Practiced a little bit of `miracle working` this morning ... the 'change the dream' and 'reverse cause and effect' kind. I am reporting this just because I'm still experimenting/learning/discovering what is possible and maybe it is useful.

I had back pain from a couple days ago, was annoying. Could not sleep on my side last night. Woke up with a sore shoulder bla bla bla. Uncomfortable, predicting that the day would be awkward and painful again. But then, decided to ask Jesus for help. It goes something like this:

1) Place your hand on the affected area

2) Join with Jesus, acknowledging that you BELIEVE/have faith that HE knows how to heal anything (healing comes from the Christ mind and you yourself (your ego self) are not capable of it) - your Christ self is.

3) Get yourself out of the way, your attitude of being forceful, your attitude of having power, your attitude of making something happen yourself, being the fixer, being a healer. NO. It's NOT YOU that is going to do the healing (this is profoundly difficult if you are accustomed to being `a healer` or fixer or savior).

4) Join with Jesus and feel his presence and stand with him in your mind, and stay there. Don't be separate. Stand alongside him and in his power and strength.

5) Now you can say words directly specifically at the problem, COMMANDING them to leave and never return, in Jesus's name (or words to this effect, ie within/using/extending Jesus's power)

6) e.g. "In Jesus's name (in my belief that Jesus can heal this FOR me), I command you pain to leave this body right now and do not return. (Notice if you start doubting and try looking for results or checking for changes or claiming credit for what's happening - this is all ego interference). (Notice also if you start believing YOU have to summon amazing amounts of magical power yourself in order to force the thing to leave... no force necessary whatsoever, you have to LET JESUS DO IT).

7) Notice if you are trying to force it or are trying to use `your own` power or strength or aggression to make the thing go away... that doesn't work. It's interference by the ego. You don't even need to ask in a forceful way. IF I can get myself out of the way then when I say the words it seems like I am barely saying anything, like reciting something without any intensity - because I'm letting Jesus have the power

8) If this does not work... and often it does nothing to begin with... do it again. Do it a few times. For me, after about 3 or 4 times, I felt my hand begin to vibrate and 'energize' and for there to be a presence in my back area and a sensation of buzzing or something happening.

9) Keep doing it because each time you are clear and pure about Jesus doing the healing it opens up your mind more and strengthens the connection - sometimes you have lots of clouds of ego to get past and it can take some determination/repetition to make your point clear enough and to extend enough 'authority' and certainty to command the 'dream' to change.

10) Hopefully if you did this well you will see some results. It takes practice.

For me, I was surprised that after 4 or 5 rounds (patiently applied) .. the pain in my back and shoulder had SIGNIFICANTLY subsided, probably like 60-70% improved. It left me smiling. It left me surprised and a bit amazed that it actually felt a lot better. Thank you Jesus! Hallelujah, or something.

I don't see that this is hard to do, but getting your ego out of the way can seem difficult. Jesus/Holy Spirit are the healers (God is). Its a matter of getting out of the way, trusting, believing in their power, putting aside fear, joining in their authority and extending their truth.

You might not be used to telling illusions what to do. You are more likely conditioned and used to a certain degree of victimhood, or powerlessness, which means that you allow stuff outside of you to seem to have power, or to have a say in what happens against your will.

Or to put it another way, you are used to listening to the ego. You're used to believing appearances. You're used to letting the world tell you what is happening. You're used to believing that these illusions are real and that they dictate what you are going to experience.

With divine healing, your attitude has to be different. It has to not listen to the ego. It has to not pay attention to appearance. It has to cut through all of the incoming signals from the ego illusion, ignore them completely, and demand and command the illusion to do what you want it to do.

So because of your mental conditioning in which you are very used to being quite wishy-washy about situations, where you sit on fences and maybe 'ask' life to change, you have to get out of that PASSIVE mentality. You have to stop paying so much attention to what your senses tell you and stop acting like a weak victim.

So this can actually take some practice to overcome and push past that conditioning, that way of using your mind that you've been so used to. It takes practice to learn whether you are actually fully COMMANDING that something change or be healed, versus whether there are elements of .. indecision, doubt, fear, uncertainty, paying attention to how things look, being caught up in the seeming reality of it, having reactions based on how the situation appears, etc... you have to weed all of that stuff out.

You need to become a finely tuned, PURIFIED, focused, clear, direct, certain, creative and firmly expressive miracle worker. You need to have authority. You must not lay down and just let the illusion, sickness, or whatever walk all over you with how much power it seems to have.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles, which means one miracle is not more difficult than another. But it ALSO means, MIRACLES ARE NOT DIFFICULT! Miracles are meant to be EFFORTLESS! In fact one of the miracle principles speaks of how miracles shouldn't be under conscious control, which speaks to how we need to be a conduit or bridge for the miracle to flow across without interference. But if our bridge is only half-built and stops short of fully extending into the illusion, to fully DELIVER God's promise of divine healing, then the effects will also fall short.

So experiment. Take time to speak TO the problem and tell it what you want it to do, explicitly and directly, not taking no for an answer. You have to be firm, and you have to be very clear. This takes some refinement. I've found that I tended at first to 'ask' problems to go. This does not work. I found that I would describe the problem. That doesn't work. I found that I would talk about the problem, to myself or others or to God. That doesn't work. I found that I would then talk about what I wanted to happen in a kind of future tense, but that also did not work. You have to tell the problem directly, NOW, in first-person immediate language, in a commanding way, "sickness, leave right now. Go! Get out!". You have to CONFRONT IT, which takes some balls especially if you are a people pleaser ;-)

I've found that it took several attempts and various failures to learn how to be commanding. It was not natural to me at first. I was too passive and uncertain and afraid. I would buy into doubts too much, like wondering if it would work or what would happen. We cannot be like that. We are representatives of God. We are like his policemen, enforcing his law. We have to be AUTHORITATIVE. And illusions MUST obey. But if you are not authoritative, illusions and sickness and all other forms of suffering will STAY because you are failing to give it a direct order to leave. If you don't use very direct commanding language, which is vague and wishy-washy, you will see 'reflected back' in the dream mirror vague results or half-hearted responses.

Illusions must respond to the commanding confidence of Christ.

In all cases, when Jesus healed the sick and so on, he always gave a very direct command. "Get up and walk". "Lazarus, get up and a live". etc... these are not requests. They are powerful commands. And that is how power flows across them. Words are a transit system for the communication and flow of God's power. You have to speak to the problem and tell it what to do.

"For truly I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain (notice the SPOKEN command), 'Be removed and be thrown into the sea!' and does not doubt in his heart (no fear, no uncertainty, completely belief and confidence), but BELIEVES that what he says will come to pass (believing it is a very important part of conviction), he will have whatever he says" (Bible, Mark 11:23).

I notice myself wavering back and forth in trust, between believing the ego's temptations that something is going wrong, versus recognizing the truth that nothing can go wrong.

On the one hand, the truth says we are all immortal and invulnerable and sinless and holy, in perfect health and guaranteed happiness, alive forever in God and incapable of suffering.

Then on the other hand, stuff happens in the world and it tempts me to believe that something can't be healed or undone or fixed, something is irreversible, something bad has happened or there is no hope.

I sometimes notice that I'm buying into this ego victimhood illusions stuff, and then remember that the truth says something much more permanent and hope-filled. But I'm still tentative about trusting it fully. There is always this ego allegiance which says, "well... I'm not quite sure, what about..."

Sometimes the truth seems unbelievable. Sometimes the idea of immortality, eternal life, divine health, perfect holiness, invulnerability, being cause not effect, etc, seems so high and lofty, it seems difficult to really deeply believe it, at all times.

It's a matter of trust. I don't fully trust it yet. But some part of me has opened up to it and has trusted it to some degree, because at least at times I doubt my ego beliefs which speak the total opposite and make problems real.

I can see the clarity and light in siding with the truth and the promise it holds, which seems in the long term to be a beacon of certainty and joy, but in the meantime I dip in and out of it, sometimes much more miraculously-minded and sometimes just coasting along unconsciously.

I like in the course when Jesus says, comfortingly, "at least you are no longer wholly insane". lol

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

This is a difficult one to accept. To suggest the bodies needs NO healing, is not an attempt to make it "ok" that bodies are in "conditions" of sickness. It's not saying that "you should not heal the body" or attempt to be free from the physical manifestation of symptoms. Instead, it's saying that really, the body isn't the CAUSE of the problem and isn't the source of what's showing up as wrong with it.

The only real issue is the mind. The mind is the only thing that can be sick. For example Jesus says somewhere that "only perception can be sick". A sick perception projects its sick twisted mental conditions onto the body and confuses itself with the body, thus twisting the body into unnatural configurations. The body itself is nothing but a MIRROR IMAGE, reflecting the mind's condition. "The mind makes this decision as it makes ALL decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

The body makes NO decisions about its health. "The body is not sick, nor does it need healing" says the same thing. The body APPEARS sick, and seemingly "is sick", but the sickness is being PUT THERE by the mind. Since mind is the cause of the problem, fixing the EFFECT (the body) directly is only going to rearrange furniture. The mind is quite capable of re-manifesting the same or different sickness at a later time. It's like trying to fix a leaking tap by collecting the water, or trying to fix an overflowing bathtub by fetching a mop. Until the source 'tap' is switched off the problem will regenerate.

It's difficult to accept this is true because the BODY in its physical appearance is quite a convincing illusion. If you can SEE, feel, touch, forms of sickness or damage.. if you can see the wounds, if you can see the cancerous lumps, if you can have sensations of the disease etc... these are quite convincing temptations to believe "the body ITSELF has a problem". And because the body was made to blind you ("nothing so blinding as perception of form"), you think the body is the start and end of the problem. You don't SEE the projector - the mind - forcing the body into sickness, mangling its form, or attacking it. The attack is invisible.

The truth is though that the body is merely the end result or effect of the mind's activities. "All sickness is mental illness." ie, NO sickness is really something inherently wrong with the body itself. The body isn't containing "an issue". The body, even if it appears sick, isn't really "having" a sickness. It's merely REPRESENTING, or symbolizing, something that's going on in the mind. It's ONCE REMOVED from the problem. Even if you can see someone's broken leg, it is not really their leg that's broken, it's their mind. The body state is a reflection of the mental state. "A broken body is PROOF the ***MIND*** has not been healed."

It is very tempting upon witnessing the end result "form" of the body "looking sick" to want to then react to that perception. Having thus made the body real, believing the body is "really sick", falling for the appearance, buying into the story of how it came about, etc... it is then becoming a block to awareness. It now disguises the mind and hides the mind from view. It forms a wall of form, a form of error, which YOUR body's eyes are now failing to overlook. And so now you've fallen for believing in (and reinforcing) the body's condition without really noticing that its the MIND that has a problem. The mind is making the body suffer.

Essentially, the body has no mind, no will, no causality, no soul, no power, no decision, nothing. The body is totally nothing. And so the mind, in its attack upon or use of the body, is doing stuff TO the body "against its will", so to speak. The body simply responds with a reflection of what the mind wants it to represent. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you (mind) can be hurt." So the body just goes along with the mind's attack upon it and "faithfully" symbolizes what the mind wants to demonstrate, even if that is a will to demonstrate disease and death. The body has no say in it, and no will to stop it or resist it. The body has no fight, no cause, no defense.

Jesus describes the body's ONLY real defense as a state where the mind ceases to attack the body. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." So when the mind is not projecting attack onto it, to hurt it, the body is instead healed by the mind's use of it for extending Christ's love. The body is like the image on a movie screen. To fix the sick body you can't attack the movie screen. You've gotta to heal the movie projector. The projector is the mind. The mind is the only problem that needs fixing.

The question then becomes, how do you heal the mind? It seems easier to do this for yourself than for another mind. "The light in your mind can shine into another mind and enlighten it." Both minds are lit by the same lamp. Your minds can be one. This is a clue. How do you heal the invisible? How do you bring about mind correction, that's permanent, in another mind, through the broadcasting and expression of love? Through weakening their belief in sickness by not believing in their body's condition? Through prayer and the power of God moving to perform a miracle?

The focus needs to somehow move away from "I believe there is a real physical sickness" to "I recognize this physical sickness is not real whatsoever and the mind needs healing." And then proceeding to take steps to heal the mind directly. The body will follow.

When we typically experience the world from an ego viewpoint, we might encounter lessons and people and problems. And then we attempt to forgive these things. And we think we are then done with forgiveness. And then another one comes along. And then we do another forgiveness. And this gives you the impression that you are doing forgiveness.

But over time, you are really moving horizontally through the world, encountering obstacles, one at a time, and these obstacles always seem specific. The form of the obstacle is what deceives you. The problem with your mother, the problem with the plumbing, the problem with the sick brother, the problem with your boss. Each one seems specifically different and unrelated to the rest. And so you perform a string of seeming forgivenesses through time.

But as you perform each forgiveness and move towards truth, you are in fact moving UPWARDS, towards the light. And this upwards movement may seem to be more subtle and gradual, such that it isn't even specific and it may be difficult to realize whether you are making upwards progress. But over time, it will start to occur to you that each of the seemingly different "forms" that problems take, is itself an illusion.

You will start to see that each of these forgiveness opportunities have something in common. Common characteristics. There's always some problem with your belief in who is causing who. And there's always some issue of authority and power. And there's always fear and reaction involved. And there's always the same stresses. And as you progress you start to generalize the learning and start to transcend the forms and differences. And then it starts to occur to you that these are not all different situations.

What forgiveness reveals to you, is that you aren't really in fact having to deal with a multitude of totally different problems, but that in fact the whole world, ALL of the problems, are doing the same thing. And ALL of the problems have the same characteristics. And ALL of them are forgiven in the same way. And this starts to show you that it's not really a specific problem with specific people, or specific groups, or specific situations, it's a problem with THE WHOLE WORLD.

And then you start to question the nature of the whole world. Maybe the WHOLE world is a collection of attacks. Maybe all of it, regardless of the form it takes, is ONE problem. And now you are starting to not fall for the illusion of form or the shape that a problem takes. You are realizing that either you move downwards into the darkness of hell, or upwards into the light of heaven. And either you are lost in the battlefield of stress and misery, or you are above the WHOLE battlefield in light and happiness.

Forgiveness starts to now take on a different direction. Its not so much to do with having a DIFFERENT way of handling each situation, but of developing a SINGLE "way" of dealing with them all. And you start to see through the deception or form that each one presents. And you stop falling for the obvious temptations. And now forgiveness is seen as vertical, in which either you are moving into hell or out of it, as a whole. And the qualities of the whole WORLD are now being brought into question.

You are now asking yourself, whether ANY of the things that happen are real. Whether ANY problem is really happening. Whether ANY person's attack has anything to do with you. Whether there even IS anything specific or different about any of it. And as you broaden your horizons to learn very large abstract truths such as that there is no world, this is just a dream, NONE of it is happening to you, loving everyone equally is the way to holy relationship, unity is the truth, sharing with everyone is unconditional love, etc... you move away from the specific towards the abstract.

And now it boils down the real "root cause" of the WHOLE of suffering, the reason for EVERY reaction, the purpose behind EVERY sickness. And you discover there not only really is only one problem, there is also only one solution. One solution to rule them all. And only one lesson that the Holy Spirit is teaching. Either the world is real or its not. And if it is real, you will suffer. And if it's not, you are free. If it's a dream, you have no basis for reactions or fear. If it's not a dream, you cannot help but react in fear. This is a fundamental lesson in the generalization of the teaching. That every form the illusion takes is just as DECOY to distract you from realizing that it's ALL the same.

This causes you to also start realizing that the hierarchy of illusions is a lie. Some things are NOT harder or more difficult than another. The form of a problem lies about its severity. You start to question whether a giant cancer is really any more threatening than a headache. You see how the ego tries to correlate the seriousness of a cause with the appropriate level of reaction, and you stop falling for this lie. The hierarchy starts to flatten, and all of the deceptions that make it seem like a world-sized maze of confusing corridors and disjointed pieces, simply start to fuse into each other as they're all seen as ONE DREAM. One problem, one solution.

"Miracles entail a sudden shift into vertical perception".

"Yet they are all the same and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the same"

"We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form."

For me I want a course that can be learned, is accessible, easy enough to understand, and can be applied without too much hassle. I think A Course in Miracles does this, and that Jesus is an excellent teacher. I think he knows what he's talking bout.

I think he is very masterful and wise and has taken huge efforts in the writing of ACIM to try to be as clear and obvious and relatable as possible, so that as many people as possible can learn the course and use it correctly. After all, it would be a pretty awful course if it was so obscure and difficult and hard to fathom that no-one could actually succeed at it.

"Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct."

"...a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around."

For me, I recognize that Jesus makes some VERY SIMPLE straightforward statements. He states facts, in the clearest way possible. He uses words which are familiar to us, and which have associations with things in our world that we recognize. He isn't speaking some foreign gobbledygook language, or trying to make things obscure. He is very direct, factual, honest, obvious and clear.

So for example in the course he uses some terms such as "Earth". I think we ALL recognize that a reference to Earth is talking about the physical planet that we're on, the ball of rock, which is floating in space. Planet Earth. I think 100% of readers should agree that Earth refers to that object. If you think that it DOES NOT refer to that object, or that "Earth is NOT really a physical planet and has some other kind of reality", something is wrong.

Similarly he talks often about the body. Even already as I write this sentence you have an association in your mind which recognizes I just mentioned the human flesh-and-bones body. That's what the body is. My human body, your biological body, the bodies of people walking down the street.

This isn't rocket science. This does not have to be difficult or hard to understand. And it especially shouldn't call for us to have to perform massive mental gymnastics, get subtle nuances, re-word things, redefine meanings, shift things around, or have massive long debates about what it means. For fucks's sake, the body is just the body!

So for example if he gives a simple statement such as: "At no time does the body exist", we're supposed to learn that he really does mean that literally. The human flesh and bones body that we're used to walking around in, does not really exist. That's the teaching. That's the fact. That's his intention.

When he then also tells us for example that "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist", the most obvious thing to learn is that once again, this human flesh and bones body does not really exist. Everything about it is geared towards separation, and it DOES NOT EXIST. NOTHING about it exists, in any way, to any degree, anywhere.

He goes on to reiterate the same simple truths in many ways, in many forms, in many statements. e.g. "As nothing, which it is, the body cannot be meaningfully endowed with the attributes of Christ." or "The body's nothingness", or "God did not create the body." etc. All of these tell us the same exact thing. The body is nothing, it doesn't exist, it's not really there. There is NOTHING ELSE to learn from this. There is NO OTHER MEANING.

You SHOULD be learning therefore that because of the many times Jesus has reiterated this simple teaching, one of many, you should be trying to learn and accept that "your body" is not really there, the bodies that you see around you don't really exist, and there are no real bodies. You should NOT be attempting to SKEW this, or to find loopholes, or ways to keep the body.

You should not be trying to explain how there is some VERSION of the body that is going to be kept. Or how references to the body are NOT really referring to the body. Or how the body is "not really physical" but is something else. Or how when he talks of the body he is only talking about it "as the ego sees it", or "as you perceive it". We have to stop tacking on all these extra clauses and exceptions and ways of DISTORTING the very basic most obvious teaching. The body is NOTHING. It's not there.

This means that all of the atoms, do not exist. It means that, the flesh and bones and organs and eyeballs and hands and feet, do not exist. Not one single part of its energy exists. None of its fluids or chemicals, none of the gut bacteria, none of the cells, nothing that gives it space, or takes up space, or is made of matter, or energy, or thought, or ANYTHING, none of it is there. That we should not be attempting to redefine it, keep it, view it differently in order to have it still exist somehow, or anything else. We need to learn to accept, THERE IS NO BODY. Zero. Totally non-existent in all places at all times in every way forever.

This is a simple teaching. It's not hard. It's not meant to be hard. You aren't required to study this course deeply for decades in an attempt to fathom the deeper mysteries of what these simple statements mean. It does not take for you to do the workbook lessons. It does not require for you too read the text 100 times. You should get it as soon as you read it the first time. The body is nothing and does not exist. It's not that hard. Jesus is not being obscure or clever or mystical or difficult or trying to tell us something in a very obscure context which only advanced students can ever get. This course is for YOU. ANYONE. To learn easily.

Statements about the body have implications. If the body is nothing, then it stands to normal sane reasoning, that anything the body is "made of" does not exist. For example if the body has carbon atoms in it, which it does, then carbon does not exist. And this by extension means, that trees which are also made of carbon, do not exist. Any if the skin cells fall from the body and become dust and contribute to the soil of the earth, then also the soil of the earth does not exist. And if the body breathes the air and depends on it, then so too is the air not real either. And as you take foods into the body and digest them and they BECOME the body, this must indicate that those foods, and their original forms, and the plants and trees and sources they came from, ALSO must not exist.

This is very simple reasoning, it's not rocket science. It's simple common sense. If your body doesn't exist as Jesus spells out clearly and easily, then it also MUST mean that anything around the body does not exist, the body's environment does not exist, and the entire cosmos does not exist. This is a very sensible and sane and rational conclusion. It's all made of the same stuff, so it applies to all of it. That means therefore that planet earth, does not exist. We could rephrase Jesus's statements to EASILY mean the same thing. e.g. "At no time does the planet Earth exist. It is either anticipated or remembered, but never exists just now." "The planet earth is a dream." "The planet earth's nothingness." "As nothing, which it is, planet earth cannot be meaningfully invested with the attributes of christ." "God did not create the planet earth."

The course is NOT meant to be ANY more complicated than this. All readers should be coming to the same conclusions. In fact there shouldn't even really be much of a process involved in "drawing conclusions". You should be seeing that Jesus has already done most of the work for you. He's already EXPLICITLY telling you outright, LITERALLY, that the body is nothing and does not exist. And he extends that in many ways to include the world as well.

"There is no world. "Earth, the other's sorry outcome, which is heaven's opposite in every way." "The place where it is reflected is not real." "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." etc. Very simple, the course teaches normal everyday readers that planet earth does not really exist. Which is a very profound teaching. And it's our job to ACCEPT this and recognize it. But it becomes incredible at times the lengths that some students will go to, to avoid this. It is driven in part by the STRONG belief that people bring with them TO the course, based on prior experiences, that the planet seems to them to be real. All the pain, all the misery, all the experiences, the memories, all the bodies, all the relationships, all the events, which all seem to contribute in our minds to suggesting that Earth really does exist. But ALL of that is FLYING IN THE FACE of what Jesus is telling us, and so we have a lot to learn, or rather a lot to UNLEARN. Because we've taught ourselves a lot of stuff that is NOT TRUE, and is NOT what the course is teaching us.

That means we have to be willing to be mistaken, we have to be willing to question our beliefs, we have to be open minded to consider an alternative, and we have to also keep sight of THE PLAIN AND OBVIOUS. And of what makes simple logical sense. When we are reading something like the body being nothing and not existing, and we can't quite bring ourselves to accept it is true, because of our commitment to identifying with the body, we will DEFEND AGAINST what Jesus is saying. And then even a simple statement such as "the body does not exist" will be met with doubt, suspicion, questioning, deception, distortion and attempts to have it NOT mean what it means. Our egos will try to CHANGE its meaning and NOT SEE the obvious.

"We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss."

Even the most obviously, BLATANT statements can be distorted if the mind is not ready or willing to listen to it. We can quite easily project onto the course a vast array of false perceptions. We can mangle it out of all recognition. We can take even the simplest clearest statements and FIND WAYS in which we can try to justify that they DO NOT mean what they mean. We can even take statements and give them completely OPPOSITE meanings, and feel "okay with that", as if it makes sense to us. As if it doesn't seem to contradict OTHER things we believe, because in our arrogance we think we already know what is true and don't want to question it.

To accept even the most simple truths in the course sometimes may require us to go through a tremendous purification process, letting go of faulty beliefs and backgrounds, discarding old baggage and world views, even questioning our most deeply held beliefs about who and what we are. And we do not WANT to do that. So we will resist it, and will instead NOT SEE the most simply obvious truths in front of us. Because we don't want to. We want the truth to be something else. And we do not TRUST it, because we trust something else.

So we have to sort through and sort out ALL of our other beliefs and find out if they line up with what Jesus is telling us. And that's going to be some rough territory because we COULD start trying to educate ourselves as to "what he means", and teach ourselves things that he DOES NOT mean. After all, if we don't even really know what is true, and are supposed to learn from him, then we need to really be willing to put aside out OWN teaching of ourselves and open up to BEING TAUGHT and actually learning something new. Otherwise we're not really being students, we're just being spewers and projectors of what we already decided is true.

Not that it takes rocket science to grasp the basic facts. Many things in ACIM are NOT supposed to be difficult. It's just that sometimes the truth is so profound and deep and intense that we do not LIKE it and do not WANT it. So we avoid it with an incredible array of creative means. An incredible arsenal of distortions, twists, defenses, manipulations, bandaids, and all manner of other strategies to not directly see or recognize or accept the simplest facts. No one with an ego wants to accept "there is no world" at its fullest intensity. And no one who believes they are a body REALLY wants to accept fully that their bodies don't exist.

But even with all these obstacles, even with learning disabilities, self inflicted filters, and all manner of unwillingness and denial, there are STILL some very, VERY basic aspects to Jesus's teaching that we all should really learn and agree to. The SIMPLEST of truths. Such as that the human physical biological body has absolutely no reality, value, existence, or meaning. It is NOT THERE. And also by extension, that this planet, the physical world, which is like the body and of the body, also is NOT THERE. These are fundamentally two cornerstone principles of ACIM. To not at LEAST accept them intellectually is going to produce a huge array of distortions of the course's teachings, and it has already done so.

Sometimes it seems like stuff happens that you did not ask for.

The only reason this seems possible is because you are not fully aware of every part of your mind, and some hidden parts of you are working against you.

You believe that your current awareness is a full awareness, that you are fully aware of your entire self. Wherever you sense the edges of your awareness to be, that is the boundary that you believe is the edge of your entire being. And that there is nothing else beyond it.

But your mind, unless you are spiritually awakened, has parts to it which you are unaware of. There are parts which are hidden behind walls of denial and fear. These parts are essentially unconscious to you, i.e. you are not aware of them in your conscious awareness and this makes it seem as though they do not exist. There is more to your mind than you realize.

If you were to ask most people if they have an unconscious mind, it would be a complete guess, because really you can't be aware of the unconscious until it is made conscious. So you have to take someone's word for it that you may even have unconscious parts to you. But unless you are aware of the presence of God, there must be some parts of your mind which are outside of your awareness.

Now, simply because some parts of your choosing mind may be outside of the scope of your conscious awareness, it is possible that those parts of your mind are active and are choosing to make things happen, but without your knowing it. These parts of your mind are filled with beliefs and thoughts and attitudes which do express and do create situations and events to reflect what it believes.

Particularly, the unconscious mind is usually a repository of darkness, self-attack, guilt, hatred, and all manner of insanity. And this tends to be so denied that it shows up in your experience as though it is outside of your body, and embedded into or laid on top of other people. You experience it out there as though it has nothing to do with you at all, and yet it is your own hidden self-hate.

So then, it seems to your conscious self as though stuff starts to happen to you that you did not consciously want or remember choosing. And to explain the origin of these things that happen to you, being unaware that you chose them yourself, it seems to make sense to now find some "other" source of these things. Like other people.

So the mere fact that you have a split mind which is partly conscious and partly unconscious, automatically puts you into a situation where you see yourself as being victimized. Choices are being made, a will is performing its desires, and someone somewhere is deciding things, but it doesn't seem to be yourself. So automatically, you will look outside of yourself for the cause.

This is the origin of all scapegoating, all blame, all perception of being a victim in any way, all anger towards others, all attempts to find other people guilty or wrong, and all belief that it MUST be someone else's fault, simply because you are not aware of what hidden parts of yourself are doing to yourself. You become hell-bent on finding someone else to be the cause of your condition, not realizing that YOU are the cause.

Given that you are not aware of the full scope of your whole mind, and given that the hidden parts of your mind are still believing that you are guilty, and given that those beliefs will lead to self-punishment, it is no wonder that once those punishments start to happen, you're going to be desperate to find out WHO did it to you. You'll think it's not you.

It can seem to be difficult to accept that you chose suffering or difficult situations or major problems or sicknesses or pain or fear. It can seem like there is just no way that you would've wanted this situation, and that there is no way that you - your conscious self, would choose this. But you're not aware of your whole self, so you don't really know that you chose it, or why.

Over time, with forgiveness, which is really just the insight that you've been doing EVERYTHING to yourself and NOTHING has happened to you that you did not choose - unconsciously or otherwise, you will become more aware of the content and attitudes hidden in your unconscious. The unconscious will be integrated back into awareness, you will uncover your secret sins and hidden self-hates, and through healing you will come to a fuller awareness of the whole of yourself.

It is in the light of that fullness of who you are, rather than being a little portion of yourself, that you can recognize that you cannot possibly have been victimized. You will be honest in admitting the truth, that you have been doing this to yourself, you did plan it all along, and there is nobody else to be held accountable.

If you can see and accept that you really DID do this all on your own, to yourself, without needing anyone else to explain why things happened, then automatically everyone else is innocent and you have hope of freedom. But this DOES require that you be AWARE, i.e. able to see, that you really ARE doing this to yourself. Then you will not even think to blame it on anyone else because you obviously are the cause.

Because now that you are in your full mind, you can choose again, and decide to stop hurting yourself. You can choose life. You can give up your death wish. You can let go of your self abusive attitude. You can stop hating yourself and stop condemning yourself. You can stop believing that you are sinful or guilty. And you can come to realize that God still loves you because you have not really done anything at all.

Awareness sets you free of the delusions and illusions of suffering, that you conclude are caused by anyone other than yourself. The belief in your fate being chosen entirely by "other than me" is a choice for death. And even then you are still doing it to yourself. You do not have to die.

Increasing your awareness through undoing of the blocks that keep the mind in the dark, will set you free and bring you back to life. This is the time of your resurrection. This is your return to who you really are, free of the illusion that you can suffer at the hands of another. It was never anyone else's fault.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself, and have been all along. And yet you have done nothing real at all. In this view, both you and others are equally innocent, and all is forgiven and released.

Imagine you go into a room which is just completely empty, with pure white walls, ceiling and floor. There is nothing in the room.

This room is a holo-deck, or a holographic projection room, in which very believable and real-seeming objects can show up. They can even have physical properties like weight and inertia and can be moved around and interacted with.

So you're standing there in this empty room and suddenly a chair appears out of nowhere. You go over to it and it looks incredibly realistic. You actually believe it's a "real chair". You're like, how did this chair get in here? You touch it and it feels solid, and you pick it up and move it a bit. It makes a slight noise as the legs scrape on the floor, and then you sit on it. It supports you. Very realistic. Very lifelike.

Except that it's just a hologram. It's just an illusion of a chair, being projected there by some kind of "system" that's running unseen. But it's so convincing, you're certain it's a real chair.

Another chair appears out of nowhere and sitting in this chair, there suddenly appears some person. This person must've been there all along, you reason, trying to justify how your perception can have not noticed them before, because they seem real. Their body looks real, it moves and breathes and has a pulse. The person is looking around, fidgeting and wondering what's going on.

The thing is, this other person is someone you know and that person is sick, or they have a disease, or a problem, or some kind of suffering or lack, or maybe they are dying, or are very emotionally upset. You see them, and you're like, wow, that seems so real. It really seems like that person is there, having these issues, and that it's all very tangible and realistic. You're so convinced you don't even remember that they are being projected by the same unseen system.

So then, because you know this person and they are unhappy or unhealthy in some way, you have this reaction, or a whole bunch of reactions about them. You believe their sickness is real, because it looks real, and you can maybe even see and touch it, or can see how it seems to be affecting them. And your reactions compel you to want to help or have sympathy or fix them or do something to make their suffering stop. All of these are reactions to the belief that they really are sitting there, having an unhappy time, and yet all along you don't realize - that person is not even really sitting there. It's a holographic projection of a body, just like an image in a dream. It's coming from somewhere else.

You build up this whole set of reactions and counter-measures and attempts to solve the real-seeming problem, so convinced that it's really happening and there's a real danger or threat to that person. But there isn't. It's just an image. It's not a real sickness, it's a holographic sickness. It's not real damage to their body, it's just a projected image. It's not real suffering, it's just a fictional suffering. Some system somewhere unseen is projecting all of this and making it seem very real and convincing. It's totally made-up.

Suddenly you see in the corner of the room a doorway, outside of which sits a computer, and this computer is actually projecting the images that are in the room. You can see beams of light coming from it, making the person appear, making the chairs appear, and then you notice it even making your own body appear. Your own body is even a holographic image coming from somewhere, and it's not even really there.

Realizing this, you RECOGNIZE that these images are just illusions being projected, and are not REAL. They are made up. The joke was on you. You believed them and fell for it. The other person isn't even really that body that you saw. YOU aren't even the body that you thought you were. The chairs don't even exist. It's all a trick. What you thought was real sickness was just an illusion of sickness, a holographic projection of sickness. It was nothing more than a flickering image like from a movie projector. It had no reality to it, no truth to it. It wasn't doing anything, or causing anything. It could've been switched on or off in an instant, or even removed entirely at the flip of a switch.

A little light lights up on the computer and the image of the other person suddenly disappears. In their place, another body shows up - the same person, but in a state of perfect health. This remains for a moment as you marvel at it, thinking that they are now a "real healthy body", and you have another reaction - a positive reaction but a reaction nonetheless, that the other person has been saved. But this is false as well.

And a second later the computer projects yet another image of the person back to being a sick body again. Your heart sinks, as though the whole terrible nightmare is happening over again. But then 2 seconds later, it flips back to a healthy body again. You suddenly realize again, all of these body images are not reality. None of them are true. None of them are who the person is. And the appearance of sickness is completely fictional and meaningless. If it can be switched on and off at will, there is no victimhood whatsoever.

Seeing where the dream images are coming from, who is projecting them, the falseness of their illusions, and not buying into the deception that they are REALLY THERE, frees the mind to SEE and RECOGNIZE illusions for what they are. That other person you know who you think is really sick, is not sick at all. Their body is part of a dream you are dreaming. Their sickness is not even really a real sickness. It's just a made-up image. It could be switched off in an instant. In fact Jesus tells us in the course that if we were to stop believing the lie, there is not a single sickness which would not be cured instantly.

We need to learn to recognize the nothingness of what IS nothing - this entire dream world and everything in it. It's all just a big dream. We're DREAMING! This is not reality. It is not real at all. Nothing in this world is true. It's all pretend. There is nothing of any more importance than anything else, hence no order of difficulty in miracles, because it's all just "movie" that's being projected. The mind projecting it can chop and change any part of it in an instant. It can flip between images of health and sickness simply because the body is an illusion, and what lies beyond the illusion is free of all sickness.

This is why we need to learn to recognize that sickness/disease/suffering/upset/death etc is not REALLY HAPPENING. And there is nothing about it which is so heavy and fixed and irreversible and seemingly insurmountable, that it can't be just flipped on or off at will. We need to learn to BELIEVE and PERCEIVE that all forms, and as a lesser group, all sick forms, are nothing but temporarily momentary images projected by a mind, and given the appropriate willingness and clarity of perception, those forms can be changed fully and instantly right now. We must overlook the illusions of how these forms of sickness/distortion are difficult or severe or life-threatening. That's all an illusion. Death is no more "difficult" an illusion to change than a pimple on your face. The FREEDOM to do this is what Jesus is teaching us, by helping us to SEE clearly that illusions of difficulty are completely false and don't mean anything.

Nothing I see means anything, because nothing I see in this dream is anything at all. It's all one thing. One dream, one illusion, showing up as illusions of forms and differences and a hierarchy of illusions. The hierarchy is FLAT! There is no real hierarchy. Cancer should be no more difficult to correct than a bloody nose. It should be effortless to change a car into a tree. This world has no power to prevent this capability. But while we believe the illusions that have been projected and are convinced there is such a thing as "real sickness", or "real death" or reasons "why you can't", then we are believing in the ego thought system and have not restored cause and effect to its proper order (your mind causes, the world obeys). And if we can't do this, we still have level confusion, and are sick ourselves.

When someone becomes afraid, they also become resistant to being helped. The fear and victimhood is really a choice to deny and resist the truth, and so they do not want the truth. This can make the situation very difficult if you're trying to help someone because they literally do not want to be helped, even if in the victimhood they are complaining and saying that they want things to not be this way.

In the Course for example Jesus talks about "requests for healing" whereby someone may seem to be asking for help, through complaint or even direct asking, but because they would be scared by a miracle, which would remove the very thing they themselves put in place, they could become afraid if this "treasure" were suddenly taken from them. In this case, it's not a real request for healing, it's just the form of a request, but really a denial and wish to not be helped.

One of the hardest things to deal with is when other people do not want to really be helped. And by that I don't mean people who actually are ready or willing to be helped, but those who say they are but are not. Those who are steeped in fear and resistance, and so are resistant also to anything that would help them. Resistant to ideas, suggestions, healing, advice, simply on the basis that their backwards perception makes it seem like "help" is actually "danger".

This happens when the thought system goes into egotism because what is true and false become reversed. Defenses are erected against the misinterpreted truth, which seems false, so understandably you'd not want it. Then the person will defend and side with the very thing that's hurting them, because they believe it's the truth. Whatever we think is true we will value and want to keep and protect. So when we're in the ego with this backwards perception, we'll actively fight against help and healing, believing it's not actually help but a form of attack. The ego thinks of the Holy Spirit as an attacker.

What can you then do but let go and let the person continue to suffer. I mean, that sounds awful but sometimes people simply want to carry on suffering, even if on the other hand some part of them is not liking it. It's really difficult to "allow" someone to make choices against themselves or against life and happiness, especially when you know that there are options and possibilities.

Perhaps at that point all that you can do is appeal to a higher power, pray for them, send them love or happy energy, try to lift them up by being a light around them, or be an example or demonstration of a better way. It's hard to let go of control and the desire to fix or save those who are destroying themselves, or at least who appear to be. Because we also have to remember that even those people are not really doing anything at all. Nothing real can be threatened, and every postulation of suffering is fake and illusion. Even if the person finds it to be terrifyingly real.

You can't force anyone because everyone has free will. Jesus even says in the Course that "your will is as strong as mine" and this is why he is not able to simply overthrow your errors or force you into awakening. You have to choose it willingly. No one comes to the atonement without being willing. It takes total willingness, not just a little willingness. "Heaven is a choice I must make". So if someone is hell bent on not choosing it, what can you do but choose it for yourself and try to extend it to them in any way they can accept? Even if all that is is you being kind or gentle or listening or whatever.

Everyone has free will. Everyone has power. Everyone is choosing everything that's happening. Everyone even those suffering are expertly manifesting whatever they want. Everyone is putting everything in place. And nothing is happening anywhere to anyone without their consent. Even in situations where it seems like they are not giving any consent, they are giving it 100%. Even when it is producing suffering or sickness, again they are literally electing for it to occur and are putting it in place. And they have that exact same freedom and power to do that, just as much as using that same freedom and power with a non-self-destructive choice.

Jesus is telling us we are free and we are choosers and we are responsible for everything. Even if we're practically dead, we are choosing to be, and no-one is going to take that away from anyone against their will. Some people want to be dead. Some people want to be sick. Some people want to scapegoat the world. Some people want to be in terrible fear all the time. And every person does not believe they have the power to do anything to change it, which is part of the deciding not to.

Keep praying for the lost souls. No-one is lost. Everyone is just finding their way. And sometimes that may mean that it takes a long time and a lot of struggle and mistakes to get there.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK"

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

Years ago when I began the course, I thought I understood forgiveness. I thought it basically meant not blaming people, and trying to learn that everyone is innocent. It's kind of that. But over time and with deeper study my grasp of forgiveness kept expanding.

I realized at some point forgiveness is a state, a high state of mind, in concert with true perception, and that our efforts "to forgive" move us in the direction of that state. At some point we would achieve a truly forgiving state of mind as an end result or goal. And this state recognizes there is no real sin.

And so then "doing forgiveness" to me was more to do with purification, healing, release, not judging, taking responsibility, embracing the secret of salvation etc. I made effort to forgive myself and others through various means and to move out of fear into guilt, out of guilt into sin, and out of sin into innocence. But this still wasn't the whole story.

It gradually became clearer that the entire world needs to be overlooked. Particularly because the world itself is an illusion, it wasn't enough to undo my mistaken ideas and beliefs about it, somehow I had to learn to "see past" the world to a light or reality beyond it. And this is significantly challenging. The world hangs like a veil before the face of Christ, a granite block of sin, designed to tempt you to believe everything you see.

It became clearer that the entire physical universe, all forms of matter, all bodies and planets and objects, are there as temptations, appearances and deceptions. That seeing something seem to happen in the flesh was in fact untrue and unreal. That people are not bodies, but something beyond their physical form that I'm meant to see. And so my efforts shifted toward trying not to be deceived by the world in general.

This is where things seem to become quite difficult. When you consider that we've lived in a physical body for many years, assuming the world is real, reacting to everything the body senses as if it's happening as proof, there is a lot of conditioning to undo. And it starts to go into a territory where you have to literally question fundamental reality, whether events are even really happening, whether sick bodies even exist, whether all of the hierarchy of illusions really testifies to bad things happening or if it's just some awful dream. And that means questioning even what your body senses say is happening.

For me lately the challenge has been intensified because I've been presented with some very difficult "physical" scenarios with my wife that present powerful temptations. Temptations to believe that awful things are happening, that there is physical loss, that body parts are malfunctioning, that there is seriousness and heaviness and fear-inducing problems. I've been extremely pushed and impressed upon by the apparent reality of these horrors.

Just the mere act of seeing something physically "wrong" and believing it is truthful, real, happening, or a danger, is enough to incite fear and reactions. When the world is dangling "proof" that sin is happening, attack is happening, that bodies seem to be real, in front of your face, proving that sin is real, what do you do? Because this is where we really get into some major need for forgiveness.

It has become more and more apparent that everything physical is an illusion. All body states are fictional. The ego uses forms to hold the idea of death in front of our noses, asking us to believe that it's really happening. It asks us to regard people as bodies as though, when parts of the body are threatened or lost, the person is threatened or lost. And if you buy it, you will be very upset. And this is why the world is so unhappy.

Presented with a torrent of nightmarish happenings, my challenge has been to try to learn to disbelieve them. To not buy the appearance. To trust a bigger plan. To see beyond the short-term nonsense. To not believe it means something. To not go into fear as a reaction to my own belief that something is very wrong. From what I've been shown through these trials and lessons, not only that our immortal reality the only truth, but also everything bodies testify to is an illusion.

My wife had to have an amputation of her left foot. At first this was horrifying. Just the idea of it made me guilty and afraid. I feared the "loss of her" because if her foot was gone, part of her was really gone. That's what the ego teaches through form. Physical loss means something real has been destroyed, which automatically leads to loss and grief. And so I entered into loss and grief and had to struggle to get out of it. It was induced by the belief that what the body was showing was true of her. That a) she was a body, a b) she was attacked and really suffering and c) it was an irreversible sin.

This is where forgiveness really meets the road. I've had to learn to try to see past and disbelieve all physical events, happenings, states, conditions, people's expert opinions about how serious it is, the physical testimony that "it really is happening", all proof, and all suggestion by the ego world that something is terribly wrong. It is not easy. The level of temptation has been so high and so frequent that I've been thrown far off-center and struggling to get back a sense of truth.

But I do realize through all of this that the opportunity has presented me with a "test", a way to find out if I will be willing to not buy into this problem and laugh it off with love, perhaps to even become miraculous and healing through that love, or whether I will sink into fear and forgetfulness. To say that the road has been extremely bumpy is an understatement. And so the challenge to forgive is to NOT BELIEVE that any of this is even happening at all. To disregard it as illusions and as lies.

Somehow through the clearing smoke, it seems I disbelieve the physical with more certainty now. And as I see other people's sick bodies, somehow I now see them with the same attitude that I see my wife's body with. Her example has changed my perception. Whatever the education has been, it now applies to a transformation in my vision. I can't by any means claim this is total or even halfway to where it needs to be, but it's clear that forgiveness has evolved way past what I thought it was, and now onto a more living experience of not being deceived by form. Even the suggestion of physical death now seems like a ridiculous lie.

It's no small undertaking. We literally are being asked to not believe ANYTHING in this world. That all forms, appearances, bodies, objects, are mere illusory appearances designed to tempt us, causing us to have to learn NOT to be deceived by them. It's very difficult to not buy illusions when someone close to you is seriously ill with visible and "serious" physical symptoms. But this is what we have to do. The body is a denial of the truth. We have to deny the denial of the truth. We have to learn not to buy a single thing the world says is happening, and look beyond the world to the light. We are safe in God, merely dreaming of exile.

In this view, our task is to overlook the world, which transforms it into the forgiven world. And a forgiven world cannot last. "A forgiven world cannot last. It was the home of bodies but forgiveness looks past bodies." We look beyond the forgiven world, beyond the real world, to the Kingdom of God. We regard the Kingdom as the only reality. We are vigilant only for its truth and immortality. We are not deceived by lies of mortal death or suffering. Nothing that the body senses can distract us from an unwavering fixation on God's truth. We are under no laws buy God's, and only the truth is true and this world is not true.

This is what we are asked to do. This is how we forgive. We overlook the false world we made and see it not. We ask to see only the reality of the Kingdom. Nothing else is real. Nothing else has value. Nothing else attracts us. Nothing else satisfies. Only in the forgetting of the world and the complete overlooking of its transparent veil of lies can we look upon the face of Christ and finally move beyond to our True Home.

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make.

Consider the Kingdom which you have made (Earth), and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect his peace, and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving?

That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, anymore than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you (Heaven), as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"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.

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear."