Catchy title eh.

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.

"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."

The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.

At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.

You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.

All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.

This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.

So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.

Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.

"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."

By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.

You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."

But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.

But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.

Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.

These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.

Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."

"The worlds nothing that I want."

The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."

"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."

"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

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

"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

"My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else."

"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."

"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

"My salvation comes from me."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."

"Salvation comes from my One Self.

Its Thoughts are mine to use."

"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains

Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan

For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."

"My salvation comes from me."

"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."

Above the physical universe there is another dimension, another universe, operating on an entirely different mindset, and with a clarity about what is real and what is not.

From that universe, everything that is happening on the physical Earth is recognized as completely illusory. The Earth is known to be completely unreal and just a dream. It is known that everything that seems to happen here is made up, not really happening, and not to be taken seriously at all.

It is also known from that higher universe that the physical universe is very good at deceiving you, because it shows you seemingly visible stuff that happens, stuff that goes wrong, people that get hurt, accidents that seem to happen and so on. And from that higher universe everyone knows that when you're in it, unless you've maintained perfect access to the awareness of the higher universe, you will easily be fooled by the Earth's illusions.

The folk up there also know that the physical Earth paints a picture of things happening that aren't happening, and that every single part of physical matter is designed to deceive. And just as Jesus says in ACIM "nothing so blinding as sight of form", they know that the entire physical experience was designed, on purpose, to APPEAR AS IF what happens there is real. But it's not.

So the real challenge you have, as you visit the physical Earth, is that you're going to be totally BOMBARDED with signals from outside of you, perceptions, which seem to show you pictures and forms of things happening, things going wrong, people getting damaged, people dying etc. And these are going to seem really convincing. But you need to remember this one key thing and hold it so firmly to your chest that you never waver from it:

DO NOT BELIEVE ANY OF IT.

There is nothing happening on the Earth, period. Anything that appears to be happening is not real. Anything that appears to happen can be changed and undone. And anything that seems to happen is not permanent. So while you visit Earth and you think, well, it's a lovely place, and stuff just happened, and yes its real, and I believe in it, and here are the effects, and here's the proof, etc..... know you've lost your mind! You've been fooled. You fell for the illusion. And to get out of it you're going to have to re-learn through forgiveness to SEE in an entirely different way, a way that lets you see through the illusion and not believe it at all.

None of the rules of this physical world apply. None of them are real laws. Only God's laws are real. And God's laws defy absolutely every physical law known to man. That's why the application of God's laws appear to be miracles. But really a miraculous existence is entirely natural. The folks up above know this. And we can return to this awareness too as we learn that this physical world doesn't even exist at all.

If your ultimate, completely long-term goal was to awaken to truth and return to God, and you knew that ultimately nothing could hurt you because you are Immortal Spirit, you would be COMPLETELY okay with WHATEVER is necessary in order to accomplish that goal.

And that does mean literally anything. If you knew that the most important thing in your entire existence is to return to being with God, then you would 'okay' a lifetime in which you suffer terribly, have horrible diseases, are attacked endlessly, treated unfairly, and end up dying. You would sign on the dotted line - yes please, I'll go through this.

And the only reason you'll allow and agree to this, is because you can see ahead of time, what the experience is going to be like but, most importantly, WHAT IT WILL LEAD TO. And because you want what it will lead to - an increase in spiritual growth, an increase in awakening, learning to be more loving, growing your heart or the hearts of others, IF you could be shown that ahead of time, you would be like... yes, that's going to be a painful lesson but the end result is WORTH IT.

This is how we initially set out to become victims in this world. We go through this process before we are born. We evaluate with help, what we want to LEARN, and what is going to be required in order to learn it. And sometimes the requirements or 'stimuli' that will provoke learning may not be necessarily pleasant. And that's a very light way of putting the fact, that we literally choose to suffer in terrible ways, IF it will lead ultimately to awakening.

Then we come into the world and really bad shit happens. Really really bad shit. And it seems terrible. And initially we don't understand because we have this amnesia, on purpose, shutting out awareness of WHY this is happening. But the whole point of that amnesia is so that we can learn and become aware of WHY... so that we can become empowered, so that we can grow stronger, and so that we can ultimately WAKE UP.

In that light, victims are not victims. There are no victims. There are only choices, agreed-to scripts, and purposeful events. Everyone who is to meet will meet. Every thing that is meant to happen will happen. And everyone will ultimately wake up. And everyone will know that it was all worth it, especially given that NONE of this stuff was even real anyway.

You always have free will. Your mind always has the power to change anything. Your thoughts influence the body and the world. You can change your relationships at any time. You are not tied down in a rollercoaster ride as a passive observer of some prerecorded movie.

That said, there is an atonement plan. Sometimes referred to as a "script". But beware this term, because a script is not a performance. It's an outline of arranged proposed situations and encounters and happenings which is still partly open-ended so that it's up to the individual actors how they operate within that loose framework.

In course terms for example "those who are to meet will meet", because they have the POTENTIAL for a holy relationship, but may or may not use it for a holy relationship. People are brought together in ideal teaching/learning dynamics, to learn lessons and so on, but not so that they are forced or coerced or have no say in the matter. Everything is always consensual.

Now, consider that the course says "I place the future in the hands of God." And consider also that "those who are to meet will meet." Consider also that the time of your awakening is set, and the Holy Spirit gently orchestrates all events in order to lead to you eternal life. There is a curriculum, but the time you take it is up to you. There are also no accidents in salvation.

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

"Therefore, the plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. They are ready for each other."

If you recognize that the Holy Spirit has a big-picture plan, and you WILL meet those that you are meant to meet, there is a DEGREE of predetermination in your future. Your life path and mission in this lifetime, your lessons that you agreed to before you incarnated, also play a part.

"Your passage through time and space is not random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time. Such is the strength of God. Such are His gifts."

So through God's strength, and through the Holy Spirit's atonement plan, various things are "set" to occur, various encounters are going to happen, various people are going to be met, and you are going to arrive at certain lessons.

After all, imagine if it had been designed that you were meant to meet the love of your life and get married for a long term relationship .. but through some randomly chaotic pointless bullshit you did not meet that person and did not experience any of the lessons you were supposed to experience with that person. God doesn't leave things up to such chance when the relationship is carefully chosen as a perfect balance conducive to learning.

If it's in the plan for you to meet a person, you WILL meet them. The dream events will be arranged and manipulated by Holy Spirit and Jesus, even rearranging space and time, in order to make sure that the encounter happens. The dream is malleable and the world is not objectively real. It is easy for them to steer events, inspire thoughts, create impulses and inspirations, and directly alter the world, to nudge everything in its right direction so that the plan does happen.

This doesn't mean you're totally stuck or that you have to go along with something or that you will even necessarily learn from it if you choose not to. It doesn't mean your freedom is taken away or that you can't influence anything, or that even your thoughts are predestined to the extent that you have no power at all. You are always a willing participant, a student, who is simply going through an agreed-to obstacle course of consentual happenings so that you MIGHT make progress.

What this does mean then is that you should recognize that there are going to be some things happening in your future which are "planned". There are some people that you are going to meet. There are some events which are going to transpire. As though the universe itself is colluding to make sure things unfold as they are supposed to.

That being the case, if it's true that you are scheduled to meet certain people and do certain things and experience certain lessons, then you should relax and TRUST that this is for your highest good. You should "go with the flow" and recognize that you ARE always in the right place at the right time, and you are where God "wants" you to be. That you are being guided, prompted and gently manoeuvred by loving hands to put you in touch with the right encounters at the right time, for the purpose of atonement.

And in seeing this, you can then cease a lot of the egoic behaviours. Such as trying to plan everything, trying to figure out what to do, fantasizing about who you might meet or what they might be like, trying to make all decisions on your own, trying to predict what's going to happen, and trying to run the whole show yourself. You can put the future into the hands of God and let him orchestrate your life.

You have to therefore make room for God and for his plan, to not interfere with it, and instead to be a willing participant in the happenings. Going where you are directed, performing the miracles you are instructed to perform, learning the lessons that have been carefully designed for you, and so on.

It means letting go of all the tight control and fear and resistance against what's happening. You are where you are because you're supposed to be, and there are people you are going to meet whether you think you will or not. You can't mess this up, unless you want to interfere with it. And you are always free to procrastinate.

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination."

So ultimately yes, there is a certain kind of destiny, a plan, a script, to help organize your life and passage through spacetime, for the highest purpose. But at no point are you forced against your freedom to have be stuck or having no wiggle room. There is always room for your own freedom to express itself. And indeed it is always up to you to determine what you make of it.

Ultimately this leads to the reawakening of your true freedom, your unlimited power, and at that point you don't need a script anymore. But you will be of service to spirit, following the will of God and doing the Holy Spirit's work in the world while it's needed.

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."|

"I place the future in the hands of God."

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Everyone who is sent to you is a patient of yours."

"And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you."

There is the me that seems to be 'in here' in the body, who I believe is innocent and did not ask for this sorry treatment.

Then there is the me that seems to be 'out there' which somehow is in someone else's body, and therefore I believe it is not me at all, and that self is attacking the self that I think remains as me, within.

What's really going on is that both the me out there and the me in here are two parts of my one mind. My mind, itself, is at war with itself. This is the ego split-mind, based in duality and separation. It is two-faced.

The me that is in-here, my persona self, is the part of me that wants to retain and keep something, rejecting everything else.

The me that is 'out there', my shadow self, is the projected (but still within my own mind, since ideas leave not their source) part of me that I do not want. Therefore that self seems to be separated off behind a wall of disassociation.

I perceive that projected shadow self as "not me" and that I want nothing to do with it. I don't identify with it and I believe it is someone else. It is what I do not want. I see it as 'my' enemy, but really I am seeing it with my persona who loves to isolate the 'good bits' to my 'in here' self, and keep the 'bad bits' relegated to the 'out there' self.

I project my shadow self onto other people and since I believe that this shadow self is 'not me', not my persona-me, I believe that it must belong to other people. I believe it must be a part of them. I believe THEY must be the ones who are attacking me, they are the ones who are offensive, they are the ones who are my enemy.

The stronger becomes this sense of 'separation' between the in-here me and the out-there me, ie me vs 'other selves', which I experience hallucinatorily as other people, the stronger and deeper that rift becomes and the more 'I' am at war with those enemy selves, the more I disassociate my identity from that shadow self - the part of me that I hate and reject. And it seems I am now an enemy of that other person, but they are really me - I am an enemy of myself.

While this disassociation is in place, it will seem to me that the other self that is 'out there', which houses everything that is wrong and ugly and unwanted and guilty and evil and deadly, has nothing to do with me at all. I will want to get away from it, reject it, escape it, and run from its threat. I don't want to accept that it is a part of myself.

But what I must do if I want healing, is I must recognize that all of the projected guilt/sin/attack that I see as 'not myself', or as 'someone else's stuff', ALL of it is mine. That content is part of and inside of my own mind. See, I think my mind is only inside my body and that my mind stops at the edges of my body. It doesn't. My mind 'in here', as it perceives what is 'out there', and as it thinks about stuff 'out there', is actually out there as well. And it's not possible for my mind to perceive that there even IS an 'out there' without my mind being in some way out there too. And everything I experience, even the out there stuff, is really encapsulated by my whole mind, like a container. My body, other people's bodies. It's me.

So if I want to heal, I'm going to have to realize that in all cases where I think someone else is wrong or at fault, I am just conveniently disassociating from MY OWN self-attack, which I am seeing as 'not me' because I don't want it, and I've seen it overlaid on top of 'people' out there. It's nothing to do with them. They are ALL INNOCENT. There is not really anything out there. It's all my own mind, parts of my mind, that I don't want to look at.

To heal, I am going to have to look at this content that I think is in other people, and I'm going to have to take back responsibility for it. I'm going to have to take back the 'power' that I think it has over me, which is really my own power within my own mind. And I'm going to have to admit that the stuff I want to get rid of, that is stuff within my mind not outside of it. There is no outside to my mind! It's all inside me. And I need to therefore heal the rift between the persona-me, in here, which only wants to keep the good stuff, and the shadow me that I project, which is seemingly out there and that I do not want to accept.

I can't accept the shadow stuff or the persona stuff while they remain separate. While separate, there is war. I have to realize they are BOTH ME and cease the belief in the *SEPARATION* that is between them. That is the key. I am doing this to myself because I am both parts of my mind, the inner and the outer. I am the enemy I perceive. I need to forgive myself and undo this rift, this split mind, between what is approved-of in me and what is not approved of in me.

It is keeping these parts of my own mind held apart and separate that brings on all sickness, all conflict, all war, all upset, and death. Reclaiming ownership of the entire scenario, the inner and the outer, they become one. I see them both as me operating two personalities that are against each other, and yet both of them are within me. Therefore.... I am something else. I am not either of them. I am awareness. I am the personality. I am the one mind.

Wholeness. Peace.

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.

There is only one curriculum. It is God's curriculum. It applies to EVERYONE, no matter how awake or asleep or in what walk or life or following what religion, even people who have never heard of A Course in Miracles. There is a difference between ACIM - the book, the course - and "the universal curriculum", which applies to everyone, book or not.

The curriculum is REQUIRED, in that there is only ONE truth, and every single soul has to find their way TO that one truth eventually. The truth is non-negotiable. "The time you take it is voluntary", and you can go closer and retreat and get lost and come back again etc but generally speaking "the truth" is the curriculum that you need to learn, ie the atonement, and either you learn it or you avoid it for a while, but *everyone* HAS to learn it. Because it's God's guarantee that you WILL wake up from dreaming.

God's ANSWER to the separation, which includes ALL PEOPLE, is the Holy Spirit, who he created AS the answer. Not just a bunch of information. Not just some "optional path". He is IN YOUR MIND as a spirit being, and he forms the Christ Mind, which ALL souls share. It is *IMPOSSIBLE* to be awakened and to exclude the Holy Spirit. The truth that you learn, true perception, IS HIS perception. You can only "learn it", by joining YOUR perception with HIS and aligning with His way of seeing. There is NO OTHER way, other than the ego's.

So essentially the Holy Spirit, sooner or later, is going to form a relationship with you, you are going to develop trust, you're going to open up to Him and work with Him. He is your TEACHER. Jesus also calls him "the only therapist", due to His position of knowing the truth. There is only one truth no matter who you are.

This applies to all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindu folk, you name it. The Holy Spirit is *unavoidable* in the curriculum process. Indeed Jesus says that you must learn to join your mind with His and SHARE His mind. You cannot avoid Jesus either. And that's probably something that might piss off some people following the FORM of other paths. That is why Jesus CORRECTLY and truthfully said, "I am the way the truth and the light and no one comes to the father but by me."

Additionally, though some will not like this fact either, being a miracle worker is a God-given right and *completely natural* for anyone who is joining with the Holy Spirit's thought system and waking up to the truth. Removal of blocks to awareness releases or rather stops interfering with miracles, and "miracle working" becomes your natural profession. As Jesus says also, once you accept the atonement you become PART OF the atonement plan and then you PROFESS HIM... ie express Him, because "atonement is the natural profession of the children of God." And that applies to ALL SOULS, no matter how ACIM-oriented you seem to be right now.

The fact is that as you approach the truth and merge with love etc, you WILL, MUST, CANNOT AVOID, becoming miraculous. It is your nature. God created you miraculously and you are miraculous forever. And so you WILL perform miracles as part of your function of healing on Earth. Anyone who "doesn't like" the idea of performing miracles FOR OTHERS (professing Jesus) is going to run into a roadblock at some point because miracles are NATURAL and *EVERYONE* is supposed to be doing them.

So long story short, the curriculum is not optional, nor is becoming intimate with Holy Spirit, nor is having a direct relationship with Jesus, nor is miracle working. This is why Jesus also says you MUST join the great crusade with Him as an active worker. It's not even something you would want NOT to do. It's a given. Part of the metaphysics. You become part of the atonement PLAN which goes far beyond yourself and helps others.

So all this stuff IS MANDATORY. You can, however, avoid it. You can be in denial of it. You can try to reject it. You can refuse to accept it. But it does not change the facts or the truth. At some point, everyone is going to return to God through the universal curriculum. They MIGHT not necessarily do it through the FORMAT of "A Course in Miracles", the book, with the lessons etc... they MIGHT come to it through what SEEM like "other paths", but no matter the appearance of the path, it is ALL part of God's curriculum for awakening, which MUST include the Holy Spirit, joining with ALL brothers including Jesus, and taking lessons to learn the SAME truth as everyone.

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

Jesus tells us ..... we do not want to ADMIT .... that we NEED healing. Because if we admit to it, it seems like it's REAL, and therefore it seems frightening.

But if you can't admit that you are in a position where you NEED healing, you also can't acknowledge that indeed healing is called for and be open to receiving it.

So then the fear of "being in need of healing" becomes a fear of healing itself.

Again this goes back to more fucking DENIAL. ie by denying that you HAVE actually done something to hurt yourself, or that something has happened that you do not want, you are AVOIDING (bypassing) the fact that it HAS occurred.

We do the same thing with this whole world. As Jesus says, the separation HAS occurred, and denying this is a very unworthy use of denial. We are NOT supposed to be denying that the separation has occurred because we are IN the state of it happening. Or at least the strong believing of it. And so it DOES seem real to us. And because of that we DO NEED atonement, we DO NEED healing, we DO NEED correction.

And that means admitting that we've fucked up somehow, and that we're going to have to actually do something about it to change our minds, heal our perceptions, undo errors, etc. There is in effect work to be done, and DENYING IT does not get the work done. Instead it results in a state of denial and spiritual bypassing "cus it never happened."

We need to stop pretending that the world isn't right in front of our faces. So long as we are in a body the world is real to us. And we're going to have to deal with it.

If we can't admit that we've put ourselves into a precarious position, we're not going to be seeing the NEED for a solution. And we DO NEED healing. Denying "the wound" is not the solution to healing the wound. It's just avoidance of admitting that it's even there, while keeping it.

Burying your head in the spiritual sandpit won't get you out of hell.

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it."

"You do NOT know, because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it."

When I had an awakening experience in the presence of God, it was so profound. I had no idea it was going to happen and had no idea that God would be so loving, gentle, soft and joyful. I especially did not know that God was not far away, but right under my own skin.

I was aware that God was real and that I was becoming merged with Christ and that my ego self was just about going to disappear. I felt myself "pull back" from the dream as though snapping out of it, into a state of such intense awareness the likes of which I had no idea was possible. I thought I was awake every day of the week when I got up in the morning, but this was a whole other level of wakefulness.

Later, when I had to go back to work, it was surprisingly bizarre how I seemed to be aware of something as though it was totally obvious, and yet nobody else seemed to be aware of it. I couldn't figure out why they didn't know about it.

They acted like they were in some kind of unconscious sleep, seemingly awake but somehow not, totally oblivious to the presence of God which was everywhere. It was like there was this huge elephant in the room that I was aware of, and nobody else even had the slightest idea that it was there.

Trying to interact with people was very peculiar because I had to sort of pretend to be at their level, and all the things they thought were important were not important at all. It was kind of funny how fixated on "small stuff" they were.

It was like looking in on the scene from outside of it, watching the people go about their lives seemingly normally but as though they were half asleep, not even realizing what they weren't realizing.

As I "fell back asleep" over the following weeks, I returned to the same state of mind as them, more or less, and once again was not aware of the presence of God. At this time was quite devastating and I had a huge sense of loss and grief.

But from time to time, God pops in to say hello and I gradually inch my way back to an awareness that I now know is possible. But I can at least understand that when we do wake up, it's going to be a bit bizarre being in a world where almost everyone is still sleeping. I guess we'll have to tiptoe quietly.

If when you feel angry you can actually acknowledge that you really feel afraid, the anger will often deflate in a matter of seconds, if not instantly.

Energetically speaking, the fear energy turns into anger when it intensifies and projects, or when the apparent cause of the fear seems to be getting worse.

Being afraid means you see yourself as a victim and as attacked, which means you also see yourself as unfairly treated, which means you think you are justified in being angry because something's happening that you didn't ask for. So anger arises out of a perceived fearful situation.

Since the anger is based on the fear and doesn't really have its own foundation, and is made to DENY the fear, if you acknowledge that you're actually really afraid, it completely shuts off the generation of anger. It doesn't deny it or hide it, it simply disappears. What this means is you've moved up the ladder, or rewound the chain of cause and effect, to where you are now willing to 'stay with' the fear rather than build upon it. The anger will simply disappear when you admit to this.

So let's say something is happening to someone close to you and it scares the shit out of you. And maybe there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it. And maybe you depend on that person and if that person has an issue, then .... who is going to look after you, or where are you going to get your ego needs met? So then you perceive that your own needs are going downhill as a result of the other person, which is frightening. And because you perceive that you depend on the other person to save you, and they can't even save themselves, you're going to get angry at them for failing to give you what your ego wants. This will make you snowball into a spiral of fear and anger, as you practically demand that the other person get out of their situation.

Secretly this is based on ego selfishness and your own dependent and fearful ego needs, which if unmet by the special relationship, sends you into a spiral of desperation. As soon as you can admit this and realize that YOU have a problem, YOU are afraid, YOU need help, this will dissolve the entire expression of desperation and demands, deflate all of the 'anger' completely, and put you in touch with what really needs to be healed ... your ego ego attachment and dependency and belief in your OWN inadequacy, which the other person is just triggering off to show you.

Once you admit to being afraid, you might have an emotional release, and this will actually shed a lot of light on the situation and show you that it is not as bad as you thought. The other person was probably being attacked by your dependency on them, and by your fear, and by your own neediness, and this was showing you a worse perception than was really called for. Things are not as bad as they seemed, once you do this. And then you can work with Holy Spirit on healing your OWN issues of desperation, whether they be fear of abandonment or rejection or 'who is going to love me' or 'how do I get my needs met be other people'.

There is a plan for salvation. Honestly is the vehicle, Holy Spirit is the destination.