"All your time is spent in dreaming."

Do you ever get the feeling everyone is just making stuff up as they go along? Or do you experience yourself doing this?

From time to time I *think* that I know what I want to do, and sort of talk myself into it, and do it, and it seems right, then later I am disillusioned and don't know what I saw in it. I add justifications and reasons why, in order to "convince myself", and later these turn out to be empty and hold no weight.

This world is insane. And we try to "give it all the meaning it has". We use scapegoats to justify doing or not doing things. We make things into enemies in order to deflect our decision making in a certain direction. And no-one knows what the fuck they're doing.

Half the time it seems all the medical people are just making shit up and don't know what the heck they're doing, cus every solution they come up with has awful side effects. The ads on TV for medications are utterly ridiculous.

People tell you what you eat and why eating this or that is better for you. Turns out none of them have the truth and none of them can agree to anything. Everyone and their cat has an opinion.

I get convinced for a while that doing something is "what I want to do" and get all lost in it and then something interrupts me, and then some time passes, and I come back to it and have no idea why I would want to be doing that thing. What I thought was "salvation" turns out to be another completely meaningless wild goose chase.

In a way, it's like trying to find "real meaning" in a meaningless world. ACIM says the world is meaningless, and we put all the meaning onto it. So when we start weaving a story about "why" something is or is not a good choice, it's all made up. It's all ego bullshit. There is no truth here.

In a way that leads to realizing, there is nothing meaningful in the world. And meaning must be deeper within somewhere. And that also reveals that the world is entirely a senseless, insane illusion that has no truth and doesn't mean shit.

If I choose to make something happen, let's say I decide and go make it happen. Well, now I made it happen cus I force it it to happen. Totally meaningless.

I'm looking around for a sense of "that's really what I love to do" sort of thing, only to find that even the things I thought I loved to do are just empty containers onto which I project various fake motivations and ideas, to try to "dress them up" and explain why they're so great. There's nothing there.

The world seems like a blank canvas. It has nothing inherent to it. It's a effect. So it can't really "do" anything "for" you. It can't save you, or make you happy or sad. It does what you make it do. And that means it has no real opinion, or value. If you don't make it valuable, it's not valuable. If you don't read into it, there's nothing to it.

It's like we're living in some kind of giant snow globe pretending it's an amazing real place with built-in value and importance but it's really all just a pile of tosh, lol.

"I do not know the thing I am."

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

Hah!

"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself."

Yet in learning this is salvation born. And what you are will tell you of Itself.

Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here.

God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

Projection makes perception and makes the world you see. You put it there. You give it its meaning. It has no real meaning at all. This is all just a big lie we keep telling ourselves. THERE IS NO WORLD!

Someone was accusing me of things I believed I didn't really do. They seemed to be just hell-bent on projecting their blame somewhere. It seemed uncalled for, and that I was unfairly treated.

My reaction to this was that I became angry. I felt that I was justified in being angry because it seemed that what the person was claiming was not true. And yet, if it was not true, why was I taking it seriously at all and having a reaction?

I believed I was innocent. I believed I was not guilty of what I was being accused of. They were literally claiming that I had done things which I had literally not done, physically. It seemed so obvious that I did not do these things that this "proved" my innocence. I was using physical evidence of "the world" as proof of what was true, to prove that I was innocent.

I also believed that, therefore, this person was just wrong and doing something to me. It seemed unfair and unwelcome and as though it was causing upset in me.

Each time they accused me of this, I felt more and more angry and annoyed. It seemed like if they would keep doing this, I couldn't see a way to become anything other than more and more upset.

But then I started to look at what was happening in my mind and how I was perceiving this. A key fact came to mind, where I remembered that, at least in theory, I could not be upset about something unless I believed it myself.

Whenever someone is reacting to an attack, making it real, taking it seriously, and exclaiming that it is not true, usually it means the person actually does believe it is true on some deeper level. There is denial involved, but here's the problem.

In our state of guilt, we used denial to make our guilt go unconscious. It was pushed out of conscious awareness. We used a mask of fake innocence in order to deny that we are guilty. This fake innocence is something that we actually believe is the truth about us. It completely covers up the guilt makes it look like, even to ourselves, that there is no evidence of being guilty. And then because the guilt is actually unconscious, we are not even AWARE that it is there, so we actually believe that we really are innocent. Imagine believing you are innocent when in fact you are guilty!

So when someone comes along and accuses us of something, we tap into this sense of innocence and rely on it and treasure it and defend it like it's the real truth about ourselves. Based on that being true, we then seem completely justified in being angry and upset and annoyed when someone claims that we are actualy guilty of something. But you'd think that if we really deeply believed in our innocence, we would be unshaken by such accusations. The reason we're not, is because deep down there is guilt, and it is being triggered into conscious awareness.

When I look at this with Jesus, I remembered that those who are upset believe in their own guilt, even if they are claiming to be innocent. I was able to then be open to the idea, that I must actually still believe I am guilty somehow. I must be still accusing myself of sin, otherwise when my brother accuses me of it I would not take it seriously. I saw in myself the presence of this sinfulness, this guilt. I saw that *I* believed in it and thought it was true of me at this time.

What this revealed is that while I was busy accusing the other person of accusing me unfairly, as though I believed they shouldn't be accusing me, I was in fact accusing myself the whole time. I could hardly blame them for doing what they are doing, when I myself am doing the same thing to myself. Admitting to doing this to myself, it was obvious and clear that I in fact did not really believe I was innocent, *I* believed I was guilty. My innocence was fake, and therefore the foundation for my justification for retaliation and anger was completely unfounded.

Seeing my own belief in my own guilt, recognizing it as coming from me about myself, somehow sobered my mind. It brought awareness and honesty. The facade of fake innocence disappeared. What was therefore revealed, was that even though this whole time I thought I had a problem of this other person accusing me unfairly, *I* was actually accusing me unfairly. They were just triggering it off, reminding me of what I actually believed about myself unconsciously, and my own unconscious belief was probably attracting them into my life to accuse me in this way, reflecting my own belief back to me.

I seriously thought I was the innocent one. I thought that I was holier than thou. I thought I was being honest, that I was sincere and genuine and truthful. I thought the other person was clearly the one who was being vicious and mean. I actually believed heavily in my own fake innocence. I was in denial, and not realizing that I had this big belief in my own guilt lurking under the surface. I had no idea that *I* myself believed I was guilty in this way.

Having a good look at this opened my eyes. I could now see the truth, that this person actually was not accusing me of something that I didn't believe in. They were accusing me of something I DID believe in. I was upset because I did believe I was the guilty person they accused me of being. I just didn't want to admit to believing it about myself.

If I myself am believing in my guilt, then the other person is not actually doing anything to me that's different from what I'm doing to me. They're not adding guilt at all. Effectively, they are just making me aware of it. My refusal to recognize that *I* believe I am guilty, was making me project my guilt, and accuse my brother of accusing me of being guilty. I thought the source of the guilt was in him, and not in me. I thought he was the cause of it, but I was.

I am not sure how I managed to stay in such a state of unconsciousness for so long. I do not know how I didn't realize or even suspect that I believed in my own guilt in this way. I thought I was defending my true self. I thought I was being honest. I thought I was innocent and guiltless, and therefore justified in being upset by a false attack. But why would the truly innocent be upset if they know they are not guilty? They would just laugh and it would not affect them at all. That I was reacting and defending my illusion of innocence just showed that deep down I did not really believe in it, or it wasn't real.

I didn't actually really take this any further. I didn't look into whether it was true that I was guilty. I didn't get into whether I really did sin. I didn't get into trying to accept the atonement. I didn't even see this as "doing a forgiveness", necessarily. I just thought it was an interesting insight, which had revealed that I actually wasn't being affected by the other person, I was being affected by myself. It somehow, nevertheless, completely disconnected my ego from the other person's.

The following day, I felt noticeably peaceful and I could not explain it. Somehow my mind was different. Somehow I did not feel engaged with that person in the way that I had. My ego seem deflated. I didn't seem to engage with that person in anywhere near as much of a kind of tug of war manner. I seemed detached and just doing my own thing. I couldn't explain why I kept feeling waves of peace, as though it came out of nowhere. I no longer felt like that person was doing anything to me at all. It was like the entire story and drama had just burst and stopped. It was gone.

All I did was realize that I had been doing this accusing toward myself, and that it wasn't actually the other person who believed this about me. My own belief was my only problem. What they were doing had absolutely nothing to do with me. That was enough to unlock the forgiveness and heal my mind. My experience was so different after that. Finally I felt a peace that I had not felt for a long time.

The fake wall of innocence which hides our unconscious guilt, is a major barrier against realizing that we are doing this all to ourselves. It is the defense against guilt, which protects us from guilt. We do not want to dismantle it. We do not want to question whether it is true. We just want to believe in it as though is is completely true, and that it is defending ourselves from all attacks. And yet this defense, itself, is merely covering up our self attack, and making it look as though we are being vulnerably affected by others. It is a block to awareness, a locked door which is disguising our our guilt and our own death wish, keeping it hidden from awareness so that we dont' even suspect that we ourselves are trying to destroy ourselves.

Who me? Innocent me? Me who is not guilty? Me who has no awareness of being guilty at all? Little sweet little innocent me? Yes.... this layer of innocence is FAKE. It is not the truth. It is protecting me from the deeper layer of belief, that I am actually sinful and guilty and deserve to die. I have to stop believing that I am innocent, become aware that I believe I am guilty, then work on undoing that guilt and the sin behind it, to get back to REAL innocence. Fake innocence is a terrible impediment, masking our guilt and deflecting our self-attack onto everyone else. To realize that we ourselves believe in our own sinfulness, and that it is not other people doing this to us, completely collapses the entire state of false perception which shows us others people as though they are causing us to be hurt.

It is me that I must forgive. Other people are not the problem at all. They are just reflecting what I am doing to myself. I have my own self attack, hidden behind layers of denial and projection. This is what I need to recognize and own up to and heal. This will automatically heal all of my relationships because everyone else truly is innocent and this has nothing to do with them. We but accuse our brothers of our own sin.

If you are not really clear that there is NO TRUTH in the world, because the entire world is an illusion, you will become quite confused.

You'll mistakenly keep searching for answers in forms, situations, explanations, authorities, rational deductions, conclusions, diagnosis, analysis etc.

You'll keep falling for every single illusion which says to you that such-and-such happened because of such-and-such.

You'll keep buying into the idea that you need to have a certain kind of special experience - the right food, the right sleep and water, the right environment, the right people - in order to be correct or healthy or happy.

You'll keep depending on stuff outside of you, and when that stuff is taken away you will be unhappy and desperate.

This all comes from believing that this world is REAL.

It all comes from LISTENING TO things that this world says, and things that the people in this world say, about why stuff happens, or what stuff is.

It takes many many occasions of stuff going WRONG and trying to figure out WHY and failing to come up with a really satisfying answer, to begin to realize that there ARE no real answers in the world. Every single one of them, every explanation possible, is STILL not the complete answer.

When stuff happens which nobody can explain, and defies all logic, and has never been seen before, and is completely insane, then you get a glimpse into just how obscure and nonsensical the world is. It is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS.

There can be no truth to it because it is an illusion. If it were real, sure, certain things would seem to make sense. There are various laws of physics and stuff which *seem* to hold true most of the time, except for when it breaks down, which it must, because the world is an unstable dream of chaos.

You can search and search and try to FIND answers and solutions and explanations here, in form, in events, in circumstances, in analyzing "what happened", and you will not ever find satisfactory answers. There aren't any. This is the ego's "seek and do not find".

If you THINK that you need to find an answer it is because you already believe there is a problem. If you believe there is a problem, you are MAKING a problem and have blinded yourself to the truth that there are no problems. So now you are on a hunt for nothing, trying to find out why nothing happened, thinking something happened. And you will FAIL. And that's a good thing, because maybe with enough failure you will learn WHY you failed. You failed because the world is not the truth and never will be.

God's truth is the only truth. "Only the truth is true" means that God's truth/reality is TRUE, and the world is FALSE.

Do not be deceived by sources of authority and explanation and proof and evidence that appear before your eyes in the world. Even if it makes sense. Even if it seems clear and obvious and totally convincing. Even if event A caused result B. Even that is not truth. Even if it can be proven in a court of law, that is not truth. It is not God's truth.

God's truth is that none of this happened at all, the world does not exist, there is no sickness or death, there are no problems, separation hasn't happened, the world is nothing, and you are immortal. If the world you are interacting with does not demonstrate that to you, it cannot POSSIBLY be real.

This is the only way that there can be miracles.... demonstration that what we think is "natural" is in fact unnatural, that what we think "happened" has not happened, and that what we think is "true" is completely false and does not exist.

If judgement and forgiveness are opposites ("he who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive"), then judgement is the condition of being unforgiving.

Being unforgiving really means that you are looking at the appearance of illusions and are believing what you see. This means that we don't recognize that we're being faced with an illusion, and instead think that it is somehow the truth. We've fallen for the trickery, for how it 'appears', but are not overlooking appearances to see the truth.

This is the same thing as not seeing Christ in others, because you can only see Christ in others when you are overlooking the illusion. i.e. you have to see past appearances, and that means also seeing past the body, seeing past how things seem, and being very clear about the fact that people are actually Christ.

If they are Christ, they are immortal, powerful, have freedom of choice, cannot be victims, and cannot die. They are also the ones dreaming their dream. If we lose sight of that we fall for the illusion they're creating and take it to be real. Doing so is 'judgement'. We are 'judging' what we see, evaluating it, engaging with it, instead of overlooking it.

It doesn't just mean we are judging harshly, labelling people, pointing out flaws or condemning. Even if we believe for a moment that someone dying of cancer is 'real' and that the person isn't choosing it, that is judgement.

So what is a failure to forgive? How does judgement justify that failure? What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you are so forgiving that you see only innocence, truth, Christ, and do not for a second fall for any illusions. You know the truth, you know who is behind all this, and you can no longer believe the trickery - appearances.

When you fail to do that, you are attempting to explain to yourself why you stopped being forgiving. So you have to point out that it was 'because of' things that you are not responsible for. It was because of other people. I mean look at them?! And so we become tangled in appearances, forgetting to overlook appearances, because we are trying to make out that we were right to not forgive, and that the person actually 'is' or 'deserves' what you're seeing in them.

What we need to realize is that this entire world is an illusion, which means, someone somewhere is deliberately creating something for the sole purpose of pretending to be something else, for portraying that author as 'not the author', to try to convince him/herself that it's actually true, and to make-believe that this story is really occurring. It's nothing more than like when a child plays make-believe and pretends that stuff is happening.

This story is what is being shown to us all around us all the time, including our body. And it's our challenge to see through the make-believe, not take it seriously, know that it is not true or real, and be aware of who it is that is making all this seem to happen. It's only because we do not recognize the author of it (and therefore do not recognize ourselves) that we think it is real. And not recognizing Christ as Christ (as the dreamer of all this) means to fail to overlook the illusion and instead fall for it, which means we are judging it to be the truth - that it is truly awful, truly deadly, truly upsetting.

It's not true. The dream is just a dream. We need to wake up to realize who is dreaming all this.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done." W320W111 urtext.

Many people have an idea in their head, before they even come to ACIM, that reality must be some kind of "oneness". It's based on their idea of God as "one great big giant thing". But A Course in Miracles has a very different definition of God and reality, so this idea of oneness has to be thrown in the trash if you want to do ACIM.

ACIM's model is that God is a creator. God is a cause. God creates many things. God has children. God has created an entire sonship comprising many sons. God's children are also creators who cause the creation of living beings. And God has also created a permanent Holy Spirit, and angels.

Without the idea of God as a creator of many things, there is no notion of God having ANY sons. There is no way to explain the authority problem or its undoing. God is now the one who separates and has to atone. There is no way for mind to be in the service of spirit. There is no way for you to be as God created you. There is no way for you to have permanent brothers to share with so that you're not alone forever. And without God as cause, you cannot have an inheritance.

ACIM's model is very very fundamental on this. God HAS to be thought of as your creator, the source, out of whom not only you but also others are created. God has to be acknowledged as your father otherwise you cannot share his power or give his gifts. God has to be seen as the cause of you and of everyone else, otherwise you are at the effect of your brothers. God has to be fundamentally acknowledged as having created A FAMILY.

This flies in the face of the idea that reality is just one thing, or its one giant expanse of energy, or there is only God being alone, or God doesn't cause anything, or that there is a kind of oneness that is all just a great big "one" without anything in it or any parts or anything to share with.

If you like, A Course in Miracles is a kind of "creationist" teaching, not that God created the Earth and bodies but God IS a creator of something. And that makes it impossible that reality just be one big blob or some void or some kind of giant emptiness or expanse of singularity. This fundamental idea of reality being "a oneness with nothing in it" IS NOT what ACIM teaches.

If someone wants a path that teaches that God is just sitting there on his own and that you are him in his entirety, then you really are barking up the wrong tree by taking this course. ACIM is not for you if you want to believe that God has no family. Or that YOU in turn are not a co-creator with your own creations. Your mind HAS TO EXTEND in order to live and to be healthy, just as God's does, which automatically implies that creation is the only true nature of anything real. Without it God is dead.

ACIM is a teaching on cause and effect, with God as cause of his effects, who inherit everything from him, and in turn become causes with effects. Reality has to be accepted as a very large "place" within which God hosts a great many things he has created. And which is forever increasing. An entire Kingdom of souls and beings and life. A Kingdom of unlimited thoughts and power and creation.

If that's not what you "like" or you think reality is not like that, then you probably should chose a different path which frames God as an inert blob. Trying to force ACIM to BE that path is just mangling its teaching, creating denial in your mind, splitting you away from the truth and producing a fairytale about not existing with no brothers to relate to. It's a shame that some people consistently assert that they have no self and there is no one else. If that were true, God has no creative power whatsoever.

God has a mind. God has awareness. God has many thoughts. God has creations. God has a Kingdom. God has power. God has a will. God has love. God feels. God knows. God be's. Gid us an author. God causes. God shares himself. God communicates. God has relationships. God is far more than just some expanse of existence.

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

Meaningfulness is of God. Meaning is reality. Love is meaningful. What God creates has meaning. It shares God's purpose. It's meaningful because it's full of genuine authentic value. It's what you really want because it means a lot to you. It's worth having. It what you were meant to have. It correlates to reality because it means what it really is without deception.

We're told in the course that this is a meaningless world - that we made a meaningless world. This means the world in and of itself has no value. We're also told that we have given it all the meaning it has by projecting meaning onto it. We're also told that we can extend God's meaning onto the world instead of the meanings we were giving it, which changes the meaning of the world.

When events transpire in the world, you might use the evidence the body provides to explain what is happening and what it means. You decide that it means something. This symptoms means this, those occurrences mean that. You come to conclusions in order to derive meaning from what you see. You then give what's happening this meaning. But you don't have to. The meaning isn't inherent to what's happening. Meaning is given it by you.

Jesus tells us that we've given the world all the meaning it has, and that if we will change our mind about what we value and believe, then it's going to change the meaning of the world. Meaning relates to what you value. What you value is what you want. What you want, you want to see. You then proceed to see it. What is it you are seeing? You are seeing meaning, projected onto the world, based on what value you want it to have. In other words, what you want it to mean to you.

In and of itself, the world has no meaning. We give it meaning. We can give it negative meaning, or we can give it love and see love in place of it. The love is meaningful. Love has within it God's meaningfulness. By giving love to what was made in hate, you change the world from a meaningless world into a meaningful world. Or at least, the love that you see in it is meaningful, because the world in and of itself is nothing.

What you want in life is meaning. You want meaningfulness. You want something of true value. You want worth. You want acknowledgement and heartfelt deep connection with genuine love. You want a purpose of love and joining. You want God.

""God did not create that war, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that disaster [specify], and so it is not real.""

""God did not create a meaningless world. He did not create [specify the situation which is disturbing you], and so it is not real.""

"WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. It is the lesson in which learning ends, for it is consummated and surpassed with this. It is the invitation to God to take His final step. It is the relinquishment of all other purposes, all other interests, all other wishes and all other concerns. It is the single desire of the Son for the Father.

The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it.

Here the curriculum ends."

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

Have you done this? I know I have done it many times: "Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real?"

Something happens, typically something related to a body - something physical which the body reports as happening. Then I observe it and judge - THIS IS REAL - something's happening, something's going wrong.

Then there is a whole cascade of reactions, starting with immediate fear. There are defenses, attempts to escape, attempts to find cures, attempts to explain the causes. All attempts are me trying to defend against the "reality" of the problem, which, because it IS real to me, cannot BE escaped.

And always no matter what I do, what I think, how I approach it, there is still the fear response to something that seems unchangeable, fixed, stuck, irreversible, and deadly.

This is always because at the "core", I've given REALITY to something that the body showed me. I've decided this is real, and have interpreted it as totally real. By making it real, I locked it in place, turned it into an inescapable sin, gave it permanence, and set it up as the truth.

Now it cannot be questioned, undone, changed, healed, or corrected. Knowing this produces inevitable unresolvable fear. If it is real, there is nothing I can do about it. And this always leads to a feeling of powerlessness, hopelessness, weakness, incapability, inadequacy and shame. As if the thing is just dangling there in front of my face taunting me and haunting me with its threats of inevitable suffering.

"NOT because it has the power to hurt, but just because YOU have denied it is but an illusion, AND MADE IT REAL."

"Its plan is to have you SEE ERROR CLEARLY FIRST, and THEN overlook it. But how CAN you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you HAVE made it real, and CANNOT overlook it."

All of this begins the moment that I look at something and decide for myself, "this is real". This one act of reading reality into it, taking it seriously, forgetting to laugh, focusing on it like it's literally right there in front of my face as proof that it exists, is enough to cement it into my mind. As soon as it is locked in, nothing whatsoever can dislodge it and it looms over me like a constant threat.

The ego has counseled that I need to look clearly and closely at what is an error - an illusion of something going wrong - as if it is real, and examine it, and figure out what it is, and analyze it, and describe it, and find the cause of it. And that only by looking intensely at it as a real problem can I possibly find a solution to it. But this does not work because all it does it holds the problem in place.

The ONLY thing which can truly uproot and solve the problem, is the recognition that I am the one who decided it was real in the first place. I bought into the illusion. I fell for the temptation. I forgot to laugh at it. I thought it was serious. I gave it meaning. I decided what it was and why it meant. And only by this decision, based on inputs from the body senses, did I convince myself "this is really happening, holy shit, there is no escaping it."

I must then reverse this belief, this core key moment, realizing that since I gave it this reality, I can withdraw this power from it also. And I must do this is if I want to experience atonement and freedom.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

It means I have given my power away to an illusory world, have set it up to have power over me, and now I see it as causing me. And now I am starting to experience the consequences and effects that it implies. And only by taking its power away can I free myself from my self-made imprisonment.

This problem has no power, it is not real, it is not happening, it is not true, it does not exist, it is not there, it is already gone, it never happened, it is an illusion and is nothing.

And then I can laugh and be free from the clutches of this tiny anchoring black-hole of despair and deception. It is truly nothing and I has no power over me.

There is a huge amount of resistance to the idea that ACIM is teaching us to perform LITERAL miracles. As in, healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, etc.

The resistance comes because the ego's thought system is completely proven false when a miracle happens. The ego has absolutely no way to understand it, no way to stop it, no way to interfere with it, and does not know what is happening. This means the ego is going to have a huge resistance to the miracle.

So anyone with an ego left, is going to be resistant to the idea of miracles, because the ego does not believe in cures, or sudden revelations, or instantaneous healing, or defiance of the law of gravity, or any other thing which the miracle demonstrates is possible.

Miracles are expressions of love, therefore expressions of truth. When the truth "happens", it will demonstrate HOW, and the FACT that, all of the ego's so-called "laws" are not true. The miracle bypasses space and time and completely ignores ALL ego laws and just does whatever God wills.

From the ego's perspective, it is frantic to try to deny and block and explain how the miracle did what it did, to try to diminish it and cover its effects so that it will be less obvious that the ego has just been shown to be totally false. Anyone with an ego, which is almost every Course student, is going to therefore have a huge resistance to "real miracles" because they are seen as an attack by the ego. They are the truth, come to demonstrate that the ego's ways are completely illusory and cannot be believed.

There is nothing a miracle cannot do. And that totally blows the ego's mind.

To the ego, miracles should not be possible. There is nothing in the ego's thought system that supports them. When they happen, the ego may go into shock or fear or denial to try to resist it.

If you were in Jesus's presence and some person had died and He told them to come back to life and they did and they stood up and were not dead, you would be like, holy FUCK!

If you were in Jesus's presence and a person that you knew for years who was born blind, suddenly had real eyeballs, and can see perfectly, and there is absolutely nothing in your ego belief system to support how this is possible, you might well run the hell in the other direction!

If you were in Jesus's presence and his body suddenly disappeared in front of your eyes, then reappeared, then disappeared, then reappeared, several times, like someone was flipping a light switch, you'd be like, FUCKING HELL! What the fuck is going on?!!

If you were in Jesus's presence and He suddenly turned the tree you were sitting under into a bunch of flowers and handed them to you, and you took them, and then the flowers turned into a snake which you threw to the ground, and then the snake turned back into a tree, you'd be like, HOLY COW! What the F just happened here?

But in each of these situations, Jesus's demonstration of miracles would have educated you on WHAT IS POSSIBLE, and those possibilities would have taken your awareness far outside the realm of the LIMITATIONS that you are used to believing cannot be transcended. Obviously if Jesus's body is switching on and off like a light switch, it shows you that the body is not really physical. That alone will blow your mind but also you will never again be able to believe completely that bodies are real.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIM

So it's simply that students are anti-miraculous because their ego's are still strongly believing in a state of being where NO MIRACLES happen, a highly unnatural state where there is NO LOVE. That's the ego's entire focus. It doesn't believe in miracles, it doesn't believe it's possible to change one object into another, or that bodies can come back from the dead, or that sickness can suddenly disappear, or that people can grow new eyeballs out of nowhere. It doesn't want anything to do with this ego-law-defying demonstration of truth.

Also given that all resistance to the truth produces sickness and miracles are demonstrations of the truth, people could actually CHOOSE to become sick as a defense against witnessing a miracle. If the miracle were sufficiently outside their mind's ability to accept it as real, they might cling tightly to the body through sickness and pain in order to try to escape from it. Ultimately you could say that all sickness is caused by a refusal to accept that miracles are possible. Or that people get sick because they choose NOT to perform miracles.

Did you know you're living inside a giant hologram?

(this may take a bit to explain, so bear with me)...

Actually, that's only the half of it. There's a reason why you are inside a hologram, and there's a motive for making it that the ego wants to keep a secret.

The purpose of the physical universe, as a hologram (a holographic dream), is to profoundly obscure awareness of God. The ego has used it to create a way of experiencing which seems to be completely devoid of God. The physical universe was made to literally shut God out and to make it look like He does not exist. And it's done a pretty good job, because we all believe it. And you don't even realize you believe it.

As Jesus says in ACIM: "Nothing so blinding as perception of form".

So, how does this work and how does it obscure God, and why is form (physical matter) blinding? And what's this got to do with holograms?

Ok so bear with me as I try to explain, this is VERY hard to explain because it defies a lot of ego logic, so let me know if I lose you.

First we define what God is like.

God is oneness. God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere. And God is whole and completely equal everywhere. What this means is, if you could think of God as occupying 'space', no matter where you are in that space, God is *exactly* the same there as He is in any other part of it. Over here He is God, over there He is God. No matter where you are in God, it's exactly the same as everywhere else.

It's kind of like if you were to take a road trip inside God you'd be driving for a while and then remark to yourself, you know what, this place looks exactly the same as the place we just came from. Exactly. Then you drive some more and it still looks exactly the same. It's almost like you aren't going anywhere. Ok so God is the same everywhere.

Now there's another part to this. This may be hard to imagine, but ALL of God is in all *parts* of God. (NB: The ego will say this is IMPOSSIBLE!) As you think of God as occupying space, and you're driving in that car to different parts of God, and its all the same, you might still be tempted to believe each 'part' or 'location' in God is actually a DIFFERENT part, but just 'looks' the same. Like, as if the whole landscape is a giant set in a movie and its all painted in white paint. You're accustomed to thinking that the stuff 'over there' is not the same as the stuff 'over here', in some way. Its sort of similar with God.

ALL of the properties of God are everywhere. ALL of the awareness of God is everywhere. ALL of the attention of God is everywhere. So then when you ask yourself, what parts of God are 'here', in this location, the answer is, ALL of Him. And when you then ask yourself, well what parts are over there in that other part, the answer is also - ALL of Him. And what about those parts you were driving through 50 hours ago... ALL of Him was there.

To the ego this would have to mean, well, if all of God is here, then there's no other parts left to be elsewhere, so elsewhere there is no God. But in God's reality, in God's 'universe', somehow God is capable of being fully present in every single part of it at the same time. In this sense its almost as if God is PERSONAL, personal and local to every single part of existence, and yet, simultaneously personal to ALL parts at the same time. (Revelations speak of this intensely personal quality.)

You could kind of think of God as though there are trillions of copies of Himself, which the ego mind might be able to grasp. Except that in God there are no separations. Absolutely all of God's being, all of God's mind, all of God's identity, all of God's wholeness, is SHARED by all parts of existence. And when you try to think of this in terms of what you are USED TO, in the physical world, you can only relate to like a large stretch of land that you call 'The United States', within which there are many different distinct places. But if this land were God, everywhere would be the same and there would only be ONE of anything. Hard to get your mind around!

Now, this is where the ego comes up with a device to shut God out.

As we know, the ego's only tool is "separation". What the ego does, is it tries to take the omnipresent oneness of God and start to make it `look like` God maybe ISN'T the same everywhere, or ISN'T fully present everywhere. The only way it can obscure God, i.e. make it seem like God has gone away, or that God does not exist at all, is to go against the nature of God. So if the nature of God is, all of Him is the same everywhere, the ego's attack will entail the idea that only PART of Him is PARTIALLY present in each location. And this implies that God is riddled with contradictory differences. (The ego is contradictory, God isn't).

So now it's kind of like, you're driving in that car through God and you notice that, some of these hills are starting to take on a different shade of color. There's some slight differences in how things look over here than how they looked back there. At first, the separation isn't strong or well defined. In fact it starts out very subtly with just a 'hint' of differences. Then as you keep driving the intensity of the separation increases, and it really starts to stand out that different parts of God are different in quite noticeable ways.

What's happening at the same time is that the ego is now suggesting, by manipulating your perception, that maybe God is not fully present here. Maybe God has some parts of Himself which are sort of 'tied up' elsewhere, or occupied or busy with something else, so he can only be partially present. And also the ego is suggesting God isn't the same everywhere. The way God is over here is not quite the same as over there, and the over-there parts are somehow distracted from being fully present here.

This is how the holographic dream is born. A hologram is the concept that "the all is in every part" - which is pretty close to the way I described God being if God were a 'space'. i.e. All of God is fully in every part of existence. If you want a primer on holograms or whatever maybe check out The Holographic Universe which is quite an interesting book.

Anyway. Basically, at the early stages of the hologram forming, a lot is still shared and things are still almost-one. But the 'density', if you will, of the hologram, increases by continued ego belief in separation. The ego starts noticing and emphasizing the ways in which different parts of existence seem not to be the same. And as this grows stronger, it starts to seem more and more as though only a small part of God is still present here, because all the `other parts of God` are apparently quite different and have become quite finite and specific, and they're all localized to other parts of existence. So what exists over there maybe does not or cannot exist over here.

As this progresses, in the mind, the hologram 'solidifies' more and more. Or another way to describe it is that, formless reality in which everything is the same everywhere starts to 'descend' into localized properties, differences, separations, divisions, fragmented identities. The more separate and clearly defined these differences become, the more the awareness of God's omnipresence, God's total attention, God's total awareness, and God's equal presence everywhere, APPEARS to be shut out of awareness. If it seems true to you that differences are real, and that you start to look AT those differences and breathe reality into them, then you will become fixated on the ways in which God is NOT THE SAME ANYWHERE.

Not only is God not the same anywhere, but this also has a dire conclusion. If you really strongly believe in the reality of differences, you must start to fixate only on the appearance of what's left. All of the different 'forms' of difference. And those forms of difference is what we call PHYSICAL MATTER. The solidification of wholeness into locality, the contraction and density of 'energy' if you will, is what happens in the 'lower levels' of the hologram. The further into separation and differences you go the more 'solid' everything starts to look, and the less there is any evidence or awareness that God is present, even AT ALL. At a certain point you would be forgiven for even believing that God does not exist AT ALL because ALL you can see are the intense, real-seeming differences of physical matter. The physical universe 'stops' God from being able to be in all places at once, or in all places equally, or in all places fully, replaced with the idea that everything is separate from everything else.

So while holograms start out subtle, or what scientists call 'diffused', the lower levels of the holographic 'dream' are much more divided and separated out and form 'images'. When you see the little images on your credit card which look 3d when you see them from different angles - those are a form of holograms. You see an image, and yet when you look from another angle, you see another image. Its as if ALL of the images are somehow 'in' the one location, SHARED. But on the level of physical matter, you can only ever see ONE of the versions of the image at a time. You can't see the 'all'. You can't see all of the angles of the little dove or whatever it is in the hologram, because it is obscured by the rules of the physical universe.

So when the Course is saying, nothing so blinding as perception of form, what it's saying is, physical matter is a very dense level of a holographic interpretation of God, which has the effect of completely obscuring any trace of oneness or all-ness, so that you fixate on only one version of one image, in which it seems like NOTHING is shared and therefore there is no God. 'Sharing' is the same as 'Oneness' so if there is no sharing (co-existing in the same space) then God doesn't exist.

In the physical world, an object does not seem to have anything shared with another object. There is no sense of there being any unity between them. There is nothing 'the same' that is exactly the same in both. This defies the property of God that all of him is everywhere. And then because the stuff that is `in` one object is NOT the stuff that is `in` another object, defies the property of God that all of his same properties are in all objects at the same time. So if you look at that matter and you BELIEVE the illusion that it is trying to SHOW you, its statement of 'what is', you will be blinded from seeing God.

Physical matter LITERALLY was made by the ego to make the properties of God totally obscured and distracted away from. If you believe physical matter does not share anything, you do not have awareness of God. It blinds you. If you do not believe that physical matter contains all of something which is also fully present in other parts of matter, you are blinded to God. Matter, in all its forms, is a giant blanket of the 'undoing' of God's reality, God's omnipresence. It is a physicalization of the idea of separation, but even moreso, the idea that God's law-defying everywhereness is NOT what existence is like, and therefore God does not exist.

It is designed SPECIFICALLY to shut out the awareness of God's presence so that, IF your mind is aligned with it and IF your mind functions according to the 'laws of matter' then you WILL NOT SEE GOD. If you SEE MATTER, you do not see God. Not fully. If you do not see PAST matter, you do not see God. If you fixate ON or look AT matter, you will not see God. Your mind needs to become able to OVERLOOK (forgive) the ILLUSIONS that are presented to you BY MATTER ITSELF.

This isn't just a matter of fixing your mind and staying in the world and not seeing God. Your mind needs to go back `up` the hologram to the point of Oneness, eventually, so that your awareness is able to discern that a) God is fully present, b) All of God is here, c) All of God is everywhere, and d) All of God is the same everywhere. If you believe that MATTER IS REAL or MATTER IS TRUE, then you cannot be aware of God. If the form of matter dictates how your mind perceives or you believe in its ILLUSION, you cannot see God. Matter is BLINDING. That is its function. And it will never have another function until it is undone.

What the ego in your mind does, is it looks at matter and uses it as a 'model' for what is true about your mind and what is true in your perception. Its illusion infuses into your mind and you take it at its word and consider it 'reality'. You buy into its illusion, its way of obscuring God, and its statements of the ways in which God is not here, God is not everywhere, God is not ALL in ALL. That is matter's message. That is the 'state of existence' of the physical universe, designed solely to shut God out - IF you believe it is real.

This also leads to another way to say, the physical universe is just a holographic dream, and it is just an illusion designed to obscure God, and NEVER will it be Heaven (because heaven is formless), and THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. Matter is not real. Separate forms are not real. Bodies are not real. Planets are not real. Physical matter is AN ILLUSION AND NOTHING ELSE. It is the illusion that God is dead and can never be real.

These are all ways of expressing the idea that God is not God, and that can never be true. And this is why eventually the physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR.

I have no idea if I explained this well or conveyed what I wanted to. I had a profound experience a few years ago which SHOWED me an EXPERIENCE of this - I experienced what it was like to go up the hologram in my mind, back toward Oneness, and how this allowed me to be AWARE of God's presence - all of His presence in every part of the dream, and how this totally defied what 'form' was trying to telling me was the truth of existence. So I speak from experience, but these things really defy the ego's logic so it's very hard to put into words. Let me know if I need to clarify something.

All is not as it seems in this world. The physical world ITSELF IS the 'form' of the egos attack on God, and IS its defense. You think you only have defenses in your mind inside your body. But the physical universe as a whole is a giant defense mechanism - IN the larger mind of the Son of God. You're literally looking at the MIND of the Son of God attempting to shut God out. That's what this world is.