When I have guilt in me, I am unaware. Guilt blocks my awareness. I can't even tell that I'm guilty. It's not like, I have full complete awareness and there is also guilt present. If I had full complete awareness there would be no guilt. When guilt is present, my awareness is diminished and I don't know what I'm doing or what I've done.
This is really why our sense of separation from God is riddled with guilt, there is an aspect to it of shock and horror and not realizing what we've done. We then seem to have some awareness of the results of what we've done and it seems like we must've made a terrible mistake, and therefore we are now horrified by ourselves and are afraid.
What's needed to escape this isn't so much to admit to guilt. Guilt can't be admitted to. There can't be a total admittance of truth at the same time as guilt existing. You can admit to being innocent, but you can only deny being guilty. And the only solution to being guilty is to reclaim innocence. Owning up to guilt, if you were to do it, would just hold the guilt against you and make you suffer. This is why we don't want to do it. Deep down we know we just made a mistake and that we didn't mean to.
"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do."
It's hard for me at times to admit to 'what I did' even if what I did was an accident, because that means owning the guilt. If it were possible to admit to something without being guilty, that would be easier. But nobody wants to own guilt. It is counter-productive. We should want to get back to innocence, as a true atonement, rather than say "I'm really guilty". Owning guilt doesn't atone for anything. To the ego it atones because the ego wants to find someone to blame and to keep the guilt, but to the Holy Spirit we are always innocent.
Is regret healthy? Is a guilty conscience helpful? Should we suffer in remorse? How long is enough time to be ashamed? How much suffering is enough to atone for a sin?
The ego wants us to own up to 'really doing stuff' because this makes the error real and doesn't forgive it. Holy Spirit asks us to be forgiving, to overlook error, and to demonstrate that it has had no effects. To demonstrate that we and the other person are innocent because nothing has really happened. The ego doesn't want this, because then it can't find anyone guilty. It takes practice.
Do you have the right to claim innocence and to choose to relieve yourself of all guilt and return to innocence with Holy Spirit? And what if someone else doesn't believe you deserve it yet?
We need to all remember that if we find someone else guilty it doesn't prove that they are guilty, it proves that WE are guilty. We can't find someone else guilty without us being involved, no matter how convinced we are. If the other person is truly the separate guilty party, then we should remain in perfect innocence. And if we remain in perfect innocence, we will see perfect innocence in the other person, so we won't be able to find them guilty. It's not possible to find someone guilty without including ourselves. That kind of puts a damper on the ego's parade. We MUST forgive otherwise we ourselves cannot be forgiven.
In A Course in Miracles, we are taught that we’ve tried to separate ourselves from God. We’re taught this is impossible, but within an idea of it being possible, we seem to experience it as if it’s happening.
To be separated from God, must mean logically that we no longer have access to what God is or what God provides. Cutting ourselves off from Him, cuts us off from the abundant supply of fulfillment that He was providing.
God provides eternal life, perfect safety, love, joy, peace of mind, strength, innocence, no reason to be afraid, certainty, happiness, etc. If we separate from Him, we are separating from all of these things.
***We cannot find any of those things anywhere else.***
God is the only source of love.
"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God."
"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct."
"God gives you only happiness."
"I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else"
"God is the Light in which I see. God is the mind with which I think. God is the Love in which I forgive. God is the strength in which I trust. There is nothing to fear."
"Love is a law without an opposite. There is no love but God's, and what He is, is everything there is."
Metaphysically, when we introduce a separation between us and God, we separate ourselves from everything God provides. And God is the ONLY SOURCE of these things. There is no cheap knock-off shop down the street selling God’s wares. You cannot find God anywhere else.
This means that once separated, isolated, alone, going off by ourselves in the darkness we made, we will LACK all of these things, WITH NO WAY to find them anywhere unless we go back to God. The prodigal son CANNOT find his father when he is away from Him. We will then try to find CRAPPY replacements for everything God was providing, to try to fill this sense of lack and emptiness.
False idols, toys, special relationships, fake meaning, a spiritualized ego, illusions of peace, a whole laundry list of stuff we "make do with" in God‘s absence, believing it’s befitting and worthy of who we are. Believing it is satisfying us when all it’s doing is maintaing a gaping emptiness. Or in other words, it’s all we think we deserve because we believe we‘re guiltly little sinners.
Lacking God, creates artificial NEEDS. These needs were being filled by Him automatically but if we refuse to receive from Him, we will invent needs which have gone unfulfilled. An unfulfilled need is a refusal to let the need by filled by the only possible source of supply.
We then will go searching externally in the world we made for some substitutes for the things God can only supply. And not find them. We made the world TO SUBSTITUTE for God. The world we made, which includes Earth, CANNOT SUPPLY that which only God can supply, because this world is entire founded in the LACK OF HIM. You will not ever find God in the world, not even if you see God in everything here. That is just a reflection. A reflection in a puddle is not the thing itself, and who would settle for that?
****This entire world is a picture of death - the absence of Life.****
We will come up empty handed. This is seeking and not finding. Looking for love, happiness, peace, truth, where it IS NOT, ensures we will not find it. Yet we’ll try intensely to prove that IT CAN be found there. That the truth is out there somewhere in the world, that a special love can satisfy our craving for God, and that we can ACTUALLY "do okay" without Him.
There will always be a state of lack and neediness UNTIL we return to God and become willing to RECEIVE what He is only capable of supplying. It is impossible to undo that sense of lack without Him. We can cover it up and deny it, but it will not go away. Only the presence of God SATISFIES your every need. Only God can give the love that you NEED in order to be free of neediness. Only God can fill the empty hole that you made when you rejected His presence.
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." This directly describes how the physical FORM of this world is LITTLE, objects, people, little critters, atoms, are LITTLE, because they are MADE of littleness. Littleness is the idea of LIMITATION, lack, deprivation, loss, absence of wholeness, you name it. Everything NOT OF GOD. It is fundamentally a world you made that is UNLIKE HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY.
The symptoms and conditions of suffering in the world are DIRECTLY a consequence of shutting God out. They ARE the "shutting out" itself. Every problem, every suffering, every sickness, every fear, every question, every doubt, every confusion, every war, is all happening because of a rejection of God. It has produced a state of LACK which has given rise to all manner of despair and depravation.
Absolutely ALL OF IT is "about God"... about your relationship to God, or lack thereof. Every event, object, personal encounter, whatever, is about you and God and whether you accept or reject Him. The ego loves to distract us with problems which seem confined to the FORM of the problem, suggesting solutions which fix only one FORM of the problem, ignoring the CONTENT of the problem which is actually, a belief in separation from God. THAT is the ONLY problem in the entire world. And the world IS that problem.
It may seem the individual problems are nothing to do with God. It may seem you don’t really need God in order to solve them. You will try to solve them on your own, but fail. Little illusions of success tempt you to believe you CAN be successful at existing without God. Only up to a point.
Solve one isolated problem, the answer to which solves no other problem and cannot be generalized, and you will simply encounter MANY MORE problems in different forms. To the ego, the perfect answer to a problem is a FORM which exactly matches the form of a problem, that "perfect tool" from your toolbox which solves this one exact situation really well. But which ensures the solution is totally cut off from all other problems, and so you are literally just as stuck as you were.
Your rejection of Him has rejected your own power, your own strength, your own innocence, and your own ability to live peacefully. You cannot find a substitute for that anywhere. Beign without God is death. Being without God is the sole reason for all of the unhappiness and suffering in the world.
This applies to everyone, course student or not.
The only way to return to a life which works and is not broken and is happy and joyous and love-filled and satisfying and meaningful, is to get GOD back into your life. One problem, one solution. "The ONLY problem you need to correct is the sense of separation from God."
There IS no other cause of the problems in the world. There is no form of suffering that does not stem from a sense of separation from God. All sickness, all death, all lack and deprivation, all fear and guilt and sin, all of it is directly descending from the belief that God is not supplying your every need. Withought Him, it is not possible to live at all. Death is the very IDEA of escaping God’s life completely... the consequence of trying to prove that you exist entirely without any trace of God in you whatsoever. Good luck with that. You NEED God to live.
To separate from God IMPLEMENTS every form of suffering. It automatically guarantees that you will not be happy. The consequences of separation are unavoidable, unless you become willing to UNDO the separation. Going to God and having God be your source, your provider, your guide, your protector, your safe-house, your healer, your sustainer, and that which maintains your life forever, and gives you EVERYTHING you need, is the ONLY SOLUTION to all the problems of the world. And this applies to everyone no matter their state of awareness or whether they are into the course or not. As John Lennon sang, "All you need is love".
The world is literally a picture of the idea of God’s absence. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son." Meaning, by crucifying ourselves, by condemning ourselves with an idea of sin, which is belief in separation, we PRODUCED a picture of ourselves as deprived, damaged, lacking, unwhole, and unholy, isolated, suffering and dead. What the Son would LOOK LIKE *IF* God were absent from Him. That is THIS UNIVERSE. The "world".
This is the condition of existence we LIVE WITH if we do not let go and let God. Insisting on being right, not happy, keeps us from God. This is why we originally made the world, to have somewhere to live without God, as a substitute reality. And one which is not capable of providing that substitution at all. We have made sorry little bullshit scraps of SHITE for ourselves to make up for the loss of God. Fun times!
It is IMPOSSIBLE to live without God. To live without God is to die. God is life. No-one can live without life. God is the ONLY SOURCE of what you need. The ego will never be able to supply you with what you truly want. "The world holds nothing that I want". Literally, this world/picture of deprivation and lack that we invented, DOES NOT HOLD that which we want and need. Earth, this world, this universe, DOES NOT CONTAIN what we need. What we need, cannot be found in the world. Ever. "Love was never in the world."
It doesn’t matter if you think the Earth is real or not or whatever other interpreation you have. You WILL NOT FIND happiness, peace, joy, love, health, meaning, fulfillment, satisfation, safety, or anything else that God offers, IN the world. "There is no safety in the world." "It is the world you see that is IMPOSSIBLE." "There is no life outside of heaven."
"Seek ye FIRST (only) the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this ONLY because you CAN FIND NOTHING ELSE. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE. God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His."
God is the only one who can give you these things. And He is offering them to you right now. And always. It is only a matter of your willingness to RECEIVE FROM GOD, which means accepting His Truth, which means accepting the atonement, and ceasing to be the one who supplies yourself with satisfaction. Of yourself alone you are nothing. Without God, you cannot be happy.
Any time that I have tried personally to go it alone and solve problems myself and or deal with life’s stresses using my own abilities and decisions and so on, it has never been enough. It always leads to fear (relying on oneself alone), additional incapability, increased suffering and a failure to correct the issue. I cannot live without God.
I could not have gotten through the things I have gotten through without surrendering my ego fight to be separate and ACCEPTING HELP from outside of me. From God. That means DEVELOPING TRUST IN HIM that he can and will take care of everything. And letting Him do so. And seeing Him do so. I can’t tell you the number of times that I thought I was supposed to or would have to DO SOMETHING to fix problems, only to have Jesus tell me "let me". I had to let go and let God.
God is all we need. God is the answer to every problem. God is the cure for all suffering. God dissolves all questions and fears. God heals all sickness and death. God is the ANSWER to every problem. In God there is nothing to fear. There is only love. Your every need WILL, and can only, be met by God.
Rejecting Him makes no sense whatsoever. "A sick body makes no sense" ec. To do so is denial, and ensures you will continue to fail to find what you need, to live with absence and lack and emptiness, and with no hope of any solution whatsoever other than to return to Him.
Love is not separate from God. God is not separate from you. You are not separate from love. The love of God is all you want. It will make you happy and fill your heart with gladness that He HAS provided everything that you ARE and everything you could ever want.
A year or so ago, someone close to me was sick. We weren’t sure what really happened. It was very strange. It seemed to come out of nowhere overnight, had no apparent cause, and seemed impossible to diagnose.
The person seemed to turn into a bit of a monster, was confused and paranoid, suddenly dropped a whole bunch of longheld beliefs, and seemed to turn into another person. This was baffling and very upsetting.
I took it upon myself to try to "figure out" what was happening. So I started to research. I went online and was googling like a madman. Sometimes I ran across something which seemed it "might" explain what’s happening. Some things seeemd to fit.
Each time I found something, I started to exclaim "this is what it is", or "this is what is causing it!" I started driving the person nuts with my explanations and ideas of what I thought the problem was. Each time that I found something, it seeemd like the true cause. But later, it turned out to be, maybe not "it". Something about it, didn’t quite fully explain all the symptoms.
Did that stop me? Nope. I thought that this meant I should seek even harder to find the truth. That I should have the "ability" to find the truth out there somewhere. I was convinced at the time that the truth IS out there somewhere. That if I just try hard enough, I will find it. That "cause" is out there somewhere. Identifying the cause would seem to suggest what is happening, to explain it, and that this would lead to a SOLUTION.
It never happened. Each time I went seeking, I felt more desperate. Each time I searched, I came up more and more empty handed. I felt exasperated and frustrated. It became obsessive. Surely the truth was there somewhere, and dealing with this person being the way there were was intolerable. I wanted to find the truth. But I was looking for it "out there", and could not find it. The more I sought and did not find, the more upset I became, the more desperate I felt, and the more I then felt COMPELLED to search even harder.
This turned out to be a good thing after a while, because I FAILED. I totally failed to find the truth out there. I "exhausted" all efforts to search externally. So my mind gradually was using up its last vestige of a sense of "possibility", that the truth was out there. I started to notice something. The truth does not seem to be out there! Anywhere! I lost faith in the world and SAW THROUGH the illusion that the world contains the truth. Any kind of truth. Anywhere.
It was a very short hop from this perception to realizing, bringing into question, that perhaps.... THE TRUTH IS NOT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. That it literally cannot be found. That seeking is a EGO TRAP. The more you seek for truth out there, the LESS you find it. And that’s because, in truth, the truth is INSIDE YOU. Each time I basically "left my inner truth", believing I "did not have the truth", I went searching for it in the world. I really believed strongly, the world HAD the truth in it SOMEWHERE. But it did not. I inadvertently proved it to myself.
So I failed, and that was great, because this idea suddenly popped in, that there is no truth in the world at all. NOTHING in the world is true. This was quite eye opening. It meant that, for example, the sickness which I’d been trying to diagnose and fix this whole time, ALSO wasn’t the truth. It also meant, it wasn’t being caused BY anything out there. The truth was NOT out there. There must have been another cause, an inner cause.
And so began a whole new phase for me, of withdrawing my belief from the world, learning to recognize it is COMPLETELY FALSE, that it is not true in any way, and that also sickness is entirely fake. These were important steps in the direction of forgiveness, and completely shifted the way I was looking at the sick person 180 degrees. Clearly, it wasn’t a question of "what out there is causing it". It was a matter of, "It is NOT being caused".
Gradually as I’ve been practicing this and growing stronger in the recognition that this is true, that earth is 100% false, and nothing in it is true, my miracle-working has gone up. It is my job now not to figure out, "what caused that", but to learn to NOT BELIEVE that it is caused by anything other than the mind. That there is no truth IN what I’m perceiving. People showing up with sickness, are trying to assert a lie. Sickness is recognize more and more as FALSE, an illusion, with no truth to it.
Miracle working **ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES** NOT BELIEVING THIS WORLD IS THE TRUTH. If we believe it is the truth, we will keep it, lock in its form, have no will to heal it, and be convinced by illusions. The truth is not in the world or in form. "Never was love in the world." It is not out there. It’s inside. IT comes from God. God is the only cause, not this world. Mind is the only cause of what’s out there.
What appear to be causes in this world are LIES. Fiction. Fantasy. Illusions. Dreams. Make-believe cause that suggest, yes, the world has truth in it because the world has a causal power. The world causes nothing. It is nothing but effect. Cause, therefore truth, is somewhere else. Truth is always equated with REALITY. Since there is NO truth in this world, not in false perception or in true perception, THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. And therefore it is NOT THERE, and whatever is showing up as "sickness happening" IS NOT HAPPENING.
What is not a CAUSE, is nothing but an EFFECT, and therefore has no reality of its own. Because the world is an effect, and has no truth/cause in it, IT IS NOT THERE. It is not happening. Separation never happened.
Jesus:
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."
"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."
"The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has but one Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen."
"There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."
"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects."
"what you made has no cause and no effects at all."
"But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause because the function of causation is to have effects"
"The world is but an effect, it is not a cause at all."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less"
"The world you see does not exist."
"Nothing the world believes is true."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality."
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home."
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."
I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.
All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.
I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!
The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.
It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.
There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.
All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.
It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.
Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.
The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.
It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?
The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.
The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.
Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.
Seeking for perfection in this world is an ego pursuit, but everyone's doing it. It stems from the separation from God.
The idea of separation introduced a mental state of conflict and war, of attack and destruction. It also gave rise to a fragmenting of everything, putting things in separate boxes with separate meanings.
As soon as we did this, competition arose, in which everything is different and at odds with everything else. No two objects are alike, and everywhere you look there is a seeming drive to stand out and be unique.
Separation literally gives rise to competition. In that competitiveness, all egos are trying to gain more, outdo others, usurp God's will, become something, win against the opposition, and generally inflate themselves.
This whole drive is towards trying to find the properties of God in the physical world at the physical level. It can never work because God is not the physical world, but egos don't believe that because they made the world and want it to be reality.
So then within this "war zone" battlefield of constant competing, everyone keeps trying to one-up everyone else. To stand out from the crowd. To have that career success, to become famous or an instagram influencer, or to get noticed. All the egos start screaming in unison "look at me, I'm the chosen one."
This realm of competition makes everyone a perfectionist. Everyone regards themselves as lacking (God) and in need (false needs) of finding something outside of themselves. Rooted in the belief that what they lost cannot be found within - leading to the ego's mantra of "seek and do not find."
So then there is a constant external push, a drive toward going out of your mind, into the world, to gain the world, and to become one with the world and the body. Or in other words, to become more perfect, based on the deeply held belief in being imperfect.
All perfectionists believe they are not good enough (an attempt to stop God loving them), leading to a compulsion to seek for a "better way" toward the world rather than away from it. To find the ultimate this that or the other in the world itself, the golden calf, the fame and fortune, the special other, the perfect house and car, the perfect hairdo, the perfect body.
But all this driving for perfection, which is an attempt to find answers in the world where they don't exist, just makes us more insane. The more you seek to emphasize how perfect something eternal is, which is idol worship, the more you believe in imperfection. The search itself undermines perfection, causing you to lose more in the name of gaining more.
Then enters the fear of not being good enough, fear of rejection, fear of not being perfect, fear of failure, fear of poverty and lack, fear of loss, etc, all various disguises for an underlying belief that no matter how much you become perfect it will never be enough.
Expecting anything in the world to be perfect is a total waste of time. The world was not made with perfection or to be perfect. It was made from an idea of rejecting perfection and entering into chaos, lack, finite limits, faults, damage, a potential for attack and breakage, things being misplaced, stuff breaking down and all manner of disappointments.
You will not ever find perfection outside of you in the world.
Trying to expect a fundamentally broken limited system to become perfect and limitless is insane. It's part of a drive to try to swap the attributes of God for the attributes of nothingness. The true and the false. Trying to make out that this world is heaven, or that it is eternal, or that it is perfect, or whole, or holy, or permanent, or wanted, or meaningful.
The world is nothing at all. It has no properties of its own because it is nothing more than a mirage in the mind. A dream of exile from heaven. We have been trying to give the world the properties of God since we made it, and we have never succeeded. And even as soon as we made it it was ready to die.
Wanting it to last is part of wanting it to have God's permanence. Wanting nothing to go wrong or to break or to be lost or damaged is a wish that it possess God's immortality. Wanting the bodies to stop dying is a wish that they were actually creations in God's Kingdom. All the resistance around things going to hell is an attempt to make it into heaven.
The only place you will ever find true perfection is in the Kingdom of God, heaven, which is not of this world. And you will find this Kingdom within yourself, not out there, or in the clothing cupboard, or in the bank, or on the streets, or at your job. Only that which is shared with and created by God is truly and permanently perfect. And thankfully, that means you already are.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it." UrT12G2
"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it." UrT11G1
Jesus suggested to me that some form of meditation might help me to find some 'clarity and hope'. His instruction was to relax.
So the past couple of mornings I've done a very simple, easy meditation which completely quiets the mind very quickly with no effort. In fact I don't even focus on trying to quiet the mind, it was an unexpected side effect.
The 'meditation' is simply to lay down and thoroughly relax the body. That's all. The only part my mind plays is to constantly focus on relaxing, letting tensions ease, noticing any muscle tightness, sinking down into the bed, letting the fascial muscles relax, the shoulders sink down, etc. My goal is a 'feeling' I get when the body is really deeply relaxed.
As I focus constantly on relaxing as much as possible, very unexpectedly, no thoughts happen. I don't even need to try to stop any thoughts, there just aren't any. My mind is fully focused on getting the body to relax physically.
As the body relaxes physically, when it truly is relaxed, you get this sensation of physical stillness. Breathing is still happening. I pay no attention to trying to control the breath. The breath automatically slows down and becomes smaller as a side-effect of focusing on relaxing. There is no breath control needed.
After a time, maybe 10-15 minutes, I find that I need to be extra soft, gentle, and subtle, in terms of my attention to keeping things relaxed, because the sensation of relaxation is quite easily disturbed or stirred up. This focus on calmness and minimal interference and letting go, seems to tune the mind and keeps all thoughts silent. Probably also the focus on the whole body relaxing at once is a 'big enough' target that the mind has no attention left to create thoughts. The goal is simply the sensation you get when the body is completely relaxed all over, which is a feeling of being very settled, still, calm, almost like levitating.
As I do this I generally find myself falling asleep as well, it's a good way to get to sleep. I'm not bothered by that. What I did find this second time is that toward the end, I had a sudden unexpected moment of 'awareness', in which I became more aware and it seemed as though that was accompanied by an even further 'stilling' of the mind, beyond what I thought was possible. It felt like a clarifying, a sharpening, and a clearing. It wasn't like enlightenment or anything but it was a definite sudden burst of awareness.
The main thing I am getting from the meditation, besides feeling very relaxed, which also has the side-effect of helping to tune out of other people's energies that I've empathed and I 'come back to myself', is that it gives me a subtler clarity about certain situations in life, and also about the activities of my mind, what my thoughts are doing, etc. It shines a light on things and shows me a greater truth somehow, things I didn't realize I was doing. I didn't realize how much mind-chatter I have, normally, contrasted by absolutely no thoughts during this exercise.
I'm most surprised that thoughts stop completely when doing this. I know that focusing the mind can do that - focusing on a breath or a mantra or word or single idea or whatever... but when I do those things, my mind is still noisy and doesn't shut up all the way, and after a while it starts to go into deeper daydreams and stuff. Doing this body relaxation exercise I get absolutely no thoughts of any kind the whole time, provided I keep my focus on being as gentle and subtly relaxed as possible. It makes me wonder what this connection is between agitation in the body and agitation in the mind. But probably it's that I'm getting my mind to focus on calmness, quietness, stillness, being settled, and the body is sort of a 'prop' for the mind to use to achieve that, through focusing on its relaxation. Tying the mind and body together perhaps, so that the mind relaxes with the body.
Of course, meditations also produce emotional releases afterwards.
When you are innocent, you can ONLY see innocence. When you are guilty, you can ONLY see guilt.
IF you think that you therefore can objectively, unbiased, clearly discern, "whether or not" your brother is innocent or guilty, you are severely mistaken.
You cannot put your own guilt on a shelf in order to see your brother's innocence, nor can you see his guilt when you are innocent.
You literally see the content of your own mind projected outward. If you are have guilt in your mind you WILL find your brother guilty and MUST judge him to be so. Yet when your mind is healed, suddenly you no longer see the guilt in your brother, it is not there, and never really was there. It was yours.
"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." This is also why when you are having an angry crappy day you think everyone else is unhappy also, only to find that when you cheer up, it suddenly seems like everyone else wasn't even unhappy.
So the ego has given us this kind of fictional claim that we actually can be "neutral" or an objective observer who can discern right from wrong, good from bad, and make valid educated judgement calls, based on what something is or is not or appears to be. But the truth is, such an "ability" is 100% impossible. You simply are incapable of this kind of "discernment" or judgement or selectivity.
You simply cannot sit on a fence and observe passively and say, yes, I see that this person is guilty and their guilt has nothing to do with me. That's a lie. If you see guilt, you are guilty.
It is the ego that says you can "get away with" one thing applying to your brother that does NOT apply to you. That is nothing less than getting away with murder. If you can cause something and escape the consequences, while your brother suffers the consequences for you, that is murderous. Everything about the ego is murderous. And it is also in denial because it's literally impossible to "really murder", just as much as it is literally impossible to "judge correctly".
Since it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to truly tell whether you brother is guilty or not, and you can ONLY see what you believe is TRUE OF BOTH OF YOU (this is the Golden rule), you really have to find a way to stop judging that "them and not me" are wrong. It makes you think that you are not included in the guilt or have escaped the guilt, but this is DENIAL and projection. You actually are still seeing yourself as guilty, but now indirectly through others.
That's what the whole ego is based on. "Me or them" "Them or me" but not both. In the thought system of Holiness, whatever applies to you applies to your brother equally because you are equals at all times. If they are guilty, so you are you. If they are innocent, so are you.
You are effectively BLIND to "whether or not" your brother is one thing or another. ALL that you can find to be TRUE of him is that he MUST be innocent, because the only way for you to BE IN THE TRUTH, is for YOU to be innocent (whole, loving), and this will make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to see guilt in your brother.
You and your brother are innocent. This is the only true judgement. And this is why the Holy Spirit ALWAYS finds both of you to be innocent forever.
If you have not really sinned, you automatically have no reason to try to get rid of the responsibility for having sinned.
If you believe you HAVE really sinned, and believe in your own sinfulness, you will try to escape the EFFECTS of sin. Sin causes guilt, fear, punishment and death. It is condemning. That's a pretty big reason to want to escape those effects!
You will then find yourself PRETENDING that part of you is not yourself - that it is someone else. And then you will displace all of your SELF BLAME onto that part, disassociate your identity from it, and pretend that it belongs to a separate self.
You will attack this "not me" part of yourself and put all of your self condemnation onto it, accusing it and finding it sinful, berating it and hating it, like it's some kind of culprit, when in fact it's actually a part of yourself. This is self abuse. It's your "innocent persona" attacking and CREATING your "guilty shadow".
You will then overlay this hallucinated "other not self" on top of people, and believe that they are the ones who are guilty. You will think that your perception of this IN them, justifies you being angry AT them, and that therefore you SHOULD blame them for what you believe they are doing to YOU. Projection of your split mind onto others completes your ESCAPE PLAN.
But you are doing this all to yourself. And you're ONLY doing this because you believe you are really sinful. And because of that belief, you THINK that you can DENY that YOU YOURSELF believe in your own sinfulness, by hiding from it using denial, and then pretending that someone ELSE is the sinner.
It is simply clear that, if you did not believe that you are really sinful, yourself, you would have no NEED for denial, no NEED for a scapegoat, no NEED for disassociation, no NEED for projection onto "not me" (others), and you would not NEED to find other people guilty of YOUR OWN SINS. You would also not need to create persona at war with a shadow, and all that would remain is your REAL Self.
As Jesus teaches, "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." This is LITERALLY TRUE. You ONLY accuse your brother of your own belief that YOU are sinful. Your attempt to find someone else guilty is your secret belief that YOU are guilty. Your attempt to see someone as sinful is YOUR OWN BELIEF in YOUR OWN SINFULNESS, that you're trying to disown.
It is your OWN belief in your own sinfulness that you are trying to escape from. You want someone to take the blame for what YOU believe YOU really did! And that's the only reason why you are doing the denial/projectin/blame game at all. You have a vested interest in finding someone to take the blame FOR you, so that you can convince yourself you don't really hate yourself, even though deep down you STILL DO.
The answer to undoing this is obvious and simple.
1. ADMIT THAT *YOU* BELIEVE *YOU* ARE REALLY SINFUL
2. STOP BELIEVING THAT YOU ARE REALLY SINFUL AT ALL.
Where will be the need for denial, or a split mind, or a projection, or a persona being at war with a shadow, or scapegoating onto someone else then? You'll have absolutely no need to do so. And that also means, you will no longer have a DESIRE or a NEED to find other people sinful... you will not WANT to find them sinful, because doing so really means you are finding YOURSELF SINFUL! You cannot escape the effects of what you believe about yourself.
If you are not really sinful, because you did not REALLY sin, because sin is not REALITY, because nothing REALLY happened, then you MUST still be innocent. And only when you can accept that this is TRUE about you will you stop ATTACKING YOURSELF with the condemnation that you are a sinner. It is you doing this to yourself. It is your self attack, masquerading as an attack on others.
Nobody has ever attacked you, and you have never really attacked anyone else. You're incapable. You're just in a war with your OWN SELF, attempting to take sides WITHIN your own mind, attacking YOU, because YOU believe that you really sinned. And if you no longer are choosing to see YOURSELF as sinful, in all honesty, you will stop trying to see OTHERS as sinful and will stop splitting of fa part of your mind to house all of your self attack. Thus you will find others WORTHY OF YOUR LOVE, and you will be justified in loving them.
Real sin is the belief that separation REALLY happened, producing real consequences. If sin is not real, separation cannot have REALLY happened and you're still WITH God and exactly AS God created you. Innocent, holy, permanently forgiven, and completely WORTHY OF LOVE.
Once you are worthy of love, you are NOT worthy of sin or attack, and you will not feel that attack is JUSTIFIED, and you will STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF.
You are worthy of the love of God, and always will be. Once you stop WANTING to attack yourself through a belief in real sin, you will AUTOMATICALLY stop judging others and will desire to love them.
Looking for God outside? He's inside you. In fact, you have to look inside first, find God there, then look out with God, in order to see God.
When I had an experience of God this wasn't clear to me. I saw God seemingly in everything external, in addition to my tremendous inner awareness of him, but then it faded. And then I sought to reconnect externally because that's where I'd seen him. But God wasn't first found outside and taken in, he was inside my mind and awareness and extended out. I found him inside because I went within and above, not because I sought outward. In fact all sickness is a form of external searching. Seeking out there for God will take you away from where he is.
God is in everything you see when awareness of love's presence is in your mind. Not because God is out there, but because you are shining his light from inside of you. You look first within and project out what is in you, then you see it. You can't find God "out there" in the world. There is no world out there. Everything external is artificial and unreal.
God being in everything you see does not mean the world is God. This is completely backwards. It means you're looking out from God. And thus you are giving God and extending God and therefore projecting God. He is in everything you see because he is in your mind, and not without that key ingredient. If God were not in your mind first, you would not see him in everything you see, at all.
During the time that I was close to God I felt a great radiance of joy and light shining out of me, particularly out of my face and eyes. It was so strong it was like beaming light at people. It was also so strong that I felt nothing could come into me from the outside, which felt very secure. As though everything was given from within.
"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions." I felt I had no needs because I didn't lack anything within. Getting anything into me from the outside seemed completely alien and utterly pointless, including eating food for a while. It was like shoving lumps of nothing into a hole for no reason. I had to force myself to swallow. It seemed completely ridiculous to suggest that I lacked anything at all such that I needed to get anything from the world to make up for it.
When you're not seeing God outside you will start seeking externally to find him. This is because he seems externally absent. This is temptation and is a trick of the lack of love in you. It makes the world seem dark and lacking. And then you seek externally and do not find him. Because you try to find God first externally, and seek to get him, and take him into you from the outside in. This never works and makes you more deprived. It is idol worship, and special relationships. You cannot absorb God from any physical object, or get him on sale, or shove him down your throat, or make him give everything the ego wants to get.
To counteract the seeming absence of God in your sight you cannot try to look for God as if he's sitting out there on a rock. You have to look within, inside your mind, where you are connected at the inner altar, with your soul. That's where the unity with God is. You have to go there first. You have to plug into the light socket deep within. This is why Jesus repeatedly says in the course there is a place WITHIN you that is deeply at peace and filled with light.
Light bulbs don't shine by reaching out and grabbing ahold of light and taking it into themselves. They shine by plugging themselves into the power source and being in the light and then radiating it outwards. Only what you extend outward from within do you see or are aware of. So if you want to see love you have to find love within you first. If you want to see God in everything you see, in spite of everything you see, you have to find him in your mind, in your inner world.
If God appears to be outside, it is because he is inside, and there is no outside. If God does not appear to be outside, it's because you're lacking God on the inside. The lack of God outside has no bearing on causing God to go away or to make him appear. But whether you are in touch God on the inside makes all the difference. It is the only way to find God "outside" at all. Cause is INSIDE of you. God is cause. Effect is its extension or projection. Trying to find God (cause) by trying to love effects is backwards.
The course isn't really trying to get you to be one with the world, or to love it. It's trying to reunite you with God, within you, so that you can extend and create with him from the inside out. So that YOU are the love you keep trying to find in the world. What seems to be "external", including the body and planet, are not where God is. They were made from the idea of being outside of God's Kingdom in exile. They are the illusion of "not within you".
The world is just a picture of the lack of God ("a picture of the crucifixion of God's son"), a hallucination, a projected image of something being outside of or beyond your self, not contained within or included in what you are. And even though the course speaks of how the light of Christ is BEYOND the body and the world, as though on the OTHER side of its walls, as if you need to see THROUGH matter to see reality, it's really right here INSIDE you. It's here, and there. It's within you.
I used to think God was "out there" in the far distant reaches of the universe. Then I experienced him, and he was so intimately close he was literally under my skin and behind all my defenses against the world. God is here now, in your mind, in your soul. Inside of you. Underneath your defenses. Behind your walls. In the back of all your thoughts. Underneath your blocks. Beyond your denial. Deeper even than your own avoidance of inner self. Look for him without and you will be without him. But look for him within and the without will be filled with him.
What the course does do is push you to go deeper within. To get behind your clouds. To dig behind the darkness. To examine with deep honesty your innermost issues. To move beyond them into a complete alignment with your true self. To get under the blanket and snuggle up with God. To know that God goes with you, beside you, within you. To rest within. And to settle into his tranquil love. And all of this requires no movement away from his immediate presence, no seeking, and no loss.
I looked up at the night sky this evening and reached out to God a little, and Jesus corrected me, "he's not out there, he's inside." The path forward moves inward, which in truth seems to be backwards or the reversal of the world, that there may be an outward extension of what you find.
The body was made to put all your attention on what is external, its eyes looking always outward to seek for what is not there. This is why the inner vision of Christ is directed inward mentally, not outward. And only by going within can you see God again.
Here are Jesus's clear affirmations of this message... "Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the whole world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to these beliefs."
"As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me."
"Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. Your Father wills you hear His Word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today." "Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. He will be there. And you can reach Him now."
"And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One." "The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."
"Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined."
"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God"
"The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose, from YOUR relationship to others, to bring them gently IN, has already begun. This is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."
"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."
"The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."
"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."
"Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain."
"For perfect effectiveness, the chalice of the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the Separation, and restores the wholeness of the Spirit."
"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete."
"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"And what enables Him to SEE His purpose shine forth from every altar, now is yours as well as His."
"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."
"If you will recognize that ALL attack which you perceive, is in your own mind, and NOWHERE ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and where it began it must end. For in this place also lies salvation. The altar of God, where Christ abideth, is there."
"But Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. "
"We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him."
"Forgiveness sweeps away distortions, and opens the hidden altar to the truth. Its lilies shine into the mind, and call it to return and look within, to find what it has vainly sought without. For here, and only here, is peace of mind restored, for this the dwelling-place of God Himself."
"At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father, and becomes one with it."
"But the next step is to realize that a Temple is not a building at all. Its REAL holiness lies in the INNER altar, around which the building is built."
"It is not easy in the world to know what giving means, and how to give a gift that God and all creation will accept as shining outward from a thankful heart and inward to the altar of its God."
"God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it IS Holiness."
"Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard, when you place no other gods before Him."
"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father. Do not be afraid to look within."
"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God."
"Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."
"This is the true communion of the Spirit Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to YOUR appreciation calls upon you to love God and His Creation."
"This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, NOT in the Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY reality. It is PERFECTLY clear in its thought, because it is a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It SEES only brothers because it sees ONLY in its own Light."
"But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine."
"The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their altars are truly radiant."
"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle."
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"
"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."
"As this peace expands, from deep inside yourselves, to embrace ALL the Sonship"
"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."
"We are Creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us."
There is a risk of accepting the world. Because we have to be aware that our perception and beliefs have a lot to do with what we see in the world, or as the world.
If we are in ego and we believe the world is real, not an illusion, e.g. war is real, suffering is real, sickness is happening etc, and we try to "accept that", that's not going to work. Your belief in it as true and real will hold it in place and work against and effort to find peace about it. No one can ever find peace on the basis of believing the world's nightmares are reality. Trying to "adjust to" the world or accommodate it or "come to terms with it being shit" or "accepting that death happens" or trying to "die in peace" is all total ego bullshit.
We have to remember that whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you. The world is not real. If you accept it into your mind "as real", through an act of "trying to accept everything that happens", you're going to be stuck. Accepting appearances as true is not right mindedness. Accepting that there "really is war, but I'm okay with it" is not right mindedness. Accepting that "I am sick but I'm at peace with it" is a lie. Accepting "something died but it's ok" is not really acceptance.
The only thing that can be truly accepted is true reality. Only the truth is true. You can accept the atonement truth, God's truth, as being true and real. It is acceptable while being simultaneously compatible with peace, because nothing unreal exists. Recognizing the world is an illusion, there is NOT really war, there IS no sin or sickness or death, is what brings peace, not trying to "integrate" a nightmare into your peaceful mindset.
We should focus on overlooking what the world is, which is forgiveness. NOT seeing it from a perspective which shows it to us as though it's really there and happening. Because otherwise we're just falling into an illusion, have false perception, believe a dream is reality, and now are trying to "withdraw" into the mind to sit on a fence of "i need do nothing" and pretend that this is peace. It's an illusion of peace.
You can only find true peace by accepting that only God's Kingdom is reality, nothing unreal exists, the world does not exist, and this is "acceptable" to you. You allow the truth ABOUT the world to enter your mind and accept it. You don't allow the FORM of the world to enter your mind or accept it as anything but false. Acceptance goes hand in hand with agreement, which goes hand in hand with belief in what's true. So you have to be careful what you are trying to find acceptance about. Getting "comfortable" with suffering is not peace or awakening or spiritual.
"The world you see must be denied"