It is just a device with a single, fixed function. It does what it was designed to do, like a machine. It can't be upgraded or changed or transformed into something more spiritual.

Like an old car, the fact is, at some point you have to just admit that the car is old and broken and it's time to let it go. It simply can no longer provide the function that you want it to provide. The ego is the same.

When you realize that the ego is just a fixed device, that means that you know letting it go is the only way to be free of it. You actually have a choice of whether to USE the ego device or not.

The device itself does not have any power over you. It can't stop you. It can only do what it does. It can create the illusions it was designed to create, which you might be convinced by, and that may indeed "stop you", but if you recognize these illusions and see that they are just a part of this ego thing, and not your self, then your self is free to choose again - free to step aside, put the ego device down, and let it go.

The ego can do absolutely nothing about this. It cannot stop you from waking up. It cannot act against your will or against the function it was designed to fulfill. It can only do what the ego was meant to do, and that is to paint a picture which is false and to pretend that it is true. If you no longer have a USE for that, and no longer see any PURPOSE in it, and it is no longer what you WANT, you will just put it down and stop using it.

You are free to choose again. You are free to drop the ego entirely. There is no power in all of existence that can stop you. There is no-one and no alien will capable of preventing you from waking up. The ONLY person or will that seems able to stop you from waking up is YOU, and the only way you can act against yourself in that way is when you choose to keep USING the ego and to keep denying that you have total freedom, total power, total choice, and that you are not in any way a victim of this ego thing.

To admit the truth is to admit that the ego is nothing but something you were using for a purpose. To admit the truth is to admit that your sickness was only put in place by you on purpose to defend you against admitting to your freedom. To admit the truth is to admit your upset and anger and retaliation against the attacks of others was only there to serve the purpose of you getting rid of your belief in sin, which was part of your belief in the ego being real. And to admit the truth is to own up to and accept the fact that, in truth, YOU ARE NOT LIMITED OR BOUND BY ILLUSIONS.

Literally, no-one is keeping you asleep. No-one is stopping you from being with God. No-one is keeping you imprisoned. No-one has power over you. No-one can stop you. There is nothing you cannot do. YOU ARE FREE! To believe otherwise, to be bound by illusions, to be caused to die, to be sick and suffer, to be incapable of performing miracles, to be unable to manipulate any of the ego's illusions, is to continue to USE the ego and to fail to recognize the whole truth of what you are. You are not an illusion but a reality.

You are completely 100% free of the ego if you choose to be so. And then it has absolutely no power over you, this entire world is at your command, and you are immortal.

The soul, which is your self, your real identity, and your true nature, can be thought of like a piece of machinery in the engine of heaven - in the mind of God.

Given that the soul is WHAT YOU ARE, it's useful to know the operating perameters of yourself. What are you? What are you capable of? What can and can't you do? What are your limits? What are your design specifications?

God is the DESIGNER of the soul. He is the manufacturer. HE ALONE determines the design of your self, gives your self its function, assigns it its abilities, specifies what it can and cannot do, and guarantees that it will always function as HE WILLS IT.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

Your soul is like a machine. It serves a function. It plays a role. It is used by God for a purpose. It operates according to HIS RULES ONLY. "I am under no laws but God's."

This means that in the overall picture of heaven, YOU are designed by God for a specific FUNCTION. Your functionality includes certain FREEDOMS or abilities.

These freedoms are inherited or BASED ON God's abilities. God can only design what He can conceive of, and He can only use Himself as a reference. He designs you to be LIKE HIM, and to operate WITHIN the confines of HIS abilities.

Your functionality includes the ability to extend God, to create, to know, to love, to experience joy and happiness, to co-create further creations, and to increase the Kingdom.

There are also some things which YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DO. And thankfully these things are not things you'd WANT to be able to do. You cannot attack anything real. You cannot sin. You cannot hurt or be hurt. You cannot damage or be damaged. You cannot cause or experience any kind of sickness or suffering. And you cannot die.

God DID NOT GIVE YOU the ABILITY to sin, attack, suffer or die. You CANNOT DO THESE THINGS. You HAVE NEVER done these things. You WILL NEVER do these things.

In your design, you also have an INPUT and an OUTPUT. The INPUT to you is God Himself. You host Him. He plugs you into His power source and his light, and extends Himself to you. He POWERS your soul. He GIVES it life. It SUSTAINS it in His mind. AND, he also MAINTAINS YOUR FUNCTIONING AT ALL TIMES.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

God Inc's equipment therefore comes with a GUARANTEE. It is a lifetime guarantee. And in fact God creates such excellent quality equipment that it is guaranteed to FUNCTION CORRECTLY FOREVER. He Himself makes sure of this by designing the soul PERFECTLY, ensuring it never needs maintenance and cannot go wrong. God PROTECTS his equipment permanently and really get's behind his product.

Everything the soul machinery is able to do, is determined solely by God. He is THE ONLY designer. He is the cause of you. Anything you can or cannot do, any function you do or do not have, is by HIS WILL alone. You cannot add to yourself or take anything away. No-one else can add to take away either.

This means that your soul is FIXED in its functionality. It cannot change itself. It cannot redefine what it is. It cannot modify itself. It can only operate WITHIN the parameters it was given. So let's say that the soul is given certain FREEDOMS, such as the free will to create. It IS possible that the soul can potentailly MIS-USE its power to create, to mis-create, but it CANNOT give itself the power to CREATE REAL damage. It cannot cause REAL sin. It can ONLY create constructively.

The other thing about this is, that the soul should generally ACCEPT its design, its functioning, its place in the Kingdom, and its overall abilities. It is in its best interests to do so. But sometimes souls decide to rebel against their creator. They want to be something they can never be. They deny their inherent nature. They imagine they are something they are not, and that they can do things which they CANNOT ever do.

When this happens, the soul isn't going OUTSIDE of its limitations, but it is PRETENDING that it is. Because it DOES have the power to FREELY CHOOSE, and so can freely PRETEND through denial that it is NOT what it is. This produces a "shut-down" mode, aka spiritual sleep. In this mode, by denying itself, the soul is shutting itself down. And when it is asleep, it dreams of impossibilities that CANNOT be really happening.

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

The soul IS FREE to do this, because it can use its freedom against its freedom, which is a mis-use of its own abilities. It can try to use free will to NOT WILL ANYTHING, which is an obvious contradiction in terms. When the soul tries to CAUSE something it was NOT DESIGNED TO OUTPUT, it merely causes nothing real to output. And instead dreams of imaginary outputs that don't exist.

The soul has been set up to have OUTPUT parameters as well as INPUT parameters. It can PRODUCE certain "products". It can generate living beings. It can CREATE LIFE. It can radiate love. And it can share joy and peace. It can experience relationship with other similar soul machinery (brothers), made by the same manfacturer. And it can enjoy perfection forever.

When the soul believes it is able to output something which God DID NOT MAKE POSSIBLE, it imagines it is producing things which it cannot possibly produce. These would include the making of bodies, planets, worlds, space and time, illusions of sickness, all forms of suffering, and death. None of these are REAL outputs, they are wishful thinking.

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

When the soul does this, it is akin to a toaster oven believing it can wash your car, or a tv set believing it can cook dinner. It still remains IMPOSSIBLE, but the soul is free to use its freedom against itself to DENY its inherent functioning, and to PRETEND that other things are possible.

Since God did not give you THE EQUIPMENT FOR SIN... because your "soul 2000 model" did not COME WITH "the ability to sin" built in, it literally CANNOT DO IT. It can pretend to do it, but it cannot really do it. It can only dream of sinning, and never really attack any thing real. Just as your vacuum cleaner cannot bake cookies."Nothing real can be threatened."

God did not give you the ABILITY to threaten anything real. He did not BUILD IN a FUNCTIONALITY that can in any way CAUSE suffering. He did not provide you the equipment or parts to PRODUCE death. You cannot undermine your perfect functioning. You cannot make yourself malfunction. You cannot interfere with your inner workings. YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE AND NOTHING ELSE.

"I am still as God created me."

For the sake of what we'll call your SANITY, or operating in your soul in the WAY IT WAS INTENDED, without running amok and going haywire with UNPRODUCTIVE distorted outputs, it is in your best interests to ACCEPT YOUR FUNCTION. This means not having grandiose ideas of BEING SOME OTHER EQUIPMENT. It means not being jealous of the GOD MACHINE. It means not wanting to REJECT YOUR NATURE. And it means therefore the end of the authority problem.

You can't experience the EFFORTLESSNESS that God gave you, while you are trying to DISTORT your function. You cannot BE YOURSELF, while you are denying what you are. And you cannot be CONTENT or AT PEACE, while you are trying to turn yourself into something YOU WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE. This means a willingness to ACCEPT your design specifications, without question, as GOOD ENOUGH. And this isn't some kind of second-best or booby prize either, because God creates perfect machinery!

The willingness to BE ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, to accept only the function THAT WAS GIVEN YOU, to fulfill the ROLE that God assigned to you, and to ONLY BE, HAVE, AND DO, that which God WILLED for you to do IN YOUR CREATION, is what re-aligns you with God's will and enables you to FUNCTION correctly. Or rather, to not disguise your true function with artificial functions.

This means having a willingness to accept FROM GOD, the specifications of WHAT YOU ARE. To allow ONLY HIM to define the TRUTH about you. To let him be YOUR FATHER. To let him be the one that decides WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO. And to acknowledge that you ARE EXACTLY HOW HE WANTS YOU TO BE. When you line up with this, and be ONLY this, and have ONLY what God gave you, and DO only what God willed for you, without objection, only then will you be happy and at peace and free from illusions.

To accept "the atonement" is merely to RECEIVE the ORIGINAL BLUEPRINT from the manufacturer. To be willing to ACCEPT that you ARE ONLY what God has designed you to be, and to function optimally within his parameters. To WANT nothing else, and to cease the MIS-USE of your function. You thus RESUME your function of creation and merely carry on as if nothing had happened.

Nothing can change what you are. You cannot change yourself. You cannot change other people's souls. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING AGAINST GOD'S WILL. You have not exceeded your operating parameters. You have not BROKEN, gone downhill, degraded, corrupted, caused unnatural side effects or damaged anything. YOU CANNOT SIN OR ATTACK OR DIE. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG.

You therefore are still exactly the innocent, perfect, holy, acceptable, worthy, beautiful, loving, harmless, immaculate, immortal, eternal, happy, joyful, powerful, free, flawless and completely divine piece of machinery that GOD CAUSED YOU TO BE. Just by being TRUE TO YOURSELF, knowing yourself, and BEING YOUR SOUL, you need do nothing else.

All that God wants for you is to be true to yourself and fulfill the NATURAL INHERENT FUNCTION he gave you. And since that function includes happiness and joy, it is a function you WILL approve of.

"All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.

On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.

What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?

What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?

Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.

This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.

A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.

A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.

All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.

The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.

Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.

Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.

You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.

Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.

Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.

At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.

At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.

And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.

And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.

So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.

So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.

So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.

What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.

And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-135.13)" - ACIM

It's all for the best.

As I see it now, guilt isn't just some little emotion you have only some of the time, in certain situations. The way Jesus presents it, ANY amount of separation produces guilt.

As soon as you separate, you are asserting a desire to not share. This means you want to take from others and have what they lack. This selfishness brings with it automatic guilt, based on the knowing that you have deprived someone and caused them to suffer.

Similarly as soon as you attack, you are asserting that you want someone else to not have something. You are attacking an innocent being, which induces guilt. Any desire to separate from another in any way is an attack and will foster guilt in the mind. Seeing yourself as not at-one with them will make you guilty for having pushed them away.

Jesus also describes attack as being another word for sin, and another word for sin is also insanity, which is a split mind. Any amount of separation whatsoever produces a spit mind which believes in sin, is attacking, and therefore is inducing guilt.

It's not as if you are just innocent most of the time and then you only feel guilty if you specifically attack someone on a specific day. You are ALWAYS IN GUILT so long as you are in separation. So long as your mind is split, there is guilt. So long as you deny God, there is guilt.

Guilt is a universal guilt, a systemic system-wide guilt, a side-effect of separation. If there is any separation at all, to any degree, or the mind is in any way divided or split or attacking, it MUST produce a guilty state. Such attacks are sin, and all sin demands guilt and punishment.

So in fact, for example, you being body identified, is a guilt-inducing state. Believing you do not share an identity with other people will produce guilt. Seeing someone as a body induces guilt. Having any lack of oneness whatsoever produces guilt.

This has to be the case because, as Jesus says, the ego depends on guilt.

"Only the ego can feel guilty."

"Without guilt there is no ego."

This means that fundamentally, if you are IN separation you are IN guilt and are being ego. If you are NOT separate there is no ego and there is no guilt. That has to mean that the guilt accompanies the separation. Where there is separation THERE IS guilt, and you cannot have separation without it.

To undo guilt you must transcend all separation, and only upon doing so do you undo the ego. And until you do so, you will feel guilty because you still have an ego that attacks. To be separated off is to be guilty, to be a body is to be guilty, and to see yourself as not your brother is to be guilty.

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"You WILL feel guilty 'til you learn this. For, in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's Mind with ALL OF YOURS."

"And you WILL feel guilty for this imagined "crime," which no one in this world, or Heaven, CAN POSSIBLY commit."

"And who, BECAUSE he wishes to attack, can FAIL to think it MUST be guilty, to DESERVE the wish and leave HIM innocent? And who would see the Son of God as innocent, and wish him dead?"

"Are YOU a sin? You answer "yes" WHENEVER you attack, for BY attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve."

"You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy."

"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt."

"You are NOT guiltless in time, but IN ETERNITY."

Seeing yourself as deprived makes you perceive others as taking from you, and that you don't have enough left to give.

For example when I'm having some emotional release/healing, maybe I cried and I'm tired and crabby and feeling vulnerable. Maybe I'm not totally past it all yet and still am feeling whatever the lack is - lack of love, lack of peace, whatever... I'll see myself as being quite 'in need', i.e. needy.

When I see myself this way, I start to perceive everyone else as being needy too. Even if they're not. I'll perceive they're trying to take from me or demand something of me that I can't supply. I'll feel put upon and taxed and offended by the demand I see in them.

And especially if the other person is in a state of need themselves, it'll trigger anger that someone is so insensitively expecting something from me when I apparently don't have anything to give. I see them as trying to 'take take take'.

But what's really happening is I'm seeing myself - the demand in them is ME demanding FROM them. So I'm needy AND demanding, stating that I do not have what I need and someone else needs to give it to me. (Secret side-tip: although I'm saying I am in need and want to GET from others, I secretly do NOT want to get because then I would't be able to see myself as needy).

I'm the one who is actually trying to 'take take take'. I'm trying to GET, in order to make up for the lack that I perceive in myself. I'm accusing other people of trying to take because they're thwarting MY effort to take.

So as I see myself deprived and lacking, it's because I believe I don't have enough love. I believe the love is not in me and that I need to get it from someone else. So if they fail to give it, or if they demand it from ME, then I am left totally empty-handed with no way to resolve my problem, and that produces fear and anger... A sense that 'I can't and I won't... which often is in the form of a lot of reluctance or resistance or, comedically, "I can't take it anymore" (when secretly I am taking big-time).

But the thing is, seeing myself as deprived is actually the CAUSE of my perceiving a sense of lack of love, which led to the feeling of neediness, which led to the drama of being pressured to give what I don't have to needy people.

So an antidote for this... if I'm seeing myself as needy, and realizing it, is simply this:

Give love.

IMMEDIATELY this cancels out and dissolves all trace of a sense of neediness, all trace of not having enough, all trace of anger and reason for fear or resentment.

I'll be honest, I've only remember this a couple of times in real situations. One of them was just now. As soon as I suddenly remembered (after asking Holy Spirit to help) that my neediness is making me try to 'get' because I am seeing myself as deprived, it made me LAUGH. Because it introduces truth at the root of this bullshit and immediately corrected all of the EFFECTS.

I have to learn to remember this more often. When I feel shit and like I am deprived and don't have anything to give and don't want to give..... the way I am feeling is BECAUSE I don't want to give, not the other way around.

I choose to position myself as unloved and in need, which creates feelings of deprivation, which leads to the whole drama. If I choose NOT to see myself unloved by SHARING love (remember giving and receiving are both required, not sacrifice or greed), the whole problem is corrected.

And then, now that I've accepted healing of the actual problem - a lack of love - I can now give love and FULFILL the needs of others, which in fact then disappear, because they were never really needy to begin with. I was just seeing my own neediness projected.

Problem solved.

Time to get your mind out of the gutter?

"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."

Jesus refers to you having a lower mind and a higher mind. The lower mind, or the place where you have a "thought system" of spacetime and ego, arose in the separation from God.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity."

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

The lower mind, or egoic false perception, tends to look at things in a narrow, hateful, judgemental way. It's kind of like the mind is coming at the things it seems from a "lower" vantage point, down on the landscape or battlefield. What we need is a "higher" vantage point which "overlooks" ("To forgive is to overlook") and sees with love.

Forgiveness, or being forgiving, is a gift given by the Holy Spirit. It's a true-perception viewpoint that looks from a high vantage point of holiness, harmlessness, innocence and love. The Holy Spirit sees with Christ Vision, and looks upon everything correctly, ie based on God's truth and love.

We might spend a lot of time trying to figure out "how to forgive", which is really the lower mind trying to stay in control. Instead, consider that we simply need to join with the Holy Spirit. We need to not simply ask for his help, but invite him in. We need to allow him to operate on us, and to help us to share in how he is seeing things.

That means getting your mind to see what and how he is seeing. Your mind has to experientially, not in theory, actually "shift" or move into a higher position, in which you receive the Holy Spirit's healing vision. In which you allow yourself to BE forgiven and to see with HIS forgiveness. A forgiveness that is GIVEN you, rather than one you keep trying to make yourself.

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

Notice how it says that overlooking guilt - in which to forgive is to overlook - means that forgiving must entail letting HIM forgive, and simply trying to line your mind up with his to be open to entering into, joining with, and experiencing, his sight. A little willingness is all that is needed to invite him to help, and to ask for his viewpoint, not to merely hand it down to you but to actually orient yourself so that you let his perspective become your own. Such that God's will becomes your own.

Also, although this is not stated often, forgiveness is the same thing as love. A forgiving perspective is a loving perspective. The mind has to be willing to want a HIGHER way to look at things.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

Part of our challenge is we often do not recognize that we're in need of moving into a higher perspective. We are stuck and lost in our lower ego mind having false perceptions, which act like prisons and traps, and may not even realize that we're doing it. We think it's normal and don't question it. But we need to try to be vigilant and notice what we're doing, when we're being unforgiving, when we're going it alone, and when we need to ask for help.

The holy spirit is there to help you. God created him entirely TO help you, to heal you, to guide you, and to love and support you. You can't very well move closer to God without sharing in his mindset, his viewpoint, and his higher perception. But to move into it you have to be willing to let go of attack and sin and guilt and death. To be wiling to admit, you might be mistaken, you might've made a wrong choice, and you want something better. The only thing that is ever better is something closer to God.

"While I am not attacking your egos, I AM working with your higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, (just as your ego does with your lower mind.)"

A lot of people interpret forgiveness to be some kind of process you do to fix your mind.

But ACIM seems to say something different. For example:

"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears."

So, hang on a minute. Joe Smith doing ACIM thinks he's "doing forgiveness", and has a little procedure he practices and tries to take back projections and undo judgements and so on and he thinks he is forgiving. But ACIM say, ONLY Christ forgives. So isn't Joe's ego claiming to be doing forgiveness?

Forgiveness is actually the state of TRUE perception, which is the end goal of the course, and not exactly something that someone is in white they're undertaking the course, especially not in earlier stages.

How about the fact that we're also told that forgiveness is a form of LOVE ... how often do you hear people saying that forgiveness is the SAME thing as love? Hardly ever. But full maximal love is quite a highly advanced spiritual state. Forgiveness and love are basically the same thing, but who ever describes forgiveness as love?

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

Then we're also told that it is perhaps not even our FUNCTION at this point to forgive. For example:

"The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

So we're being asked not to take over the Holy Spirit's function of forgiving. And it even suggests that in terms of us being forgiven, it is not US that forgives ourselves. More to the point, it says that we ARE forgiven already - as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, and our work is more to do with acceptance of this truth rather than the production of this truth. WE don't put forgiveness in place!

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

Essentially, forgiveness is a final state of true perception which is the same thing as accepting atonement and achieving salvation and resurrection. It isn't a step along a path. It isn't a process or procedure or technique. It's the end result natural state of a healed mind that is loving, and BE's FORGIVING toward everything. It is the nature of a loving mind expressing and relating from love with love.

When you're IN that state of mind you are being one with Christ, and with the Holy Spirit, which is why you then can claim to "be forgiving." But really until you reach that state, and you're still in false perceptions trying to undo your hell, what you're DOING isn't really forgiveness.

What if every reference to forgiveness in the course is a reference to the END STATE, and not a process?

What if we're being asked to "practice forgiveness" only in the sense of trying to get ourselves TO the state of forgiveness? And what if we should not be calling that practice "forgiveness", but rather perhaps - purification, or mind training? Or accepting that we've been forgiven already?

I think the term forgiveness has been rather hijacked by a lot of people, students and teachers alike. It really refers to the purified state of miracle mindedness, whole perception, true perception, a healed mind and heart, a state filled with love, identified with Christ, and the perfect enlightened recognition that there is nothing LEFT to be forgiven - that only innocence exists.

We can practice moving toward that state as our goal, but what we're doing to get there must not take over the Holy Spirit's function or presume that we are "being forgiving" when all that we're doing are a few basic steps to reclaim slightly less insanity. Forgiveness is really on the level of miracle working.

"Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others."

Forgiveness that is not COMPLETE forgiveness is not really forgiveness. COMPLETE forgiveness immediately BE's forgiving toward everything without need for thought or practice or procedure or technique. It is loving relationship.

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."

"And that, in COMPLETE forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, YOU are absolved completely."

"Remember that you who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness."

"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

Let's redefine forgiveness, to be less about me fixing up what I'm projecting or trying to fix my own suffering, and more to do with whether I am GIVING love or not. Let's think of it not JUST as a going-within, a taking back of projections, a taking of responsibility, and a claiming of atonement for ourselves, and recognize it ALSO entails a GIVING outward, an expression of love, a healing force, and a resurrection of OTHERS.

Therefore it is actually a "forgiveness process" to GIVE LIFE to others, to not only see them correctly, but to RESTORE them to wholeness by giving them love. By working a miracle for them and providing a SERVICE. That is forgiveness, not just sitting on a fence passively looking at someone with a smile, or trying to solely find peace for yourself. That is selfish.

Atonement is about sharing, in which giving and receiving are one, and you can't have one without the other. To receive but not give is not atonement. To bring darkness to the light but not bring light to the darkness is not atonement. You cannot exclusively receive atonement UNLESS you are willing to GIVE it. It HAS to be given otherwise you cannot receive it.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

To forgive is to HEAL, both yourself AND the other. Both the giver AND the receiver benefit. It is not about you exclusively doing this for yourself, it is much more to do with SHARING and including. Restoring your brother to health SO THAT you can also be restored to health. Giving love SO THAT you can receive love. You cannot have anything unless you give it. And the resurrection of your brother is YOUR salvation.

Forgiveness is not about being selfish, or trying only to resolve your own issues, or attempting to find peace just for yourself. You cannot have peace in isolation. You cannot be happy while you ee yourself as separate from others.

You cannot experience love if the love is not going OUT. One part of our work is to uncover our blocks to the light within, SO THAT the light can SHINE outward and be given to others. You are not a lightbulb in a box, you are meant to be seen and received. You are a GIFT to others, and your healing is one with theirs. You are a gift to your brother that God has given to be shared.

If you exclude your brother from the healing, if you do not give them love, if you do not see THEIR salvation as part of your own, then you are not being forgiving. Forgiveness is not one-sided or exclusive or about just you.

It's not a question of "how do I forgive", it's about "how do I forgive FOR US." It's about you giving to the whole sonship, and participating in the great crusade to resurrect EVERYONE. How can YOU find peace if others are not at peace? How can YOU be healed without the healing of your brothers?

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."

"So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

I choose to be afraid.

I project the fear outward and identify targets that are causing the fear.

The existence of these targets 'explains why' I am afraid.

Explaining why I'm afraid justifies and proves why I am afraid, and gives it extra weight, making it real.

I then say, oh my, I'm afraid, I don't want those targets to attack me. But this is a two-faced ego lie.

I want to see them attacking me because it justifies keeping my fear. I want them to make me afraid. And until I stop identifying them as the cause or 'reason for' the fear, I will just stay afraid.

The truth is, there is a secret reason for the fear which has nothing to do with who or what it is projected onto. They are not the cause of it. They are not the ones who are creating it or making it happen.

I am secretly making it happen by trying to defend myself from God. My secret wish is to be separate from God and to deny that God exists. My secret wish is a suicidal death-wish in which I want death in place of Life. That's the whole reason why I'm in a body - to escape from God.

So every time I become afraid of 'something', that's not really what I'm afraid of or why I'm in fear. I'm in fear because I am conveniently using them as a scapegoat for why I NEED to be afraid. I want to NEED fear because I NEED fear to separate me from God and fulfill my hidden agenda.

The people or events or objects or body functions that are 'making me afraid' are very conveniently HELPING me to reject God. Thank you, fears, for helping me to stay separate and choose death, exactly as I wanted.

See, underneath the farce of projected fear, there is a death wish. And that death wish wouldn't be there if I did not WANT it. I wanted it because it was my CHOICE. I CHOSE that I wanted the opposite of God and did not want Life. It was a decision I made. So the only reason I am now afraid is because I want to be because it's helping to support my underlying death wish.

Can I be afraid if I get honest and own up to using fear to cover up MY deliberate attempt to be dead? Can I believe that other people are causing the fear if I get honest and own up to the fact that I want them to help me justify keeping the fear, so that I can shut out love and be autonomous?

I have to admit that fear is a choice, just as death is a choice. And it's ME that is doing it TO MYSELF. This is the key to salvation.

I can decide I do not like what I have chosen for myself and admit that I chose it - it was not created by anyone else or anything else - and nothing else is keeping it in place other than my secret wish for death. Do I like the results? Do I want it? Shall I keep it? Is it working out? Am I enjoying the results? Probably not.

Maybe it's time I admit that I chose mistakedly and it was a poor choice, and that I want something better. Maybe I'll admit that it is pointless to deny God because it doesn't make God go away, and being without Him is always going to be a less enjoyable experience. I can be stubborn about it or I can give up trying to be dead and ACCEPT LIFE instead.

We do have this choice. We make this life-or-death decision every single time we choose ego over God.

The good news then, is, since we were the ones choosing death and fear, we can choose again and choose not to be dead. Yes, death is a CHOICE. If I choose to accept LIFE then I will permit eternal life to lift me up and sustain me forever. There is nothing 'the ego' can do to prevent this because the ego is nothing more than my insane mistaken choice to try to reject God.

So what's it going to be today? Life or death? You choose.

I'll give you a hint. Death actually isn't death, it's just a dream of death, which is just denial. It doensn't actually do anything to the Real You. YOU can't die. So trying to do so is a waste of time.

Give up. Surrender. Choose God again and be happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIFE DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT GOD.

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

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

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

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

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

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