Independence can seem like a good thing. It seems to in some way be better than dependency on others, or codependency. It seems to represent being responsible for ones own life, and having the freedom to choose anything.

The ego has an idea about independence. To the ego mind, independence from God is highly sought after. If you can exist and be autonomous without Him, that's your goal. And you can be relatively successful at this, albeit that usually the success will be punctuated with failures and is short lived.

You can, if you want, have your life all to yourself and do whatever you want to do. But at some point it will become obvious that something is missing. There is an emptiness, and your heart yearns for meaning. And that's because your independence is an attempt to be separate from meaning.

Separation from God, in which God's love is heartfelt and meaningful, must lead to a meaningless life in which the ego has taken over control of your life and is running the show on its own. This autonomy is artificial and pretends to be freedom. But it leads to death.

Without God, alone and incapacitated, there is only so much you can do. You cannot move the planets or heal the sick. You cannot raise the dead or bring miracles to those in need. And you cannot experience true peace.

Your independence from God is at a price. You may not realize it at first, but the cost is great. To be separate is to have nothing. And yet independence from God is an attempt to have everything for yourself. This grasping and holding-on to everything cannot accomplish what it aspires to do. Instead, everything is lost and you have nothing of value.

Your very existence, your being, cannot last while it is disconnected from the Source of Life. Cut off from supply, you will become sick and die. Disconnecting from your Real Self and from God is a lonely path of weakness, vulnerability, suffering and death.

If you want to eat real food at the table of God, then it comes with requirements. The Kingdom has some conditions you must meet. It is not that the Kingdom is conditional, but it does not include the ego. The idea of independence from God must be recognized as an ego attempt to be separate from God, to have a will of your own, to overthrow the Authority of God and to play at being God of your own world.

This you must be willing to let go if you are to reconnect and reunite with the only source of True Strength. This you must surrender if you want the benefit of Eternal Life. You must give up your desire for separate control over your life, and allow yourself to receive God again. Together you can share everything, but alone you have nothing but scraps.

The world is a dry and dusty desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Without God, it has no life, and there is no hope of forever. Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven, come to rejuvenate, resurrect and bring life back to the living. Only when you allow God to nourish you in this way might you enjoy the fruits of Heaven.

You can have it your way, exercising all the rights and freedoms to the full extent that individuality and separation allows, yielding every possible result that can come from an single separate self. But you will grow tired and be thirsty for more. And true meaning will not be found in a separate life.

God is your home. The Father shares everything worth having. True Peace can be yours again if you will open your heart and mind and let Him help you with living. Plug yourself back into His Power Source and return to Life. You have been dead without Him. Now is your time of resurrection. It's time for the prodigal son to come home.

As Jesus says, "the separation has occurred". The separation is another name for the fall of man. We did in fact "fall asleep" and dream of another world in which we believed in and thus made/maintained "en ego". It has not been fully created because it is not created, but made. But we DID have the tiny mad idea and enter into dreaming.

"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."

In heaven, God thinks holographically. The whole, which God is, creates. Anything he creates must be like himself. Therefore his sons/creations must also be completely whole. To be whole, and given God is everything, they must share all of God. So now you have parts, which are wholes in and of themselves, which also share with and are joined with the whole in "oneness". All the creations are of like kind, whole like God. And also the sons of God who are wholes also create whole children.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

"The soul is the idea of self fullness."

"The soul has not only been created perfect it has been fully created. There is no emptiness (unwholeness) in it."

So we have this whole, which creates more wholes, which are whole as individual beings and who also share the whole with all other wholes.

"God who encompasses all being (is the whole) nevertheless created separate (distinct parts within the whole) beings who have everything (the whole) individually (as whole sons/beings) and want to share it (sharing is fundamental to reality, true sharing is oneness) to increase their joy."

The part where the separation comes in is, where a part, which is a whole joined to the whole, attempts to disconnect itself from sharing the whole. It tries to cut itself off from the whole of God and from its brothers that were previously sharing everything with it.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

So a son of God puts a fence around what appears to be himself, the "part as a whole" individual self, and tries to isolate it from the sharing/communicating-with portion of itself. It tries to "become separated" from sharing with anyone or anything. This turns it into a "part which is not sharing". Which is the idea of selfishness.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Having become "separated off" ie isolated from sharing with the family, we are now "the separated ones" and we have a "separated self". But this doesn't mean we invented a self at this point, it just means we took our self and imprisoned it in a body concept.

"The body is clearly a device for separation."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love (shared wholeness)."

By imposing upon ourselves ideas of "not sharing with the whole", we necessarily shut out some portion of our self which was shared with the whole. And that now means that we are seeing and experiencing ourselves as "partly myself", or a part which has no wholeness. This "partial self" is hemmed in by illusions of separation, and it confuses itself with these illusions and believes they are true of it, thus defining it. This produces "the ego" in the mind, which is basically a belief by a fundamentally whole/joined entity that it is not whole/joined. It's self denial. The ego is the idea of what you are not, which is an attempt to destroy your whole self, which leads to death.

"The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

To awaken we have to undo the illusions of imprisonment by not believing in them, opening and expanding our sense of identity to align our mind with our soul, reconnect with God and the sonship through total sharing (holy relationship), and thereby disappear the egoic selfish idea of being "separated off". Thus we regain and re-inherit our inheritance from God, reclaim our identity as part of Christ, and resume our position in the sonship. Wholeness is restored and we return to being whole (aware of it) and to being "one with God", ie sharing everything with God and the whole Kingdom.

Imagine what life might be like if you let God do everything for you? Literally everything? You can just lay back and relax and do nothing, while God does everything.

Trying to live without God is painful and limiting and doesn’t work very well.

We’ve gone off into a fantasy of trying to be God, to replace Him with an entire array of substitutes, and to try to "go it alone". Without God, everything sucks.

God wants to do everything for us. He wants to love us for us. He wants to protect us, heal us, nourish us, give us life, show us the truth, make us happy, undo all our suffering, wipe away all our tears, and give us perfect peace.

He wants to be the one to GIVE all of this to you. To SHARE it all with you abundantly. To OFFER it to you. To LET YOU receive all of it from Him. So that you HAVE NO NEEDS.

He wants to meet ALL of your needs. Everything. Being in his mere presence undoes all your doubts and fears, all your sense of loneliness, all your loss and emptiness, all your suffering, all your sickness and pain, and all problems. Just by being with Him.

Being without Him AUTOMATICALLY creates problems, lack, limitation, suffering, pain and tears. It is the separation FROM HIM that is causing these problems for you. This means YOU CANNOT live separately from Him AND SUCCEED, because the separation from Him ITSELF is a big problem for you.

If you are separate from God, your needs will go UNMET. If you deny God’s love, you will be NEEDY And LACKING. If you shut out God’s healing, you will become sick and suffer. If you reject God’s eternal life, you will experience illusions of dying. You don’t want that.

LIFE DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT GOD.

You cannot succeed on your own. You cannot be so amazingly "god-like" that your existence separate from Him is a total success. BEING separate will infuse your life with fear and denial and self attack and loss and all manner of manifestations of the ABSENCE OF GOD. Without love, it all goes to fucking hell.

God wants to love us for us. He wants to choose for us. He wants to will for us. He wants to give us life. He wants to fulfill every need. He wants to make it so you have no questions and only answers. He wants to take away all your suffering and forms of sickness. He wants to heal your mind to perfection and sanity. He wants to restore you to eternal life and to love you forever. He wants it so that there is NOTHING that you need DO on your own, separate from Him. Nothing at all. That you are HAPPY AND FULFILLED, living a life of True Meaning!

TOTAL DEPENDENCE ON GOD ALONE to do EVERYTHING FOR YOU. Doesn’t that sound heavenly? That you could be so thoroughly served, supported, so abundantly helped, so unlimitedly sustained, by God, without any effort on your part? Totally effortless bliss and happiness forever? No need for defenses or walls or counter measures or magical solutions or bandaids or denial to make illusions that everything is ok. God wants you to know that you are exactly the way HE CREATED YOU and always will be because it is His Will to SUSTAIN YOU FOREVER and to constantly ensure you LACK NOTHING.

Everything is not ok with you when you don’t have God. Everything SUCKS big time when God is suppressed from your life. When you are doing it all yourself, everything goes wrong. When you are RELYING ON YOUR SELF, you MUST become afraid. Depending on your weak, limited little self is guaranteed to make you afraid because you KNOW that you lack God’s power and are powerless to deal with life. You also believe that God’s Will is against you, which is insurmountable, causing you to cower in the shadows in fear of death.

You need God!!!!!!!! YOU NEED HIM! You need what he is offering. It is IMPOSSIBLE to be sustained without Him! Accepting His Gifts will solve everything for you. To have God back in your life is going to bring you so much happiness an peace and effortlessness. So much guidance about what to do and where to go and what to say. So much healing flowing through you, for you, and for others. So much PURPOSE. So much MEANING to living. So much reason TO BE GRATEFUL because of the TOTAL BLESSING that has been given to you. Open to receive help! God is here for you and loves you now!!!!

THANK YOU GOD!!!!! I OPEN TO RECEIVE YOUR DIVINE SUPPORT AND MY NATURAL INHERITANCE. THANK YOU FOR SUPPLYING EVERY SINGLE NEED AND FOR TAKING CARE OF EVERY PROBLEM. I TRUST YOU IN EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE. I SURRENDER MY SEPARATE WILL AND WANT WHAT YOU WANT FOR ME. I ACCEPT YOUR LOVE AND YOUR HELP AND AM WILLING TO BE OF SERVICE TO CARRY OUT YOUR WILL ONLY. I AM HERE FOR YOU AS YOU ARE HERE FOR ME AND WE LOVE EACH OTHER. AMEN.

YOUR SOUL IS ALREADY PERFECT! <3

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever."

"I am as God created me."

"But the Sonship itself is a perfect creation, and perfection is not a matter of degree."

"YOU DID NOT BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN PERFECTION."

God created you perfectly, with perfection, to be perfect forever. You are divine and holy. There is absolutely no flaw in you, no lack, nothing wrong. This perfect self, has immortality and eternal life. It is FOREVER perfect. There is nothing that can ever happen to it to change this. Not even the separation has made the slightest difference to it. You are a perfect child of God ALREADY.

This perfect self, the real you, is seemingly hidden behind layers of denial, blocks to awareness, mistaken beliefs, denial, forms of separation and a mistaken sense of identity. But just because you seem to have all these things in your mind, blocking your awareness of your perfection, doesn't mean your perfect self isn't there. It is ALREADY PERFECT. It's sitting there waiting for you to acknowledge and recognize it. It coexists with your delusions about yourself.

As if that wasn't strange enough, that your perfection and that of your brother is already established by God in spite of your belief to the contrary, you can actually communicate with this "higher self", your Christ self. It can talk to you. You can receive guidance and healing from it. You can "talk to yourself". Almost what you might think of as your future self. Your awakened self. Pretty mind-bending.

So here is an exercise in getting in touch with YOUR SOUL. Or, alternatively, for getting in touch with the soul of your brother - His Christ self.

Simply start to recognize and affirm the various properties and characteristics of your soul-self, in terms of its total absolute permanent perfection. To do this you have to ignore the body, ignore sickness, ignore blocks. You look past these. Focus entirely and only on what is absolutely true, God-given, and permanent about your soul. For example.

I am perfect.

I am holy.

I am permanently innocent.

I am completely pure.

I am one with God.

I am divine.

I am powerful.

I have no fear.

I cannot be sick.

I can never die.

I have eternal life.

I am immortal.

I am filled with permanent joy.

I am completely at peace.

I create with God.

I am God's will to be happy.

etc. Flesh it out. Say as many things as you can think of that are *absolutely* true of your soul. You should find that doing this somewhat puts you in touch with it. You may feel the presence of your soul-self, as a very simple, honest, gentle, unshielded, soft self, deep within you. You can try talking to it. Listen to it. Just be with it. Be yourself.

As you focus on the truth about you, you should come to realize that if your soul is ALREADY PERFECT, what more is there to accomplish? What is there to do? Enlightenment is but a recognition. A recognition of what God created. Your soul doesn't need perfecting! You're ALREADY DONE! Merely ACCEPTING THIS is the acceptance of the atonement. "I am STILL as God created me" in spite of the entire ego dream story. I am perfect NOW.

You can also do this with regards to another person, and doing so is actually part of forgiving them. By recognizing the qualties of their SOUL, you are overlooking all illusory things about them. By emphasizing what is TRUE of them, you overlook what is false and de-emphasize it. This withdraws belief in illusions. It also is a way to recognize illusory things for what they are. Because if the qualities of the soul is TRUE of the person, all other lies and appearances cannot be true. This weakens your belief in the "reality" of illusions in your mind AND theirs, and helps to heal them.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"Miracles unite you with your brother."

"Sickness and perfection ARE irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you ARE perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you HAVE placed other gods before Him."

"Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

Of course, true healing would recognize the PRE-EXISTING PERFECTION OF THEIR SOUL, such that you would see THEY ARE ALREADY HEALTHY, WHOLE, HEALED. Seeing this obliterates the belief that they are "really sick" and allows you to dispel the illusions of sickness. Recognizing and affirming and focusing on what is ONLY true about them, reminds them of themselves.

How simple this is, really. Have some soul-to-soul communication. Focus on the soul's perfection, immortality, unchangeability. The soul has no need for spiritual paths, techniques, practices, seeking or finding. It is ALREADY TOTALLY PERFECT. Recognize this in a brother and your recognize your own perfection.

"And merely by remembering them, the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death MUST be forgotten."

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

"We share life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."

"If your perfection is in Him and only in Him, how can you know it WITHOUT recognizing Him?"

"You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you."

"Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home?"

There is no evil, only the seeming absence of the good.

There is no sin, only the seeming absence of love.

There is no death, only the seeming absence of life.

There is no darkness, only the seeming absence of light.

To take something and suggest that just because it is ABSENT, must mean it is the PRESENCE of something negative, is an error.

Evil does not ASSERT itself and maintain its own existence. It seeming presence ENTIRELY depends on the absence of the good.

Darkness cannot prevent light from shining it away when the light is present.

Death similarly cannot RESIST life. When life is supplied, the appearance of death MUST change to resurrection. Death is nothing more than the seeming absence of life, a lack of love, and when the love returns there cannot be death.

Sin is not a "positive sin". It isn’t an assertion of real attack. It is literally nothing OTHER than the seeming absence of love. A lack of love is not the same thing as an ASSERTION of sinfulness. You don’t have to FILL the lack of love with fire and brimstone, or REPLACE an absence with some other opposite material.

All things illusory ARE simply the appearance of the ABSENCE of something REAL. They are just lack. A lack of love is not a presence of hate. Hate is an illusion of being unloving. Someone who seems evil is just a little bit loving. They could be more loving, but judging that amount of love as the PRESENCE of evil is a failure to overlook illusions.

Every seeming symptom, effect, sign or symbol of the ego, every form of sickness and death, all darkness and attack and murderousness and sinfulness, is not ACTUALLY what it appears to be. It is only the LACK of something. There is a NEED, and the need is a CALL FOR the supply of that need, such as the call for love.

Attack is not attack. It is a request for the lack of safety to be supplied. It’s a request for a reminder of immortality. It’s a need to be reminded that reality cannot be threatened and no one can sin. It’s not the PRESENCE of evil.

Shadows on a wall do not have their own existence. They can only maintain so long as light SEEMS to be blocked. As soon as the blockage is remove and the light is supplied, it fills that area with light. The supposed darkness simply VANISHES. It has no staying power, no properties of its own, no will or power to remain, and it cannot resist the light. The notion that the darkness can HIDE the light or MAKE the light go away, is insanity and falling for the delusion of illusions.

Similarly sickness and death are ONLY the seeming absence of health and life. And when health and life are GIVEN through extension, when lack is supplied, these things MUST vanish. They do not have reality of their OWN and they have no power or will TO RESIST the healing. There cannot be anything keeping them in place because they DEPEND ENTIRELY on life, health, and love being temporarily lacking. When life is supplied, death MUST BE UNDONE.

Sickness isn’t sickness. It is merely a lack of health. That is not the same thing. The appearance of a lack of health can SEEM LIKE the PRESENCE of a sickness, a damage, an infection, a malfunction, a breakage, a disorder or disease. But these appearances are NOTHING OTHER THAN the seeming LACK or absence of life and love. They are no different to a shadow. And when light comes the shadow cannot stay, just as when the healing power of God’s LIFE is supplied, all forms of sickness and death MUST BE CURED.

A failure to heal, thus, must be because you simply have NOT GIVEN what is lacking. Because if it were given, sickness cannot stay and has no way to resist its undoing. It DEPENDS on life’s absence. Giving life supplies what was missing, and now there is wholeness, with no lack that sickness can be based on. Sickness is guilt, just as it is caused by sin, because sin is the belief in a lack of innocence and guilt is a belief in a lack of deserving love. Supply innocence and love and sickness cannot be there.

Nothing can resist this healing, except for possibly an assertion of free will, whereby someone WANTS to maintain the belief that darkness is real, sickness is its own thing, the body is autonomous and causal, evil exists, or that they are sinful and it cannot be undone. If the person does not show at least some willingness, love does not enter and miracles do not frighten. If someone does not consent, God’s help is held back. Not because it can’t be given but because there is unwillingness to receive it. Those who are sick have to have some faith and willingness, in order to receive help.

Besides this, the law is simple. Either there is the presence of immortality or its seeming absence. And when it seems to be absence, supplying it corrects the absence. And then all sights of mortality must go.

"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (ie., lack of love)"

"The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom."

"Remember, I said before that because "nature abhors a vacuum", it does NOT follow that the vacuum is filled with hell fire. The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love, because love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except WITHIN a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels."

"The second step is inherent in the first, because light cannot tolerate darkness. Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition. EXPLANATORY INSTRUCTIONS: Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."

"There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness."

"My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. 9 I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. 10 Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. 11 If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me."

Thoughts are attempts to create. They are attempts to give and express. They produce effects. They are not passive or neutral. A negative attacking thought is an attempt to use thought for destructive purposes. That means to "mis-create" or to attempt to "create destruction" or to "not create", ie to create a lack of love (an emptiness/sin).

Let's say that expression/extension is life, and is a matter of thought. As you express anything, you are creating or miscreating. Either way you are producing an effect. Mind, as it thinks, is applying itself. It actually causes something to happen.

When we having loving thoughts, the thoughts we think with God, they have a miraculous healing power because they are thoughts of wholeness, holiness, innocence and harmlessness. They are creative thoughts. They are miracles with the power to affect others.

When we having attack thoughts, thoughts thought with "the ego" or "lacking God", lacking life, we are thinking destructively and are attempting to bring about a less-than-creative outcome. This has an effect just as much as holy thoughts, except holy thoughts are far stronger because innocence is strength.

A thought you have of someone is not just a separated-off commentary, it is an expression and a transmission. It is a creative act. You are trying to give something to them and send it to them. And there are no private thoughts, so they will receive it. This is also how people perform "psychic attack" by thinking negatively or fearfully of others.

Jesus indeed even goes on to say that we curse others through what we might call a "spell", which is an attempt to reinforce the ego beliefs others have already chosen, which further imprisons them. Your thoughts are capable of imprisoning others just as much as setting them free and healing them.

Perhaps we don't want to admit that thought has such a power or influence because we are really afraid of thought and of the responsibility which comes with "thinking well" of ourselves and others. And the fact that this is also the secret of salvation. The ego interprets responsible thinking as a reason for guilt and blame.

The thoughts we have of others aren't merely mental chatter, or a conversation. They are creative acts. You give people your thoughts. You communicate them to them, sharing the thought with them, to either strengthen or weaken them.

If you have high uplifting thoughts of others, you resurrect them with your mind. If you have fearful victimized concerned guilty thoughts about others, you imprison them and attack them. If you feel lovingly toward them to are thinking them into health. Thoughts are powerful, they are not idle.

"If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought."

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"ALL thinking produces form at some level. The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers"

"And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"

"It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.

People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them." "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thinking."

""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."

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

"The truth is that you ARE responsible for what you THINK, because it is only at this level that you CAN exercise choice."

"You WOULD be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking IF IT COULD NOT BE UNDONE."

"It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of mis-Thought can result in real healing. When you are fearful, you have willed wrongly."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world (Earth) arose to hide it, and became the screen (mirror) on which it was projected (a second projection ONTO the mirror which produces perception - what is reflected back to you as feedback), and drawn between you and truth."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell (empty mirror), but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen (mirror) for the misuse of projection."

"If you could accept the world as meaningless (has no content of its own like a mirror) and let the truth be written upon it (reflected in it) for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless (having no image of its own), you are impelled to write upon it (reflect in it) what you would have it be. It is this you see in it (reflected in the mirror)."

"The reflection of God (in the mirror) NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but ***the mirror***, and the message which shines forth from what ***the mirror*** holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to ***the mirror*** that is in HIM."

"In the world you, can become ***a spotless mirror***, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here (in the mirror). But no reflections (in the mirror) of the images of other gods must dim ***the mirror*** that would hold God's reflection in it. ****Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego.**** (because it's a mirror) You need but leave ***the mirror*** (Earth) clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it (reflections seen in it). God will shine upon it (reflect in it) of Himself

. Only the clear reflection (in the mirror of earth) OF Himself can BE perceived upon (reflect in) it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"***Perception is a mirror***, not a fact." (what you percieve are reflections in the mirror of earth that you projected onto it to see. The mirror Earth ITSELF Is not part of perception, it's the mirror which allows projection/perception to happen.)

"The reflections that you accept into ***the mirror*** of your minds in time, but bring eternity nearer or farther."

"Your picture of the world (the image you see in the mirror) can only ***mirror what is within*** (projected onto it). The source (origin) of neither light nor darkness can be found without (because what's out there is just the earth mirror, and you have to give it meaning). Grievances darken your mind, and you look out on a darkened world (reflection of darkness in the mirror, or "dirt" seen "on" the mirror obscuring the reflection of God). Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts your will, and lets you look upon a world of light (reflected in the mirror)."

"The world is nothing in itself (because it has no meaning, because it's just an empty mirror). Your mind must give it meaning (project images onto the mirror). And what you behold upon it (in the mirror as the feedback of your perceptions) are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them (reflected back at you) and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world (the mirror), but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for (put onto the mirror because you wanted to see it) when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (because the world is a mirror and what you see in it is just your wishes), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see (in the mirror), and all the world (reflection seen in the world) must change accordingly."

"Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary (projected onto it), and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came (the earth was a projection of the idea of nothingness - the opposite to everything) when there is no more use for it."

"Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning (images shifting) changes constantly, and yet is true."

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless (the projections of ego meaning, a different context), and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world (mirror) with attributes (meaning, images) which it does not possess, and crowd it (project onto it then perceive in it) with images that do not exist."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it (projected onto the mirror), nothing more than that."

"There is a silence covering the world (mirror) that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based. (the mirror earth was formed from the idea of the opposite of love which is fear)"

Projection doesn't just mean you're trying to blame others. ACIM has a much larger definition, and blame is only a small part of it.

Projection is actually a natural function of ALL minds, including God's. Projection really means extension, whereby something that is IN the mind is extended or pushed outward, or in a forward direction. It really means GIVING, and is also a part of CREATING. Blame is actually a form of mis-creation, or an attempt to create destruction.

"Project (verb): to extend forward or out." - ACIM

"We said before that magic is essentially mindless, or the destructive (miscreated) use of mind."

"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"the miscreations of the mind do not really exist."

The mind HAS to give ie project/extend, in order to exist, because love has to be shared in order to be what it is. To love is to share, and sharing requires giving, which requires extension, ie projection, which creates.

In heaven before the separation, projection was PROPERLY used by God to create the Sonship, and by the Sonship to create their own creations. Proper projection is also used by the Holy Spirit, in the same way that God does.

"The Holy Spirit, as well as the ego, utilizes projection but since their goals are opposed, so is the result. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect. KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both." ... "this arouses love FOR both because IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION." ... "Perceiving equality, it perceives equal needs."

Proper "sane" projection, or the projection/extension of holiness, means that what is in you is seen as extending to and including others. You give love to your brother and recognize that that love is shared by him and is in him, as part of yourself. Thus you see yourself in him and love both of you equally.

Projection is actually a law of the mind which always functions on all levels. God and the Holy Spirit use it share what is true and loved. But the ego has its own distorted USE of projection, which results in trying to get rid of (or project away from itself) what it does not want, rather than giving what is loved.

"Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God."

"To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"Projection to the Holy Spirit is the law of extension. To the ego, it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it."

So there is a natural innate mind function of giving and extending what is inside your mind. This is always there. You give what you have, or are. When the mind is sane, it loves itself, and sees love in itself. It extends this love outward and sees it in others.

But if the mind is not sane, the mind first attacks itself. It regards itself as not loving or lovable. It sees a lack of love, and a darkness. It sees evil and guilt and sin within itself. It is trying to destroy itself. It is in a state of denial. The projective function of the mind then still operates, but now it is trying to "send out" this egoic content as a projected attack.

Since the ego content or insanity is a matter of separation, in a split mind, made of denial and attack, denial and attack are projected by those with egos. Since denial or attack is a way of "not wanting" yourself and God, or not wanting to love, a "not wantedness" is projected ie extended out of the mind, and you "do not want" the stuff you are expressing.

"A second fallacy is the idea that you can GET RID of something you do not want BY giving it away. GIVING it is how you KEEP it. The belief that by giving it OUT you have excluded it from WITHIN is a complete distortion of the power of EXTENSION."

"This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection (in the ego sense), follows automatically."

(note here that miracles are EXPRESSIONS ie PROJECTIONS FROM LOVE, whereas "ego projection" is a projection from fear or ego content - as such the proper use of projection is miracle working, ie the sharing and extension of love/life!)

This means that the mind projects or tries to "get rid of" what it does not want, rather than wanting to SHARE or INCLUDE others in what it does want. Since giving and receiving are usually one, projecting love indicates that you have it and keep it, and now both have it and the love increases.

But when this breaks down, we enter into the ego's rules of "either/or" and separation, where EITHER you have something OR the other does. You therefore believe that by projecting your self attack or "unwillingness", you can cause what you do not want to actually LEAVE your mind entirely, to be given but not received. That you can put your guilt, sin and fear onto someone or something else, and disown it.

This disowning is part of denial and also what we call dissociation. You dis-associate from it, by pretending that you can give it through projection and therefore LOSE it. That it can be placed outside of you, away from you. That you can put the blame for your internal "sin" onto someone else and escape it. So now you seem to be blaming your own self-attack, and your attack on God, onto something "external."

The truth is, however, that "ideas leave not their source". And projection does not actually make anything go outside the mind. It is because of the split in the mind, and its denial and its attempt to "destroy" what it does not want (its self-destruction), that there SEEMS to be a gap of separation between what's "inside" the mind and what's "outside".

"This is because their projections have NOT left their minds"

But at all times, all of this content is STILL within the mind. The mind is split, and has simply sectioned off a region within itself to "project" or dump its self-hate, in pretending to be free of it. It is now deluded into thinking that it has gotten rid of sin and guilt by putting it "outside" itself, but this is only because its sense of self has reduced to a sub-portion of the mind. The "outside" is really just the rest of the mind.

To perception, it then seems as if that which you used to destroy yourself, which has been projected outward, has somehow magically been displaced or given into some kind of "external" world, beyond the mind and body. The body seems to then act as the separation device or barrier dividing internal and external worlds, but really the mind encompasses both.

It's very easy then, in a state of dissociation, to believe that the guilt does not BELONG to your mind, being seen as "not inside it", and so it becomes logically sensible to associate it WITH someone else. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You bind other people to your projected self hate. You try to accuse them of doing what you are doing. And you see your guilt in them as if THEY own it or are even the source of it.

Since you have "not wanted yourself", and thus attacked yourself with unlove, you project what you do not want (really yourself) outward, and continue to attack it. You now seek to destroy it "in" another person, or condemn them for it. This is an indirect attack upon yourself still. But because you are projecting separation or dissociation, you see yourself as "safe from" the junk you have projected, which seems to exonerate you and render you innocent. This then produces the face of innocence.

"Anger ALWAYS involves PROJECTION OF SEPARATION"

"Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. 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."

So in its true sense, projection is a permanent part of the mind's nature, whereby it extends itself and gives or shares itself. The ego hijacks or distorts this by attacking YOU and then projecting FROM that distorted view of you. What is first seen within you as darkness is projected outward as darkness, and the attack continues.

In effect the ego projects TO SEPARATE or to keep emphasizing the dissociation or split in the mind, to try to "keep the guilt away" from you. Thus the more the mind believes its ideas HAVE left it, the more it thinks it is safe and innocent, but its insanity is increasing. The more it projects attack the more it splits itself, between the part it attacks (seemingly in others) and the part doing the attacking, both of which are ALWAYS in your own mind. Separating off from others or pushing them away deepens the internal rift between you and yourself.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. "

So there are some passages in the course where Jesus talks in the big-picture context of ALL minds projecting, the main projective or extending function. There are some passages where this is referred to AS extension and is contrasted AGAINST "projection" in the sego sense - where projection means the ego's projection of self-attack or an attempt to "push out of the mind" what you do NOT want. And there are also other passages where Jesus is talking ONLY about the ego's projection of self-attack. So it's important to be aware of the context.

Here's one final big thing to realize. In the separation from God initially, before there was a world here, and before the Earth, we had a split mind. We already had seen guilt and sin in our mind. Thus we entered into the ego's use of projection. The separation was the belief in the "lack of everything", or love's absence, or the lack of heaven and God - and the idea of death. We projected the "lack of everything", as the idea of heaven's total opposite, outward. This was a projection of the idea of emptiness and NOTHINGNESS. The projection of the idea of separation.

This projected THE WORLD, which "arose" as an attempt to DISOWN the separation, something you DID NOT WANT in the mind, in an attempt to get rid of it, because it was fearful to you. This projection of an illusion of nothingness took the form of a "screen", somewhat like a mirror, a meaningless neutral world, because it was a projection of insanity and meaninglessness. And it seemed to take on the form of error, or sin, producing space and time and bodies, as a natural consequence of the total opposite of God's laws. Planet earth and human bodies were the projected result - a mis-creation or a "world of destruction."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"the mad projection by which this world was made."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

We had "created" an ILLUSION of a world of emptiness, opposing all of Heaven's laws. A world made of the idea of death and of alienation and murder. We then ALSO in a SECOND STEP, projected our inner mental garbage ONTO that screen, which is where "projection makes percpetion" comes in. We project stuff ONTO the "neutral world screen", which GIVES it meaning, and the mind determines what to make of what the body tells us about it.

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him."

"If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

So in the separation we made an error and projected this error, and the world - spacetime - including all planets and galaxies, arose in an ILLUSION of a world, made of nothing appearing as something. This "world" is really nothing, and we then proceeded to PROJECT ONTO IT, the continued negative content of our minds. This secondary step of projection produces perception, a kind of feedback, in which we project either guilt or innocence, sin or holiness, and this changes how "the world" appears to our perception.

What I see in the course now is that "the world" itself was an initial projection of the separation, a world we made to attack God and heaven. And in the making of bodies we placed ourselves within it to "perceive it". And now we project ego shit ONTO it, either falsely perceiving it, or perceiving it truly. True perception shows you that you have GIVEN (projected) holiness and love and peace, and only BY giving (projecting) that do you see a forgiven world. If you project ego onto it you see a world of sin.

Once you cease to project ego ONTO the world, the "nothing world" - really the absence of heaven - is recognized as nothing, with no sin put ONTO it, and it is forgiven. In this view it loses all of the illusion of "real sin" or "existence" or "happening", and eventually disappears completely. We then wake up in God and resume our REAL PROJECTION of creation in the Kingdom. "It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

"All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

At first you will see a reflection of God in the world, a reflection of heaven, because the world ITSELF is just a screen and has no meaning of its own. It was a projection of nothing, acting as a neutral canvas on which TO project what you wanted to see. However, upon doing this, the world itself will ultimately give way to heaven, because its total nothingness is recognized.

"But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God."

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

"At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done."

"Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."

You'll often hear talk of how "my ego this" and how "the ego" that. A lot of clout and blame is pinned on "the ego" now. It's used to describe all kinds of stuff in the world and in life.

People have even turned it into a kind of enemy that they fight with and blame and try to accuse for doing stuff. The label is thrown around like there actually is an ego, and then you'll hear explanations for why it doesn't "really" exist except in a dream.

There are widely common interpretations that Jesus is describing "the ego" in the course and therefore "the ego" is a thing or an entity or a something, that is responsible for some bad stuff. And this sets up a whole premise of being at war with it.

This is all confusion. Jesus is NOT trying to suggest that the ego exists AT ALL, not even fictionally in a dream. So let's put aside any belief that there is such a thing as "the ego", and we'll start from scratch.

God's world, heaven, reality, has various qualities, characteristics, properties etc. It has a nature. For example it's immortal, alive, permanent, perfect, whole, innocent, etc.

"Ego", is nothing more than, a CONCEPT OF, the "opposite to all that is".

Someone had a thought in their mind, like, "What if the opposite to God's Kingdom is true?" And so began the tiny mad idea.

This is ENTIRELY conceptual. It's someone sitting there just wondering, imagining, theorizing. Asking themselves, "what is the opposite of all this?" Or indeed, "what if I OPPOSE all of this?"

We simply tried to use our free will to oppose free will, or to "create" (will) that there be an outcome OPPOSITE to what God wills. A "mis-creation" or a "mis-use" of will. That is all.

This was a silly idea, ridiculous in fact. To try to use will, to make yourself NOT will, is obviously circular logic and makes no sense. It's impossible to will to be unwilling. But this is what you tried to do. You tried to put your will to sleep, to disempower your creative powers, and to strip yourself of what you are. To oppose yourself.

So ego is just this idea of opposition. What would it be like if there was an opposite to everything real? The opposite to life would be death. The opposite to permanence would be impermanence. The opposite to happiness would be unhappiness. The opposite to existence would be non-existence (death).

Now it's important to also put BELIEF on hold because I'm not even talking about BELIEVING IN this concept yet. At this point we're happily sitting in heaven just theorizing. Asking a question. "What?" Questioning everything, which is an attempt to oppose it.

What you come up with conceptually is, the idea of "non-existent impossibility." This non-existence, by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. It's not some real place you can go and visit. You can't live there. You cannot be its nature. It's ENTIRELY theoretical. Non-existence DOES NOT EXIST. It's the idea of being OUTSIDE of and completely SEPARATE from, existence. And existence is God.

So we started out with just a conceptual notion, an idea of an opposite to God's nature. An idea of NOT existing. And fundamentally we could never actually DO that. We could not LEAVE God and go where God is not. We couldn't get outside of God to go to that "non-existent" place. It's impossible. Literally totally impossible.

For example God is infinite and is everywhere. So you cannot go be somewhere and expect him not to be there also. Everywhere you go, God is there. He is omnipresent. So this idea is an idea of, what if you could go and be somewhere that God is not? Which is obviously a totally ridiculous idea, and no sane person would give two seconds of thought before laughing at being outside of infinite unlimited boundaryless reality.

So first we came up with this theoretical notion of "an opposite to what is". This was prior to believing in it. And at this point we were still sane. What made it a MAD idea, or turned us mad, was that we then attempted to CLAIM or assert, that you actually CAN go where God is not, you actually CAN be opposite to his nature, you actually CAN be unwilling.

You BELIEVED IN IT by denying its obvious impossibility, thus making you unable to RECOGNIZE it for what it is, and thus losing sight of the fact that it IS impossible. You became confused and lost.

This obviously was a form of denial and confusion and being totally mistaken. The logic shows that its impossible, but you insisted anyway. To insist that something is possible that is patently impossible, is essentially "nuts". BELIEVING IT in spite of its ridiculousness, became the only problem.

It was only when you forgot to laugh at the ridiculous notion of not existing, that you took it seriously. And you became deceived, tempted, and you "fell" into delusions, denial, hallucination, confusion, mistakenness, and all manner of fantasy nightmares. You lost track of WHAT IS TRUE AND REAL, and so went insane.

What were you trying to do? You were trying to MAKE non-existence be TRUE of you. Whatever you believe is true of you, you regard as your IDENTITY. Your truth describes you, defines you, establishes WHAT you are. And originally this was God's truth about you. But now you were attempting to assert that some OPPOSITE truth was true of you. And so your sense of WHAT I AM, your identity, became CONFUSED WITH, or caught up in, identified WITH or "matching" this notion of being opposite to what you are.

You did not actually make an ego as such. You did not accomplish the making of a non-existent self, because it is impossible. You did not ACTUALLY get outside of God's existence. You did not reach non-existence. You did not cease to exist. BUT, you BELIEVED YOU COULD. And so you DREAMED OF "the ego". A dream of the ego concept is NOT the same thing as ACTUALLY being it or bringing it into existence.

So when you believe that "the ego concept" (impossible non-existence) is POSSIBLE, your sense of IDENTITY shifts to align with it, to reflect it, to mirror it. You try to BE LIKE it. To be one with it. To merge with it and make it true of you, thus redefining your whole sense of what you are. And so by putting belief in "opposites to reality", your sense of WHAT IS TRUE changed, and thus your sense of WHO I AM changed.

Your sense of identity shifted from your soul, to an IMAGINED idea of what ego might be like. This did not actually make "the ego". You never created a "real ego". You just BELIEVE what is BEYOND your dream on the other side of oblivion. You believed in not existing. You believed in impossibilities. You believed in being opposite to what you are. That is all.

So there is no EGO doing anything whatsoever. There is no EGO taking responsibility for making ANYTHING happen. There is no ego to pin stuff on. There is no ego to say "the ego did this". There is no ego PERIOD. So every time there's someone teaching that "acim says" there is an ego, they are mistaken.

NON EXISTENCE DOES NOT EXIST. THE EGO DOES NOT EXIST.

Not even in dreaming do you go there. Not even in your wildest fantasies can you ever CREATE an ego. You never have. All you've done is TRIED to exchange God's reality for UNREALITY. Which means, taking everything true about God and trying to make it false. And taking everything untrue about God and trying to make it true. This results in CONFUSION (insanity) and that is all.

If you believe something is possible which isn't, you are not sane. If you believe you are IN the non-existent realm outside of God, you are insane. If you think you DID become separate and thus are OUTSIDE God, you are insane. But that IS what you believe, and that BELIEF is the tiny mad idea. The notion that the ego concept is OPPOSITE to what the ego concept IS.

Earth is just a neutral fantasy ABOUT non-existent realms, an attempt to REFLECT hell/ego/impossibility, as an "image" in the mind IMAGINING what having no imagination is like. Thinking about what having NO thought is like. Being unwilling to will anything real.

Let's put this another way. If the ego concept is non-existence, impossibility, death, nowhere-ness, lovelessness, emptiness, etc... in your BELIEF in it, you have tried to assign it the attributes of heaven, reality, truth, and God. You've tried to BRING IT TO LIFE. You've tried to turn hell into heaven, you've tried to claim that non-existence exists, you've tried to assert that immortality can be killed, etc. You've produced an entire hallucinated world based on this attempt to oppose life and make NOT LIFE appear to "live."

The body is nothing. The world is nothing. But in our BELIEVING (spacetime), we have TRIED to make it APPEAR AS IF bodies live, worlds evolve, there are "life forms" etc. it is NOT LIFE. It is an illusion. it is nothingness pretending to be something.

"There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

So there literally is no ego. We need to stop blaming "the ego" for stuff. EGO IS NON-EXISTENCE. It does not exist even in dreaming. There is no ego anywhere. Evil is not real. An absolute opposite to everything does not exist.

"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 substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

So what does happen? What does happen is OUR MIND keeps on trying to turn itself into "the ego". It keeps trying to get CLOSER TO the CONCEPTUAL idea of "being ego", which is non-existence and impossibility and total limitation and death and a void and emptiness and lack and darkness and lovelessness. We keep trying to BECOME it, as if reaching through the outskirts of God's being to another world. But we can't. And we NEVER will. So it's all wasted effort. We might as well just accept the truth.

This is why the secret of salvation tells us that we MUST recognize that WE are doing this ALL to ourselves. Not the ego, not the world, it's us. We do the shit, we must undo it. It is NOT the ego, ever. It's part of our own mind running rogue and opposing the rest of our mind. It's us TRYING TO BE opposite. Working against ourselves. We are the dreamer. Miracles reflect the idea that it's this thing I have done and it is this I would undo. ME. My mind. Not "the ego".

You cannot give your power to the ego either. EVER. All you can do is BELIEVE that you are giving your power to "it". And thus YOUR MIND now goes into a distortion, against ITSELF, pretending to be opposed, pretending to BECOME an ego, and acts ego-LIKE, and now you blame "the ego" for stuff, but its PART OF YOU doing stuff to yourself. So now you are disassociated and projecting and trying to make your ideas leave your mind. That is all. Take responsibility for that. Never blame ego for anything. It does not exist whatsoever.

And when I say that I don't even mean, ok, this is a dream, so ego doesn't REALLY exist, cus none of this really happened, but it seems to, and so in the dream it does exist. IT DOES NOT. Ego doesn't even exist IN the dream. It's ENTIRELY just a theoretical concept and label for "absolute opposition". It's BEYOND God completely and even this dream is not THERE. It not here, it's not anywhere, and you can never make contact with it. This is why the Holy Spirit and "the ego" never communicate.

If you could actually leave God completely, and go to where existence is NOT, you've meet "the ego". But you can't and you never will. And all your dream life is about is imagining that you ARE or HAVE or CAN, when you AREN'T and HAVEN'T and CANNOT. It's wishful thinking at best. Ego is nothing but a theory. Which is why when it's gone, it's recognized as nothing.

Replace "the ego" with "I". Your mind is either whole or split. There is nothing else.

"The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

ACIM: "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end." (clarification of terms, chapter 5, paragraph 1).

Other religions that teach that the physical world is nothing but a dream/illusion...

1. Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta)

Concept: Maya (illusion) – The material world is an illusion created by ignorance (avidya), and ultimate reality (Brahman) is formless and unchanging.

Teachings: The Upanishads and Adi Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy teach that individual identity (atman) is identical to Brahman, and the world of appearances is like a dream. Only through knowledge (jnana) can one realize this truth.

2. Buddhism

Concept: Śūnyatā (emptiness) & Māyā (illusion) – All phenomena lack intrinsic reality and are conditioned, much like dreams.

Teachings: The Buddha compared the world to an illusion, a mirage, and a dream in texts like the Diamond Sutra. The Madhyamaka school (founded by Nagarjuna) and Yogacara school (which emphasizes "mind-only" reality) both argue that what we perceive as reality is shaped by mental constructs.

3. Platonism & Neoplatonism

Concept: The Cave Allegory – The material world is a shadow of a higher, true reality.

Teachings: Plato described the sensory world as mere reflections of the eternal Forms. Neoplatonists like Plotinus argued that the material world emanates from the One and is a lesser, dreamlike version of true reality.

4. Gnosticism

Concept: The material world is a deceptive prison created by an ignorant or malevolent demiurge.

Teachings: Gnostic texts (like The Gospel of Thomas and The Apocryphon of John) describe the world as an illusion that traps the soul. True knowledge (gnosis) allows one to awaken from this illusion and return to the divine.

5. Taoism

Concept: The relativity of perception and the dream-like nature of experience.

Teachings: Zhuangzi’s famous parable of the butterfly dream questions whether reality is absolute or a shifting illusion. Taoism often portrays distinctions between waking and dreaming as fluid. 6. Sufism (Islamic Mysticism)

Concept: The world as a shadow or veil obscuring divine reality.

Teachings: Rumi and Ibn Arabi describe the world as an ephemeral illusion, with God (Al-Haqq, "the Real") being the only true existence. Sufi thought emphasizes awakening from worldly distractions to experience divine unity.

7. Christian Mysticism & Idealism

Concept: The world as a temporary illusion compared to eternal divine truth.

Teachings: Some Christian mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme, emphasized that the physical world is fleeting and that true reality is found in union with God. Later, philosophers like George Berkeley argued that reality exists only as ideas in the mind of God. 8. Sikhism

Concept: Maya (illusion) – The world is transitory and deceptive, keeping people from realizing God.

Teachings: Sikh scriptures, including the Guru Granth Sahib, emphasize that attachment to worldly things is an illusion. True reality is found in devotion to God and spiritual awakening.

9. Hermeticism

Concept: The material world is a lower reflection of the divine mind. Teachings: The Kybalion and other Hermetic texts describe reality as mental in nature ("The All is Mind") and suggest that the physical world is a projection of higher consciousness.

10. Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism)

Concept: The material world is a lower, imperfect manifestation of divine reality.

Teachings: In the Zohar, the world is described as a series of emanations from the Ein Sof (Infinite). The material realm is an illusion in the sense that it veils the deeper truth of divine unity.

11. Rosicrucianism

Concept: The physical world is a veil hiding spiritual truths. Teachings: Rosicrucian teachings, influenced by Hermeticism and Gnosticism, describe reality as a temporary, symbolic projection meant to teach spiritual lessons.

12. Manichaeism

Concept: The material world is a trap created by a lesser, evil power.

Teachings: This ancient dualistic religion, founded by Mani, teaches that the physical world is a deception created by darkness, while the true realm of light exists beyond it.

13. Jainism

Concept: The material world is impermanent and a source of bondage.

Teachings: Jainism teaches that the soul is trapped in illusion and karma. Liberation (moksha) is achieved by transcending attachments to the physical world.

14. Some Indigenous and Shamanic Traditions

Concept: Reality is fluid, dreamlike, and shaped by spiritual forces. Teachings: Many indigenous traditions, such as those in Native American, Aboriginal Australian, and Amazonian cultures, describe reality as a dream, a shifting landscape influenced by spirits, ancestors, or cosmic forces.

15. Pythagoreanism

Concept: The world is a mathematical illusion.

Teachings: Pythagoras and his followers believed that reality was structured by numbers and harmony, with the material world being a lesser, imperfect reflection of the perfect, mathematical order.

16. Theosophy

Concept: The physical world is an illusion created by spiritual ignorance.

Teachings: Helena Blavatsky and later Theosophists describe the world as maya, emphasizing that true knowledge comes through spiritual enlightenment and connection to the higher planes.

17. Catharism (12th–14th Century, Medieval Europe)

Beliefs: The Cathars, a dualist Christian sect, saw the physical world as an evil illusion created by Satan. They believed that the true, divine world was purely spiritual, and human souls had to escape material existence to reunite with God.

18. Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm (Byzantine Christianity)

Beliefs: Some interpretations of Hesychasm (a mystical tradition within Eastern Orthodoxy) suggest that the material world is not truly real compared to the divine presence of God, which can only be known through inner contemplation and prayer.

19. Christian Science (Founded in 19th Century)

Beliefs: Founded by Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science teaches that the material world, including sickness and death, is an illusion. True reality is purely spiritual, and healing comes through understanding this truth.

20. Some New Age and Esoteric Christian Movements

Some modern Christian esoteric groups, influenced by Theosophy or the New Thought movement, teach that the material world is a mental construct or illusion, similar to Hindu maya.