to HELP YOU to wake up.

6) Having now admitted to this responsibility, and started to access the sense of RELIEF and freedom that this gives you... because dropping the whole victim drama is a RELIEF from suffering, you can now enter into GRATITUDE. You cannot be grateful to an attacker while you think you didn't ask them to attack you. But you can be grateful to them when you realize you DID ask them to AND you can turn your mind to look at the situation as helpful/for you. It's like looking for the silver linings. What's happening is NOT a terrible tragedy or a horrible event gone wrong. That's illusion. What's happening is trying to help you to be steered in the right direction or to keep you safe or to help you learn who you are or to guide you to remembering whats true or to learn to love and care etc.. whatever the purposes are in your plan for spiritual "growth."

7) Finally then you have to learn to change the 'direction' or angle from which you look at events. If you're responsible and everything is for your good, then you need to learn to 'take it' that way. Look for the helpfulness. Look for how it is 'positive'. Look for the silver lining, the learning, the opportunity its giving you. Look at how it is making you grow or what you're learning from it. Ultimately then there is only one LESSON, in the form of all lessons. And it's this. You need to overcome the NEED for the lesson by recognizing the truth, owning up to the responsibility of who you really are (owning your innocence), entering into the mindset of the Holy Spirit which shows you that you are never a victim, and reclaiming your FREEDOM from the dramas of the ego. Ultimately this translates to you OVERLOOKING (forgiveness) all of the ways that you get LOST in the 'game' that you set up, so that you literally are no longer CAPABLE of playing the game. Once the truth is revealed, you can never forget it. And so you no longer need to create these dramas ever again.

Remember, nothing happens to you against your will. There are no accidents. Nothing happens that wasn't planned at some point in time BY YOU. Nothing is being forced upon you against your will.

You might find yourself 'inside a lesson' in this lifetime and feeling stuck in it, victmized by it, limited by it. But you might not also remember the benefits of this situation. Maybe it has indirect effects on the spiritual growth of other people. Maybe by suffering a sickness you HELP other people to learn compassion. Maybe by being afraid you give others an opportunity to learn to nurture. We're all this big soup of roleplay and side-effects and responses.

Also let's just finish by saying you're not stuck with a lesson. Holy Spirit WANTS you to learn the lesson. The answer to it is not being hidden from you. Often Holy Spirit tells me, in the midst of some frustration and confusion, "its a lesson". So them I'm like.. hmm... what is this lesson, what am I meant to learn? And it's not like Holy Spirit is withholding the answer, but I need to experientially becoming willing to accept some measure of truth in order to complete the need for the situation. The lesson may not be obvious.

In fact a recent lesson for me was to learn to DROP the idea of miraculously healing a problem with my eye, so that i would let go of false ideas about control and spiritualization of my ego, even though this outcome seemed at the time to be totally the opposite of what I thought I needed to do. Holy Spirit eventually revealed, when I was at the readiness to admit to it, that the whole point was to help me to 'see' the truth - that I was trying to do/be something beyond what is asked of me.

Also I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned compassion and a heart-opening as a result of various challenges that a person close to me has been through. For which I'm grateful, even though it sounds 'sick' to say you're grateful for sickness.

Holy Spirit said to me, "there is a plan". I'm learning to trust that more. And thus learning to take responsibility for my part in that plan, and thus relinquishing all of the support for victim mentality and blame. Even now as I start to look back at past events in 'this new light' I can see that I need to become grateful to people that I thought were against me or who I thought did the wrong thing. They were only helping and they only DID help. I just didn't recognize it.

Ultimately you want to get to where you have no more need for writing scripts, having learned everything they offer. Then you are free from the cycle of reincarnation forever.