We each, as spirit, are capable of manifesting any form that we like, and of showing up or appearing to take form in any particular form imaginable. We are not really confined to any one form and can change them at will.
When we decide to incarnate 'as' a body, we seem to take on a particular form, which btw is constantly changing, and gradually steer the manifestation of that body in various directions of growth and change. This is all done in the mind.
It is possible for some individuals with greater awareness to shift the form of the body from one state to another more readily utilizing mind power and miracles, for example. Health can turn into sickness, and sickness into health. These are shifts in physicality which you would think are not really shifts of a singular globular 'blob' of matter, but it really is.
Similarly, all shapeshifter are capable of morphing into any number of forms, even beyond the human form.
Now, the interesting thing also with shapeshifter is that there is a 'pool' or 'ocean' of unifies, blended-together shape shifters who are in what you could call a non-manifest or non-specific form. This is very nicely illustrated in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine series btw where Odo, a significant character, is a shapeshifter who can become any form and can return to a lake filled with other shape shifters who are all blended together. On a physical level this is representative, symbolically, of what we are capable of, and in fact we are also capable of these physical shifts.
The point to be made here, is that it is natural and normal for us to co-exist in a unified pool of 'oneness' where we are not any specific form and where we are all the same, sharing everything with each other. This is our home. The Spirit of God.
So really we are not locked into forms, but we come to believe we are, and act like our body is rigid and changes slowly and is very hard to adjust at will. But we can. And this ability can strengthen as we transcend the body in its limiting awareness, and return to an awareness that we are spiritual shape-shifters, or rather, shape-transcendent. Form is not who we are and it is not our true identity, or our natural home. It is just something we become imprisoned in for a while.
"The mind, being sane, heals the body."
"The mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."
"Sickness is a defense agains the truth."
"If you arrest the extension of the mind, it fosters separation and induces illness."
"A damaged body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."
When the mind is whole, it is undivided, of one will, has no conflict and its perceptual content is wholeness. Wholeness is love, and love is mental health. This wholeness brings perfect peace because there is no conflict.
When the mind starts to entertain ideas of inequality, difference, separation, specialness, attack etc, the mind itself becomes split. It forms one area which seems to house your idea of "holy and pure" and another area is sectioned off to house "sinful and evil".
While one part of the mind is believing that e.g. "I am the innocent one" and another part of the mind is believing "they are the guilty one", this literally requires YOUR mind, all within itself, to maintain BOTH states. And this means your mind is now having a war with itself. It is conflicted, its will is split against itself, and there is therefore a disturbance of peace.
This lack of equality, this disruption of peace, is dis-ease, turmoil, stress and suffering. It is a state of mental illness. A mind that believes the truth is different for you and others, is trying to maintain multiple truths at once. One truth for you, and one truth for everyone else. This inevitably is a conflicted state where the mind is just all over the place in contradiction.
The result simply is mental illness, ie lack of health and sanity, which is also a lack of wholeness. This means the mind is attacking itself, having a private war. This war may well be projected onto the world or others, but it is a war with yourself, which the secret of salvation reveals.
The thing is, this inner conflict, produces an outward picture of an inward condition. And the result is that this mental self attack attacks the body and the world. This produces distortions, which manifest as PHYSICAL sickness.
"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."
While the mind is sick, it FORCES the body to represent that sickness, because the body is ALWAYS a symbol in a dream. It symbolizes whatever the mind believes is true. When the mind is believing in self attack, it pictures itself as an attacked illusion, a body image, which depicts the attack through the materialization or production of physical symptoms.
A mind which is heavily in conflict with itself, is attempting to destroy itself. It projects this onto or AS the body, and the body now shows up MATCHING the state of mind. It correlates. "The mind makes this decision, as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."
Just as "a damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed", "a sane mind heals the body." Never is the body truly healthy when the mind is sick, and never is the body capable of being sick OR dead if the mind is healthy. A healthy mind PROJECTS a healthy undefiled body image. A sick mind projects a damaged, suffering, aging, weak and sick body, and eventually a dead one. The body is the PROOF of what you're trying to communicate to yourself and others.
This boils down to a very simple mechanic.
Healthy mind, healthy body.
Sick mind, sick body.
This always applies, even if it is not apparent. Even if the attack doesn't seem to have obvious symptoms. That DEATH occurs eventually is a SYMPTOM of mental illness.
If you want to be free from death and free from sickness, your mind needs to be healed to the point where it no longer is at war with ITSELF, and thus has no inner conflict, no inequality, no belief in multiple truths, and therefore is not disturbed or distortable. A SANE mind heals the body, because "a sick body makes no sense."
Any form of physical sickness IS PROOF of a defense against the truth. ALL physical sickness is a defense agains the truth, indicating the presence of denial. This denial is an attempt NOT to awaken. ie
"All forms of sickness (physical or otherwise), even unto death, are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the fear of awakening."
That all encompassing statement is hard to refuse. EVEN death is merely a state of denial, an attempt to AVOID the truth. Which indicates just how unnatural death is and why it is not supposed to be happening, not even at the body level.
"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received (it will show up as HEALED), and by its health (HEALED!) and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""
"The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him (REQUIRES PHYSICAL HEALING!). And in its healing (BODY HEALING!) can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak ****with power greater than a thousand tongues***. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (WHICH CAUSES YOUR BODY TO HEAL AS WELL!) 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."
ie, your healed body PROVES to your brother, teaches him, demonstrates to him, with a power greater than a thousand tongues, with CONVICTION, that HE CANNOT HAVE SINNED because there ARE NO EFFECTS OF ATTACK in your body. Your body becomes a device by which to PROVE the innocence of your brother and thus HEAL HIS MIND. He cannot believe in his own sinfulness if he cannot find evidence for its effects in YOUR body image. Your HEALING IS HIS HEALING! Your demonstration of harmlessness weakness HIS belief in HIS sickness.
****"And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."****
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"
***"A miracle of healing (MENTAL AND PHYSICAL) proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."***
There is a theme in the miracle principles. Many of them speak of the fact that you as a miracle worker are in a position of greater supply than others. You are DIFFERENT to them. They are lacking something you have and are in need of healing. And it is now your role to GIVE to them, or supply, that which they lack, for them, so that they will be lifted up to a healed state. This means that miracles are a way to HEAL OTHERS. To be truly helpful. To actually CAUSE effects in them whereby they CHANGE, are transformed, and BECOME healed. In mind AND body.
Miracles are not the same thing as the state of miracle mindedness. They arise FROM that state and EXPRESS outward to others.
"Miracles ARISE FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
"Miracles are an EXPRESSION of love."
They are miracle impulses, sparks of life, divine broadcasts, thought creations, ("miracles are thought creations" "miracles are a spark of life") which EMIT from the mind, travel through you from the holy spirit, to your brother's mind, where they are received. This entails a GIVER and a RECEIVER. They CAUSE HEALING IN OTHERS. In your brother. Because he has placed himself in a position where he is blocking his own healing and so NEEDS the light in you to shine into his mind to heal it, for him. Just as if someone is disabled, you HELP THEM to cross the road.
Having placed himself in a state of sickness, your brother is in a position to NEED HELP. He is not willing to correct the error himself, even though he made it, and even though his mind could heal itself. So now your function is to perform a miracle of healing FOR HIM, as a SERVICE that you provide to help him.
"Miracles are a universal BLESSING from God through me to all my brothers."
A miracle is an intercession. You INTERVENE on his behalf and do FOR him what he is not currently able/willing to do. You CAN do this because your mind has a light in it which is compatible with his mind and is able to shine INTO HIS MIND to enlighten it. The light in you can shine away HIS darkness. Your mind can HEAL another mind. This is not magic, it is miraculous. The love in you can RESURRECT your brother from death!
"Miracles are healing because they ***supply a lack***; they are performed ***by those who temporarily have more FOR THOSE WHO TEMPORARILY HAVE LESS***."
"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring ***more love both to the giver AND THE RECEIVER***."
"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously ***increase the strength of the giver and SUPPLY STRENGTH TO THE RECEIVER***."
"The miracle, on the other hand, is an ***ENERGIZER***. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES ***induce peace***, and by establishing tranquillity it enables both giver ***AND RECEIVER*** to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, is restored."
"A miracle is a ***SERVICE***. It is the maximal service you can ***render to ANOTHER***. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."
"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by ***extending it to OTHERS.***"
"Miracles enable you to ***heal the SICK and raise the DEAD*** because you made sickness and death yourself, and ***can therefore ABOLISH both***. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator."
"A miracle is a universal ***blessing*** from God through me ***to all my BROTHERS***. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
"I inspire all miracles, ***which are really INTERCESSIONS***. They ***intercede*** for your holiness"
"A miracle is a ***CORRECTION*** introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly."
"The miracle ***DISSOLVES error*** because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, ***darkness automatically DISAPPEARS***."
"A major contribution of miracles is their ***strength in RELEASING you*** from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack."
"A miracle is never lost. It may touch ***MANY PEOPLE*** you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware."
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ***the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs***, because that light IS theirs."
"The miracle is the ***act*** of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he ***strengthens*** His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. ***The power of one mind CAN shine into another***, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."
"Our brothers are forgetful. ***That is why they need*** your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, ***you can change their minds about themselves***, as I can change yours. ***Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them***, as I can enlighten yours."
This is not a violation of the person's free will. If they are willing to be helped, a little willingness is all that is required to invite the holy spirit to move and act and heal. It is our role as MIRACLE WORKERS, to GIVE healing to others who need it. We are in a position to do so because of our greater strength, and the Holy Spirit is EAGER to bring as much healing as possible as soon as possible.
"Your function on Earth is healing."
"You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."
"Do his works."
"You will see miracles through your hands through me."
"If I live in you, you ARE awake. But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH you, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you."
"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."
"The truly helpful are God's miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you."
As you work on recognizing that causes are not outside of you, but that they are in your mind, please realize that there is a powerful difference between these two perspectives.
It's not just a matter of you taking back projections or you realizing that what you saw 'out there' is really 'in you'.
When you believe that there are causes outside of you, you have become DIS-EMPOWERED. You have given away your power. You have lost your authority. You have given rights to the ego to do things to you on your bahalf. You've invited an evil dream to tempt you and torment you, for you.
When you take back your power and stop seeing yourself as being capable of being a victim, and that THERE IS NO VICTIMIZER other than yourself - it was you all along, you haven't simply just transfered the location of 'the cause' of things. You haven't just moved what was 'out there' to 'in here' like it's just some object or limited thing.
Instead, you have reclaimed authority, you have taken back power, you have become strong and mighty, you have regained miracle-mindedness, and you have reclaimed ownership of the ability to work miracles. You are now POWERFUL instead of weak. Reversing cause and effect back to their proper orientation you become empowered and miraculous, not just the proud owner of a bunch of decision making.
"I am not weak but strong"
"I am not afraid but all powerful"
"I cannot see in darkness but in light"
"I am not an illusion but a reality"
etc
As a strong, powerful, light reality, you have POWER and you are miraculous because you are now flowing with GOD's WILL which has power over all illusions. As a victim you were disempowered and weak and couldn't have authority over anything.
So it's not just that you're taking things back and realizing where some kind of weak 'cause' is. You're not taking back the weakness that you projected. You're not taking back the victimhood you projected. You're stopping being weak and a victim. Which is a whole different matter. Now you are EMPOWERED.
Yes, you now see that all causes are in your mind, and therefore, that all EFFECTS are outside of you. And therefore, nothing outside of you has power over you or greater than you, or even any power AT ALL. The power is IN you. You are powerful. And what you say goes. The illusion must comply for now you realize it is just your effect and that you have total authority over it.
And now you are a miracle worker!
In ACIM chapter 27 "The Healing of the Dream", section about "fear of healing", Jesus describes forgiveness as REQUIRING physical healing in order to PROVE that forgiveness has been accomplished.
Jesus is LITERALLY saying that if there is really a true forgiveness of someone injuring you, any symptoms in your body MUST be healed in order to make the forgiveness real and to prove that there has truly been a forgiveness. If you retain the symptoms but claim the other person is pardoned, it is NOT a full forgiveness. It indicates you do not FULLY believe that it is forgiven. Forgiveness might well be happening in the mind, but it MUST reflect in the body also! Forgiveness without a miracle is incomplete! Forgiveness that keeps symptoms and retains real sickness is NOT complete forgiveness!!!!!
Quotes below:
"Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real."
"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see."
"And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent."
"The sick remain accusers."
"For no one in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. "
"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."
"Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who forgives is healed."
"And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."
"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. "
"You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless?"
"And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt?"
Jesus apparently isn't just asking us to achieve forgiveness in our minds, but to also demonstrate the truth by removing all sickness from the body.
"A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him."
If we're doing forgiveness processes that don't result in FULL forgiveness, and which don't produce a miraculous undoing of ALL SYMPTOMS and side effects, then you have NOT fully achieved forgiveness!!!!!!!!! You can't just be in a state of "still being sick" and believing that you're done forgiving. We need to take it all the way! 100% undoing!!!!!!
If you know what the secret to the magic trick is, you know that there is not really any magic happening. But if something is hidden, if there is information missing, it becomes possible to enter into an alternative state of awareness - a state of deception and misperception.
In that state, where you don't know that information is missing, or that something is hidden, you believe that you're seeing the whole truth. You therefore make sense of it, and it seems to be what it is, based on its appearance. You think you're seeing the truth because you think you are seeing fully.
But if you are not seeing the whole of the information, and some information is hidden, you aren't seeing the real truth. So when you then believe that you are, you're inside a hallucination.
In other words, you're seeing meaning where there is none, you're convinced you're awake but you're not, you're certain you are making complete sane sense out of what's happening but you're mistaken, and you don't even realize that you're nuts.
This state of insanity is automatically a state of imagining truth where there is none - a hallucination of the truth, which is a state of believing the truth is something it is not.
Puzzles are another good example. When you first encounter a new puzzle, you do not see the answer. It seems obscure, hidden. At first you are confused, and you don't understand it, and it makes no sense, and you can't "see" how it is possible. And yet it seems to be possible that the unsolved state of the puzzle is truth, because you see no way to solve it or see additional truth beyond that. But over time, as you question your perception, you gradually might realize that by undoing your own assumptions and reversing your own conclusions, i.e. collapsing the hallucination, the answer suddenly becomes obvious.
Once you have solved the puzzle, it's because you've seen some information, really a state of greater awareness, which has burst the illusion and suddenly you are seeing outside of it. You are no longer fooled, you've found the answer, it seems clear as day and now you kick yourself for the apparent stupidity of having not seen it earlier. In other words, you realize you were mistaken the whole time and its pretty embarrassing.
Bringing this around to A Course in Miracles, it is the same with the "illusion" that this world is a reality. There is an illusion here, in front of your face, which if you were able to see ALL of it clearly, you'd see past the hallucinations and the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings, and suddenly realize, in a state of greater awareness, that what you THOUGHT was true before, was actually false. And you'll understand why. Because now you have revealed some kind of awareness of information that was hidden before, and this information is vital to being able to see the illusion correctly. Ie to overlook the deception, to overlook the delusion and insanity, which was telling you that all kinds of other stuff was true.
So right now, unless you're in full awareness, you're still inside what seems to be a puzzle. And because there's some stuff you are blocking from awareness, there's some information you are not privy to. And because of that limitation, and because you don't even know that the extra information exists yet, you believe that you're seeing the entire truth as it appears to you. That's in spite of the fact that you're only seeing part of a scene, are coming to false conclusions, are seeing "truths" which actually aren't quite true, and are therefore having hallucinations about the meaning of what you see.
You see a dark shadow behind a door, and because you lack information - awareness of "God facts" - in your belief that you are seeing correctly you believe that "its true" that there is a scary monster behind the door. However, if you turn on the light, which reveals to your awareness extra information, now it becomes obvious it was just clothing, and you once again kick yourself for falling for the silly belief that there was a real monster there. But before that, you really believed there was a real monster, and you were therefore frightened. Frightened by an hallucination - a false belief about the truth.
When there is enough awareness of "what is here", of what this illusion IS, its structure and purpose and functioning, and the ways that it deceives, it is no longer possible to believe the magic trick. You've seen through and past all of the mistaken perceptions which you thought were showing you reality.
All of the horrifying mis-truths that you believed in, such as that sin and death were real, are revealed to be completely false. All of the reasons you ever had to be afraid, suddenly have no foundation whatsoever because the truth emerges and shows you that the things you thought were frightening were not TRUE, they were delusions and hallucinated meanings, and thankfully there is a larger explanation for them. When you don't understand what is happening or why its happening, it will scare you, because the illusory truth it presents makes it seem real. When a correct explanation is given, you're like, oh... okay then. Then you drop the false belief, with relief that you no longer have a valid reason to be afraid.
So a blockage placed on awareness leads you to believing that the meaning of reality is obscured, the truth no longer quite makes sense but still seems true, you see things IN and ON TOP OF the illusion that are not even really there (thereby hallucinating), and the sense that you make of it is actually a deception. When the blockage to awareness is lifted, you can no longer be deceived. It's like hearing the punchline to the joke, and never again can you hear the joke and have quite as much of a laugh because you know the answer. Knowing the real answer, the real truth, is revealed by awareness.
So here's a question. If there is a grand illusion of a physical universe, a world, and a body, and if the only reason that you believe you're even seeing them is because you are lacking awareness, then doesn't it suggest that if you had enough awareness, you might suddenly see past that illusion and realize the world does not even really exist? It was just a kind of twisting of consciousness, a distortion, which you could only experience while insane and hallucinating? Maybe the world you thought existed was your misinterpretation of reality, and only existed as a hallucination based on a lack of awareness. Maybe there is no world.
Jesus said in relation to seeing through illusions, "What is understood as nothing must disappear."
and
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. "!!
It's not just that there really is an illusion. It's only even an illusion because you believe there is one. Really, you are just misperceiving reality. That misperception shows you an illusion that there is a world. Once the puzzle is seen through and the truth is revealed, you will no longer be able to perceive that there really is a world. You will not believe it. You will recognize it was just an illusion, and nothing about it was ever really true. Like a dream. Not a real dream, but a dream-dream.
Form, matter, bodies, the universe, events, people, places, sins, guilts, death, sickness, it's all an illusion, a deception that APPEARS TO MAKE SENSE or appears to be real and true, ONLY because we lack awareness, and ONLY be cause there is some hidden information. When all is revealed, all of these illusions must disappear into the perfect omnipresent light of God, in which they DO NOT EXIST.
In reality, the world does not exist. We're dreaming it, hallucinating it, imagining it, reading into it, and are TRYING to make it a reality. It's just what you get when you haven't solved the puzzle yet, because the truth is obscured. When the truth is revealed, it will be obvious that there isn't really a world there. It was part of the puzzle while you fell for it. And now that the light has come, it is gone.
Lesson 75, "The light has come":
"The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. " - ACIM
To be willing, is a movement in a VERTICAL direction upwards towards God/Holy Spirit/Light. Unwillingness is a movement away from God into the darkness of the ego. In order to become willing, you have to willingly and trustingly move at least a little in the direction of forgiveness and truth. A willingness to be mistaken, a willingness to surrender, a willingness to let go, a willingness to consider that your brother might not be sinful, is a movement upwards towards the truth. And therefore a movement in the direction of INCREASED FREEDOM OF WILL.
This little step towards God is an invitation to the Holy Spirit to enter. It is PERMISSION that your are giving to Him to help you. Through your free will, you are saying, I am WILLING to open up to a greater truth, and thus you open the door and ALLOW and ACCEPT that which can come down to help raise you up. Willingness isn't about sideways doing, or horizontal cause and effect.
It's always about opening up your will to more freedom, moving above the battlefield beyond limits, and therefore letting go of some small amount of imprisonment. You need only show even the slightest willingness to reconsider your position, question your false beliefs, recognize that your brother is not the problem, or have a sense of honesty about your perspective, and this alone is yet enough for the Holy Spirit to recognize you are reaching up to Him and asking to be involved with His Help. And he will come, and he will help you, to the degree you are WILLING TO ALLOW Him to heal you FOR you.
"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM."
"the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation"
"This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation."
"The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS WILL."
"Purification is of God alone, and THEREFORE for you. Rather than seek to prepare YOURSELF for Him, try to think thus:
"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him.
He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need ADD nothing to His plan.
But to RECEIVE it, I MUST be willing NOT to substitute my own, IN PLACE of it.""
Because we don't realize how much power we have lost by following the ego, we might not realize just how much power is available to us.
Returning to God doesn't just mean we remain some kind of disempowered, barely able to do anything being that's nice and calm and unassuming. We've been so used to living in limitation and lack, spiritually starving ourselves, and so used to blocking the extension of God, that we may not anticipate the wealth that is on offer.
This wealth will return to us as we reclaim the Kingdom, and resurrect to our True Identity.
It is the difference between going from death, to being alive. Going from suffering to happiness. Going from loss to abundance. Going from fear to profound natural confidence.
It's as though we've taken God's power and presence and have tried to squeeze it and wring it out and drain all of the life out of it. We've become spiritually dry and barren.
As you awaken, your willingness to do God's will and your openness to RECEIVE, is going to open the floodgates to the extension of LOVE to flow and radiate through you. Love is power.
Quite literally, the absence of love is an absence of life-giving force, an absence of freedom, an absence of manifestational potential, and a breaking of causal power.
We're been preventing ourselves from wielding miracles, limiting and stopping or creative capabilities, and have placed ourselves in a prison with shackles on. Having bound ourselves to the ego and the body, we have shut down our unlimited power, and now thing there is no greater power to reclaim.
Your ability to cause anything has been reduced down to almost nothing by being in the ego. So much separation has come between cause and effect, to suggest they are disconnected. It's like the power cable is unplugged.
Returning to awareness of God's love WILL reconnect you with power. The power of the mind and heart. Causality will be hooked back up with effects to bring about immediate manifestations of God's will.
This power to cause and produce instant effects, where cause and effect are one, is your completely natural birthright. It is God-given and shared with God.
The potential of what can be accomplished in this power, compared to the almost complete powerlessness rendered by the ego, is staggering.
As you approach God, it is like stepping into the sun. The light radiates, warmth returns, everything becomes dynamic and alive, and life resurrects the dead. God is life and the giver of life which, by comparison, shows just how little and weak the ego is.
As you step out to express God's love, fulfill God's will, and extend God's power, miracles will become effortless and unlimited. Your word will become infused with Spirit, such that you can speak to mountains and force them to move, literally.
By reclaiming and owning up to your natural Christ Power, you will go from cowering and fearing, to certainty, authority, and complete power over all illusions. They will be nothing to you, both in truth and in expression.
You will become like Jesus, or Moses, or many other miracle workers, who share God's impressive might and powerful creative will. Going from a lifeless life to one infused with the living God is going to be night and day.
For a while I'd thought that by asking Holy Spirit to decide for or asking Jesus to decide, it meant sort of a 'giving up' of deciding.
Lately especially in light of free will I've been seeing it a bit differently, that instead of sort of a subservience or obedience, it could be looked at more as a collaboration or joint agreement kind of thing.
e.g. "Today I will make no decisions by myself".... could mean, let someone entirely separate do all deciding. OR it could mean, make a decision WITH guidance. The course does say that guidance is not coercive, it is only supposed to point you in the right direction and it's up to YOU to FOLLOW the guidance willingly.
I think in a way, the way I was doing this before was somewhat SACRIFICIAL, in that I would attempt to put "all responsibility" into their hands. The course does say that if you choose with Jesus and your will is IN ACCORD with His, there can be no fear, but it does not say like... "do whatever Jesus tells you you must do". Jesus in fact often tells me "you are free". He does not impose upon my free will. Because I used to view Jesus and Holy Spirit as even more of a kind of tyrant or "authority" or dominating power, I would become quite afraid and reluctant to channel or write their words etc, turning it into an arduous task, precisely because I thought I was serving some kind of powerful dominant being.
This kind of thinking of sort of "surrendering self" and being a slave or servant to some higher decider, was I think part of the "one son, one self, one mind, one will, one dreamer" bullshit paradigm taught by others, which I bought into before. All the implications of "you have no self" and "you do not exist" and "there is no one else" etc CAN lead to these kind of interpretations, that you simply have to sort of "die" and put aside all of your own will or decision-making and hand it over to someone else.
What I see now, especially in light of God clearly having created many souls/sons and giving each free will, is quite a different picture, that while Jesus is an older brother and is due respect for his position and accomplishment, he is still a brother. He also speaks of how we are not to awe him, and also how he is equal with us in our awe of God, and that there is nothing he has that you cannot attain.
This sounds a lot more like EQUALITY than it does being dominated or submissive or under the thumb or obedient in a kind of... "because I don't matter" kind of manner. I'm finding MORE freedom and MORE willingness to trust and open up to this guidance BY ACKNOWLEDGING my free will and recognizing that Jesus acknowledges it also. Thus there is less FEAR involved in "having to do" whatever commandment comes down from heaven in a lightning bolt. Without that pressure or coercion or sense of God's impending punishment if you don't comply, there is much less to FEAR and thus far greater WILLINGNESS to actually trust the guidance and follow it freely!
So much more freeing and mutual and cooperative than I used to think was possible or intended.