In the separation from God we made what seems to be a world, opposite to God - space and time and bodies etc. But we're told this world is unreal. What does "unreal" mean? Because while we're told it's unreal we're also told we believe in it, and that by believing in it it becomes real to us.

Being unreal is a way to say it's not ultimately true and isn't how God creates. So in a sense, it is dream-like. But people DO have dreams, and the mind IS dreaming of a world of space and time. This dream can seem very real and solid and effectual to the dreamer.

As such even though the world is ultimately unreal, which would seem to write off anything that seems to happen in it, while we are still in it believing in it we do still have experience of it AS IF it were real. In fact we can make it extremely real to ourselves and have a horrible nightmare.

"anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

But nightmares do in fact seem very real and frightening and full of suffering and stress to the believer. To the believer, even if they are hallucinating, even if what they experence is total fantasy and not possible in God's laws, it nevertheless can seem VERY real and true to a mind that belives in it.

How do we overcome this nightmarish experience of a world in which everything suffers and dies? What is NEEDED? What is called for? If the problem is that the mind is believing in it and giving it power, then the mind has to withdraw that power and stop believing in it. And by not believing in it, the mind will ultimately stop seeing it.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

Here the course doesn't say that the remedy or approach we're supposed to take is to just write the world off with labels like "unreal, illusion, nothing, doesn't exist" ESPECIALLY when the mind IS honestly still believing in it and giving it reality. That's a form of denial. Instead it says we are to use RECOGNITION to realize that the world isn't real and isn't true, WHILE still in it. That's different from PRETENDING TO BE OUTSIDE IT.

A hallucinated world will disappear only when RECOGNIZED that it is a dream and not a reality. This is what "awareness of dreaming" is about. Awareness of dreaming isn't denial. It's in fact a state in which you are still asleep and dreaming, but you have the awareness of what you're doing.

We're not supposed to keep bypassing the world in an attempt to overcome or escape it. In fact, Jesus's remedy for us is to CHANGE PERCEPTION so that we will come to first see this world from a different vantage point. That does require us to "love the world" and to find peace in the world. Before we can leave it. As the course says:

"First you will dream of peace, then you will awaken to it."

If we try to skip the dream of peace, or the happy dream, or the forgiven world, and just try to jump from false perception to knowledge, we're doing a bypass.

"Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. 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."

Those who use non-dual-seeming statements like "the world doesn't exist so it doen't matter what you do", "the body isn't real so don't bother healing it" etc... are trying to use truths from the level of KNOWLEDGE, to correct the problem. But Jesus says this will not really work. THE ONE CORRECTION for false perception is true perception. We can't skip having true perception. We have to find a way to forgive this world and everything in it first instead of trying to jump ahead to being what is only really experienced AFTER we complete the curriculum.

"Miracles are thought-creations. 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."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. 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. All beliefs are real to the believer."

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

I keep hearing various people say things like "using miracles as spectacles is wrong" and various other statements which make it sound like we should not be performing miracles.

These are all based in fear!

Jesus's statement (from an earlier version) is: "(A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)

11. The use of miracles as a spectacle to induce belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

What he is saying here, is that miracles are used BY believers - people who believe in the correct sequences of cause and effect, who believe God wants to heal all the time, and who are in touch with the willingness (not fear) to extend the miracles of love all the time rather than accept the consequences of sin.

He is also saying here, that such miracles are typically given TO those who BELIEVE. Which means, someone, as a receiver, typically needs to have some faith of their own, some belief in God, in order to be WILLING to receive a miracle.

This aligns with the unfortunate scenario, that if people do not want healing or are not ready for it, miracles cannot do anything to help them, especially if they would scare them, and quite honestly, miracles COULD produce fear in a lot of people indirectly because of the way they totally defy every expectation of the ego.

So what Jesus is saying is, since miracles are typically given BY someone who "believes", TO someone who has at least some measure of belief, this is the natural way that miracles CAN operate. So when you try to go outside of that, to "induce belief", to enforce belief, to try to MAKE someone believe, or to perform a miracle against their will, for the sole purpose of trying to create a FICTIONAL scenario where they might be shocked and awed and caused to react in some way, as a SUBSTITUTE FOR BELIEVING, that would be in appropriate and a mistake.

So you would not attempt to use a miracle to just entertain a crowd or to try to get people to follow you or to show off or to "force people" into complying or healing or obeying or anything like that. This is because miracles come from LOVE, love enters where it is WELCOME, and therefore it is LOVING not to try to coerce people with some kind of dazzling light show that is just there to be a "spectacle". When we are using miracles in this way as spectacles for that sole purpose, we are basically attempting to turn them INTO MAGIC, to put on a magic show, which has as its only purpose to delude and manipulate, rather than to ACTUALLY HEAL, or to be RECEIVABLE by someone who believes in God's love for them.

This is ALL that Jesus is telling us not to do. He is not in ANY way telling us not to perform miracles, NOR is he telling us that our miracles need to be SMALL AND WEAK AND UNNOTICED. Nor is he telling us that we should not move a physical mountain, or even something bigger than that. Nor is he telling us to keep miracles on the HUSH HUSH and make sure no-one notices. Nor is he telling us to never show or demonstrate anything which someone looking on MIGHT come to be shocked and in awe of.

The ego is SUPPOSED TO BE TAUGHT by a miracle, that the laws of the ego do not apply. Miracles are teaching devices. They WILL BRING INTO QUESTION what people believe is possible and true. If someone who was just dead, is suddenly brought back to life, this is going to radically challenge the belief system of ANYONE who sees it happen. They won't be able to "believe their eyes". Some of them will be in awe, although they should not be. Some of them would be perhaps even afraid and run away in fear that some kind of magical voodoo is happening, because they don't understand or aren't ready to receive it.

Miracles are CAPABLE OF BEING "spectacles" in that, they are capable of being very IMPRESSIVE, and extraordinary, and way out of the box, and not something that you typically see every day (which is sad, because miracles are supposed to be happening ALL the time, every day).

Perhaps my favorite demonstration of a miracle is Jesus walking on water. I mean, talk about the POTENTIAL to be considered a spectacle. Quite a demonstration! To suddenly see someone out in the ocean not sinking whatsoever as though he was lighter than air. To SEE THAT, would've been extraordinary, and you could think well, Jesus is just SHOWING OFF. No he is not. It was a teaching situation to PROVE that the ego's laws do not apply and that ANYONE can walk on water. He was giving an EXAMPLE of the truth. Some would call it a spectacle because they put it in the same category as "anything which is extraordinary or dazzling is a spectacle". No. Spectacles are ego attempts to induce belief instead of building UPON belief. It doesn't in any way mean you shouldn't walk on water or float through the air or turn yourself into a giant mushroom.

When Jesus came back from the dead and showed up, just kind of casual like, probably laughing, "and you all thought I really died, haha".... the people who saw him were probably like... is that a ghost? Am I hallucinating? Am I seeing things? Have I lost my mind? The ego will be severely challenged. And at the same time, it would've come across as awe-inspiring and really radically impressive and intense and life changing!

Jesus is not telling us to SHOVE MIRACLES UNDER THE CARPET, nor is he telling us to AVOID BEING SUPERNATURAL, nor is he telling us to "beware" just in case we scare someone, nor is he telling us to keep miracles a private secret. NOR does he mean that such miraculous healings and reversals of sin/separation/death are MAGIC. They are NOT MAGIC. Magic goes in totally the opposite direction and makes things WORSE. Miracles make things BETTER. They heal and undo and correct and reverse what the ego has tried to accomplish. They have nothing do with magic at all, UNLESS you start to twist their purpose as a way to try to FORCE someone to believe when they are not ready to. This is all that Jesus is warning us about.

That we keep using these kinds of statements as a way to POO POO miracle-working is a really sad misuse of the course and a really unfortunate way to KEEP PEOPLE POWERLESS, as well as being a massive form of DENIAL and FEAR about what miracles are and what they are capable of. When the Holy Spirit performs a miracle, your mouth is going to be hanging open! This is only because we're so used to being UNMIRACULOUS that we think that's normal, and that miracles are UNNATURAL. Miracles are natural, being sick and dying and having to suffer is UNNATURAL.

So no, miracles are not inherently spectacles to be avoided by all who are afraid of the power of the mind. It is just a CAUTION, not a turn off.

When someone comes along and says something to you which seems hurtful, and if you are affected by it, it is because somewhere inside you you've taken it seriously. That means that you believe there is some truth in it.

If you did not believe there was any truth in it, you would recognize that this person is just calling out for love, that they are mistaken, that they need healing and correction, and you would just respond with love and laughter. You would make light of it and not take it seriously or personally at all.

When people come along and provoke you in this way, they are actually attempting to help you, by pointing out places in yourself where you actually believe that something is wrong with you. If you didn't believe something is wrong with you, when people say these things to you you would not react at all. It would not move you or disturb your peace, or your confidence, or your certainty.

Clearly, if you are upset by what someone has said, it is because, sadly enough, deep down, you believed there is some truth to what they said. In other words, you've abandoned your certainty that you are wholly truth and love and light, and have entered into a lower estimation of yourself, which is in agreement with their evaluation of yourself. If it seems that they have so easily triggered you into a reaction of hurt and retaliation, then clearly you have too easily fallen into a belief that you're not good enough, and that you deserve this mis-treatment. And this will be marked with you viciously retorting that 'thats not true at all', in a very upset way, because some part of you actually does believe it's true. You say you don't want it, but you do.

Therefore, people come along and seem to hurt you but in fact, you could not be hurt if you did not agree to be hurt. And then you must in fact be hurting yourself, because the other person isn't the one who forces you to agree. That's your choice. You don't have to agree, you can hold firm in the truth, certain of what the truth about you is. But if you have any fear as to who you are, or any doubt as to your worth, or any undermining of the truth of you, then for sure, you're going to attract people to come along and poke and prod at your sore-spots to try to get to look at them to heal them. And you'll take these helpful provocations as unwanted attacks. ALL of your sense of attack, however, comes from yourself, and you attack yourself plenty enough without needing to claim that anyone else has added to or caused it.

So if someone has said something to me, something that is not true, and if I have a reaction to this, it must mean that I have an ego, which means that I believe I am not as God created me, and therefore I am the one who is not certain of my own integrity. And it is my own lack of certainty in myself that is being pointed out, and it is my own agreement with what they've said about me that sends me into a tailspin. But I have to realize that I really am responsible for this reaction. I am the one who believes this (and probably worse) about myself, it just *seems* like they put the hurt into me by seeming to be the one who attacked me. They did no such thing. All they did was raise to my awareness the pre-existing hurtful attitude about myself that was already inside me, which I put there, because it's what I think of myself.

People who are frequently easily upset and easily triggered and easily angered and easily offended, do not think well of themselves. People who are often reactionary and get extremely worked up when other people seem to say or do things that are unacceptable and 'clearly false', you know that those people are 'weak' in their loyalty to the truth, and have little faith in themselves. They don't realize who they really are, or how much God loves them, or what the truth is about them and others, otherwise they would be in a constant state of invulnerability and joy and peace.

This state of invulnerability is what we all deserve. We are all worthy of it. We are all good enough. None of us are sinners. We've done nothing wrong. All of us are equally innocent and divine. So if that's all we are certain of, we could not be harmed by anyone attempting to say otherwise. We would just laugh and not take it seriously. But if we do not believe and know and experience this truth, then yes, we will have a reaction of 'how dare you say that' and will feel hurt and have justification for blame, to disguise the fact that we ourselves actually are the ones who don't believe in ourselves. The other people just came along to show us that, to point it out, to make us be aware of our own pain, so that we could have an opportunity to choose again as to how we regard ourselves.

And it is our own self-attack that we experience as inner hurt, not an attack by another person. We are 100% responsible for everything we experience and feel. And before we attack others for how they seem to attack us, we need to really honestly take a look at how we are attacking our own self with our own beliefs in unworthiness, negativity, lack and so on. Why is it that we don't deserve absolute love all the time? Why is it that when such and such a person comes along to tell us that we suck, do we recoil in horror that WE ourselves actually believe this is true, and how dare they point it out?

"I am not upset for the reason I think." - ACIM

There are a lot of ACIM students believing that they are working miracles. There's often talk of shifting perception, changing beliefs and so on.

But when you look deeply at what ACIM says, not only does it rarely mention shifts in perception etc it tells you that you aren't even the one who performs miracles.

"The holy spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"Concern yourself not with the extension of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand. ***Nor do you do them.*** It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you do not do them."

What the Holy Spirit can do is not of this world, and His power is unlimited.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

Sometimes I feel like I'm going out on a limb and saying something which most ACIM people don't believe.... in that, it is really the Holy Spirit who performs miracles. Yes he needs you and performs them with and though you, but Jesus is repeatedly telling us we don't even understand miracles, and although we inherit God's power it is really the Holy Spirit who knows what to do AND does it.

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.

... Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. 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."

It is the Holy Spirit who performs miracles. And the miracles he performs are not mere shifts of perception or adjustments to your beliefs. And while His Help can benefit YOU, and heal YOU, it is also there to help OTHERS.

I think at times that a lot of ACIM people do not get this. They are not in touch with the Holy Spirit, do not work with Him, do not talk to Him, do not trust Him, do not heal with Him, maybe don't even believe He is a Spirit with POWER. The power to heal. It is the Holy Spirit who raises the dead and heals the sick.

YOU are needed in order to fulfill a functional role of being a conduit for Him, a point of prayer and request, a servant, and what ACIM refers to as a "physician of the Lord". But your function does not entail knowing what the heck a miracle IS, yet alone knowing how it WORKS, or what it DOES. Do you really honestly know how the human body functions such that you can repair it supernaturally? No you don't. But the Holy Spirit does. And it therefore requires trust in Him to do so.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."You can also see that YOU are not the SOURCE of miracles, though you may be a relay-station for them.

"Miracles are a universal blessing FROM GOD, through me (or you), to all my brothers."

"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

God provides the miracles. Not you. But you perform them. He does them through you, with you. You are asked to be in an open minded state of trust in which there is love present, SO THAT you are a facilitator of HIS WORK, through you. So that you can "do his works."

"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."

There is nowhere near enough openness to the Holy Spirit in the ACIM community. In fact it seems at times that hardly anyone ever mentions Him. A lot of people are doing the course "on their own" as a "self study", which strips it of all power and completely avoids the Holy Spirit. If it's some book you can tinker with on the toilet without ever having to develop trust in a supernatural entity, then.... it's more like school homework than a way to become empowered with the SPIRIT of God.

We are supposed to be developing trust in HIM, and allowing HIM to heal through us, and to USE our bodies, and to SPEAK through our mouths, and to WRITE with our fingertips, and to express love with others. He wants to use our bodies as a communication device. This does not exalt the body, it makes the body nothing OTHER than a tool through which HIS importance shines and extends. HE is the one that we are supposed to be working with.

Where is the Holy Spirit in all this? Where is the supernatural?

Where is the revival and the miracles?

Where is the Holy Spirit in the activities of those who claim to be awake already?

Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

The appearance of the sickness is actually an illusion which covers up what the problem is. The sickness, the symptoms, are actually there to function as a distraction, to make you focus on the body and to make the body real. This is a protective mechanism to try to defend your ego-aligned self against a misperception of the truth.

It's not that the form of the sickness is the problem. The PURPOSE of the sickness is the problem, which is to act as a defense. There is a perceived NEED for a defense, and that manifests as physical symptoms. But the appearance of it, the physicality of the sickness, is not really the cause or the thing that's happening.

What's happening is the underlying attempt by the MIND to shut out God and to cling to the body. It just happens to CREATE symptoms such as pain and disease, in order to try to get the awareness to fixate on the body, to think that the body is very real, and therefore IGNORE the truth - to shut it out of awareness.

So sickness is an escape from reality. If someone has cancer they don't need to be healed of cancer. They need to be healed of the belief that they need cancer in order to protect them from reality. As Jesus says, when the purpose of the sickness is recognized, and when it is understood to be an illusion, it must disappear. If you had no more "use" for the sickness, and it wasn't serving a purpose of any kind, it would have no basis for the mind to keep sustaining it, and it would vanish.

So it's like, someone gets exposed to truth but their ego misinterprets it and their interpretation scares or threatens them, so they put up a "shield" of protection, which cuts them off from Life and blocks life-sustaining "energy" flowing in the system, and creates distortions in the body image. The body image then shows a sickness to symbolize the need for escape, and to provide an escape. Therefore the sickness is always a form of distraction and an attempt to make the body MORE real than the truth. Trying to make illusions more real than reality produces sickness.

If you could be convinced that you don't really have a need for the sickness because the purpose of it was misinformed, and what you experienced as a threat is not really a threat, and it's not a threat because you're not really the ego self that sees it as a threat, then you'd be willing to let it go and stop using it to protect you. You'd see no purpose in it, no need for it, and no use for it. So it would disappear.

The trouble is that once sickness is implemented, its symptoms and suffering can be so effective at distraction, so effective at absorbing your attention, so effective at making the body seem real and frightening, that you have all kinds of peripheral reactions as a whole other "layer" of experiences. You start trying to defend yourself against the defense! And that means you start to view the sickness as though you did not choose it.

Theres's a very good reason why you do not want to admit to having chosen the sickness, and it's because if you did, you'd have to own up to that and wouldn't be able to hide behind it. The sickness was made to block awareness and to shut out the truth, so if you were to admit you made it, you would not longer be able to receive its benefits of defending you.

You don't want that, so instead you shut out awareness that you made it, perceive that you did not want it or ask for it, and then launch into a series of reactions to the sickness as though it is attacking you, you want it to go away, etc... but you really don't. Not honestly. If you really wanted it to be done with you wouldn't react to it at all, you'd just admit to the ways you wanted and needed it and would drop those, having come to accept that the truth was true and your misinterpretation of the truth was invalid.

Fighting with sickness therefore is part of the huge distraction that sickness presents, and can have you spinning your wheels trying to just deal with the symptoms and discomforts. Part of you is saying you want it to go away, while another part of you - now unconscious - is actively choosing to keep it, because in the bigger picture you're still terrified of what you saw in the truth and are trying to protect yourself. It therefore frightens you to think of actually being HEALTHY, because that would mean you'd take away your PROTECTION, and then the truth would be able to attack you again. So efforts to become "well" actually can have a lot of resistance and a lot of defense against, because it actually threatens you more to become free of the sickness, IF you are still misperceiving the truth.

Perhaps a key then lies simply in the mistaken perception you originally had which seemed to show you that you needed to become sick in order to defend yourself. You need to look at what you perceived and why you perceived it. But you need to look at it with Holy Spirit or a higher perspective of truth. You need to be willing to have been mistaken. This is why you need to APPLY FORGIVENESS, to undo the ILLUSIONS that you were under that made you misperceive, creating the need for a defense. You need to disassociate from the ego identity in some way so that you do not take the truth as a threat, and do not see it as meaning that you are going to stop existing.

The primary "cause" of sickness, if you will, is the simple fact that you have bound yourself to the ego, are perceiving what IT perceives, are interpreting the truth THROUGH it, and therefore you become frightened whenever you are exposed to the truth. The truth is that the ego is not real and does not exist, and everything it believes in is false. If you are identified with it and think that it is you, then whenever the truth comes along you will be frightened that you are being attacked by it, that it implies you do not exist, that you are not real, and that's horrifying. It is a misperception, but it's horrifying. And who would not want to defend themselves against that?!

Correction is needed therefore, and a forgiveness is needed and a willingness to consider that who you are is not the ego. You need some reassurance and clarity and perspective that just because the truth says something, does not mean it is attacking you. Who you thought you were was mistaken. How you were perceiving was mistaken. What you saw in the truth was projected onto it by your own mistakes. It amounts to a willingness to accept that the truth is TRUE, and not that the truth contains evil intentions. If you can accept that the truth is true, and not false, and that what you thought was true is false, then you have the key to unlock the NEED for sickness to protect you from it.

When there is no misperception of the truth, there is no need for sickness, and you will not create it or use it.

Sickness isn't really the problem that needs healing. Sickness showing up in form is an ILLUSION, because it covers up the underlying secret ambition of self preservation, and is meant to be a distraction and a smoke-screen. That's why sickness isn't real. It's not the problem that needs to be corrected. Trying to treat the sickness or the symptoms of sickness therefore will fail.

It should be obvious that since sickness is an attempt at self-preservation, making oneself sick and likely to die in the name of self-preservation is insane.

To transmit large amounts of love to someone, supplies a lack and heals them. All suffering is simply the illusion of a lack of love, ie belief in sin and fear.

But the ego will believe that this undertaking of exprsesion will exhaust you, threaten you, deplete you and will take a great effort to push this love outward. It believes that all expression is a SACRIFICE AND A LOSS. That you will have to burn yourself out to help anyone, expending great effort above and beyond what you are capable of. And that you will have to do all of this yourself without divine help.

The solution to this is the recognition that your proper function in the machinery of love, is in its EXTENSION, not its sourcing. All love is of God. You should ALLOW HIM to extend love through you, and your "effort" should mainly be in stepping back, opening the door to the light, and being a CONDUIT, THROUGH which the love expresses. This requires your own mind to be open to love.

If you think that you are the one giving this, you will become an unhealed healer and deplete yourself, because you are really trying to force there to be a power. And you who see yourself as finite and limited will see this power as limited, requriing you to force it more The power has to be acknoweldged as being OF GOD, and via the Holy Spirit, so that you ALLOW HIM to be the therapist.

"To acknowledge that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The thereapist merely lets healing be." "The Holy Spirit is the only therapist."

Our healing function is therefore to act as a PORTAL, open and free from fear or restriction or limit, which acts as a LENS, to allow the light of God to shine THROUGH. To broadcast and transmit to and be shared with another. To be this portal YOU DO have to be in a loving, spiritual, purified state yourself, not simply so that you do not interfere but so that you can reflect and RELAY what is being given TO and THROUGH you.

If you repeat something along the lines of "I extend God's love to you", this is a good place to start. You reach within or above, find the light, love and power of God, tune into the Holy Spirit, and with great willingness act as a RELAY STATION to extend HIS love to the patient. "I give God's love to you" would be another way to look at this. "I extend God's love to you".

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed." You receive the love by giving it and through your own healing. You express the love by extending it in which giving and receiving are one.

It is also true that if you believe you are currently lacking in love, which is highly likely if you are still working on your own atonement, you will recognize yourself as NOT having what it takes to heal anyone. You will fear healing. You will feel inadequate and weak and incapable. And you will try to depend on your own knowledge to make something happen, even though you have NO CLUE how to heal anything. This will make you feel TENTATIVE and HESITANT about even trying to heal.

But what you will find is that, as you step aside and plug yourself into the power source, and start to "get the ball rolling" by STIMULATING the flow of love through you, simultaneously your openness to the love will increase. As will its effectiveness.

The ego would say, if you start out with hardly any love, you have nothing to give. And it would say that because you lack love, there is no way to increase the love, and so giving it risks your own depravation. But you will in fact find that if you simply TRY, and start from wherever you are AT, and you start to "talk yourself into it", by at least efforting to extend God's love, you will find that your rusty pipes will open up, the flow of love will increase, it will BENEFIT YOU as it increases, and this benefit to you will also raise your own light and increase your ability to flow it.

"I will heal (myself) as I let Him teach me to heal (others)."From a stationary starting point, you can simply assert, "I love you [person]" or "I feel and extend God's love to you" or whatever. And as you repeat this over and over, you WILL start to tune into love, and feel it, and this will begin to heal you, and raise you up, and plug you in even more strongly. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver".

By giving, you affirm that you have it. By giving, you open up to receive even more. The more you give, the more it FLOWS abundantly. Giving even when you believe you have nothing TO give, starts the process and gets things moving. Your natural function here is to SHINE BRIGHTLY, to emit a large amount of intense light. And you can only do this by EXTENDING the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Not by "burning out" of your own resources.

Ultimately when your mind is very loving and giving and receptive to love, it shines brightly and the light shining THROUGH you from God shines INTO the other person's mind and energy field. This lifts them up as well as you. You will feel not only lighter but stronger, your energy will feel more intense, and you will feel more powerful. And you will feel noticeably happier. And if you had stuff to be healed as well, you will find YOU receive a healing as you attempt to heal others.

We fear to begin this process only on a basis of the apparent LACK of love that we currently experience. We think we are are just too WEAK to even get off the starting blocks. That we don't have enough to give. Or just feel too unloving, honestly, to really want to help anyone, because we sense that giving a lot of love to someone is going to bring healing to ourselves also, and that is going to entail a challenge to our ego and our own suffering. We literally stand in the way of healing until we have some willingness to TRUST and to OPEN UP and at least TRY, from whatever our starting point is. And to do what we have to be willing to BE healed as well.

This is why it is vital to be willing to at least ATTEMPT to perform miracles, to express love, even if you yourself are lacking, and even if you are not enlightened yet, because it is this OFFERING of love that UNLOCKS your own receipt of help and healing. And it is through this GIVING that you accelerate your own RECEIVING of illumination.

You can of course take your sweet time and simply wait until you are "naturally" expressing love consistently all the time, but being willing to EXPERIMENT with this and TRY to heal, even as an unhealed healer, will help you to move forward on your own path faster, AND begin to show you RESULTS through your efforts with others. And by these results you will see PROOF that you have the power of God in you.

Miracle working is an ABILITY to be practiced. "Doing them brings conviction in the ability". You are not yet convinced that they can even be done, because you doubt your natural function as light of the world and as co-healer with the Holy Spirit. But by ATTEMPTING to perform them you will learn and hone the ability, learn from your egoic interference and failure, and move more rapidly towards consistent miracle working.

Lately what I've been trying to focus on is what can be *experienced*. The truth can be described in thousands of words but really it is an experience. We're really talking about you getting to the point where you can experience happiness, experience love, experience peace, experience God. God is an experience.

So what this means is looking at what you are experiencing NOW, and looking at what tools you can practically USE to actaully shift your experience to a happier, fuller, more truthful/authentic one.

And this has nothing really to do with what you are thinking about what you're experiencing or what's going on around it or what you should be experiencing, but the actual direct immediate experience - your feelings, your psychological reactions, your perception of reality, your union with God. What is reality to you right now, in honesty and not trying to 'please' Jesus?

This isn't done on a mental level or in terms of theory or discussion. What you really need is practical tools that WORK that bring about a real TRANSFORMATION of what you are experiencing. You are meant to LIVE the truth, not just talk about it. You're meant to actually feel God's love, live in God's love and be God's love.

What I've been seeing also is that when you try to be or attain a goal or theoretical truth that is too far beyond what you can actually EXPERIENCE, all of your energies start to flow into the intellect because they aren't grounded or rooted in what is real to you. You try to grasp at it and affirm it and think about it and make it seem like you understand it but you're not actually *experiencing* it because it's outside your envelope. It's very easy to conceptualize 'oneness' but, are you actually fully omnipresent and experience absolute unlimited psychological access to every part of existence? Nope.

I can testify that I went to great lengths in my mind and intellect in understanding the Course and the metaphysics and the high-level statements of truth and how it all fits together and all that. I was looking for some kind of a way to experience truth by having the biggest or best thought about it, or the widest grasp of where it fits, or the most abstract or subtle aspects of what Jesus has taught about the truth.

But even when I thought I really really really was getting it and understanding it, mentally, it was NOT followed by a result of experiencing love, or experiencing God. It did not bring peace. And it was like getting to the end of a path that you thought would lead you to the truth or to God only to find out that it does NOT lead there.

It doesn't lead there because its a journey in thinking and intellectualizing rather than the much more real, direct EXPERIENCING of truth. So I had to learn this, the hard way, that it can't be all about the talk or all about the theory or all about the metaphysics. It IS okay to seek for understanding (ACIM says understanding is appreciation of the truth), but you can't EXPERIENCE it on a purely theoretical level.

When we're not actually dealing with what we are experiencing - the immediate interaction of you vs what's in front of your face right now and how your mind is having a RELATIONSHIP with it - then it moves away from here-and-now and becomes removed and distant, turning into just a theory or concept.

Your head, your intellect, is quite capable of handling concepts and theories and thoughts about them, but its as though the intellect is an artificial ego device to be separated from reality, from the here and now. I would find myself tending to even intellectualize my feelings, transferring emotional energy into my head and trying to process it there through thought. Instead of feeling. Instead of experiencing.

I've also seen people get caught up in what they 'should' be doing or are supposed to be believing, launching into 'trying' really hard to force yourself to be those things, without ACTUALLY being able to do so. It creates the spiritualized ego. And when asked questions about what they are experiencing now or what they are really feeling, they are disconnected from it.

They will respond about what they think of it or what it means or what they think they're supposed to say or what lofty course idea they're meant to believe, but they don't REALLY believe it. They don't REALLY mean it. And they're out of touch with where they're really at, cut off from FEELING. Feeling is much closer to being than intellectualizing. But people don't want to feel. They don't want the immediate experience of reality, preferring to be buffered against it by all of these intellectual walls of thought and guilt and shame and force and pressure and ... using the wrong tool for the job.

What you may find as I have, as well, is that what I can experience has certain boundaries that prevent me from experiencing anything too far outside my 'comfort zone'. My mind won't stretch that far. If there's a suggestion to be or do something that I'm just not ready for, there's no way I'm going to be ABLE to do it yet alone willing to do it.

You can be willing enough to take small steps from where you actually are to where you want to get to next, but giant leaps are next to impossible. And when you try to make giant leaps before you're really ready, you will BYPASS, which means you're in denial about what you're really believing and experiencing and are pretending to be further along than you want to admit to. It's the ego that tries to throw you into 'advanced spirituality' before you are really ready or willing or able to actually BE it, because it wants the prowess of 'mastery' without ACTUALLY letting go of enough ego to experience it truly.

So you need to stop, go within, and look much closer to home, much closer to where you are realistically at right now. What are you experiencing right now. What are you feeling. And this is where you have to be really honest. Do you REALLY believe what the course is saying? Probably not. What do you believe instead? You have to work through this stuff. You can't pretend not to have blocks to awareness, you have to ACTUALLY look for them and acknowledge that they're there and then work on transforming your beliefs/viewpoints/attitudes so that you can ACTUALLY be free of these blocks.

They don't go away by sweeping them under the carpet, or by using denial, or by shutting them out, or making yourself unconscious, or bypassing to a level of advancement you're not ready for. There is nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you are NOT the advanced spiritual successor to Jesus just yet. If you don't acknowledge what you're actually experiencing then you aren't going to be able to change your experience. And I think that's what this is all about - transforming what you are experiencing so that you can experience something better. And this means dealing with the 'reality' of your situation, not some ACIM-driven fairytale about how spiritual you are or how lofty the concepts are or what you are 'supposed' to be like.

How do you feel? Where are you at? What is honestly true for you right now? Have the courage to look at it, feel it, experience it, be with it. Acknowledge how fucked up you are. Then re-interpret your evaluation of yourself and transform your experience of yourself into a genuinely higher version of yourself.

Authenticity.

"Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies which lead separate lives and go their separate ways."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real."

On the one hand, it seems that people are not the same. That is, if you look at their bodies, their seemingly different personalities, they're all quite different. That's what we think makes everyone unique. But there is really no equality on this level. This is the level of differences, of disagreement, of conflict. Just the mere fact that two bodies are not alike is war.

We then look to higher morals and try to treat everyone the same, with some kind of unconditional love or equality of rights. That someone who is a certain race or sexual persuasion or gender etc might be treated in the same way as any other person. But the fact is that in order to lift up out of the realm of differences into the realm of equality, you HAVE to transcend the body.

We can't be saying that, on the one hand, we are bodies that are for sure all different, while on the other hand trying to find some kind of moral equality, or equal rights, democracy, or whatever. These higher ideals MUST transcend the very fact of the body's variation. It must in fact overlook and defy the very things that make the bodies stand out as unlike each other.

This is why for example if we are to be kind to people who have bodies that seem overweight, then we have to really be looking past the overweightness. And we can't honestly do that if we're looking at the body still, trying to make the body special or sacred or holy or more important or equally important or anything else is really a kind of denial.

You cannot find equality at the physical level. Physical things are NOT equal and never will be. So when we start talking about treating a person of a certain "type" in a fair and equal way to other bodies of other types, we're really trying to have our cake and eat it.

To keep the bodies and identify people as separate objects, while simultaneously deciding that they all deserve the same rights. But this is impossible. The separate and the same cannot be reconciled, nor can the different and the equal. But isn't variety and difference and uniqueness a wonderful celebration of individuality? No it's not.

So then we set about this confused mixture of trying to make all the special separate bodies special in their own ways, exalting them, having marches to support them, rallying to get certain kinds of bodies the same rights as other kinds, but all still entirely focused on bodies and identifying people with physically different objects. And there is simply a total inherent tug of war in that, you cannot be maintaining belief in separate things while claiming to be a proponent of equalism.

The ONLY way that makes any sense and which can produce TRUE unconditionality, is to entirely transcend ALL conditions, all differences, all forms, all shapes and sizes and colors, and every definition of a person as a physical object. You can't keep being a man or a woman and claim to be interested in equal rights. The ONLY way there is equality between the two genders is for them to NOT be two genders. For gender to not matter at all, you can't KEEP gender on the table. You have to look past it.

This means the only way to find any sense of unconditoinality towards anyone, you MUST not regard them as a physical body in any way, to any degree. You cannot make their body extra special, or put the bodies alongside each other and say they are all the same - which is a lie, and you cannot make out that certain bodies are deserving of what other bodies have. That's total insanity.

Only if we are NOT bodies is there equality. Only if we are all identical in every way, created by the same one creator, in the same design, with the same will, sharing the same mind, sharing the same everything together, united singularly under one purpose and one function, can there be equality. This is why there is only true equality in heaven, where the differences of separation and form and conflict and war do not exist.

You CAN "embody" that reality here, to an extent, which is what forgiveness is about. It's about living like you are in heaven while you're on earth, seeing with loving eyes instead of the physical eyes, and using the mind as primal cause instead of the body. And to do that you cannot put any emphasis on the body whatsoever.

You cannot be confused that people are their bodies because this fundamentally denies their soul. You cannot say that somoene is a certain shape or form because now you're separating them out which is in fact an attack. To say that anyone is a body is an attempt to bring them down, to isolate, to condemn, and to accuse of sin. You can't be doing that if you are interested in equality and unconditionality.

Bodies are utterly incompatible with love. They are utterly incompatible with treating everyone the same. The only way to treat everyone the same is to NOT treat them like they are a body, or have a body, or that their body means anything whatsoever. The body is NOTHING. It has no real value or meaning and isn't even real.

To regard a person as a body is to believe a fantasy about them and to NOT see them. Bodies are disguises, a form of camouflage, which people who want to hide from God wear to pretend they are physical objects. You won't find any true sense of trust or meaning or purpose or function or value or reality by regarding people as human bodies, or by trying to reconcile their utter incompatibilities by pretending they're all the same.

Bodies will never be the same, every single one of them is unlike the rest. And if you believe people are their bodies, you are literally denying them equality. Gay bodies, straight bodies, male bodies, female bodies, trans bodies, autistic bodies, tall bodies, skinny bodies, large bodies, short bodies, they are NOT the same, and they are NOT TRUE OF ANYONE.

"While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious."

"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"Communication MUST have been restored to those that join, for this they COULD not do through bodies."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."