This idea, that should always ask "what is it for", is a fairly popular ACIM teaching. And it's useful to remember this. But I struggled to relate to this wording as if, the answer was obscure and unknown. We might find it easier if we ask, "what is my purpose in using this?" ie, WHY am I using this, what is the GOAL I am trying to achieve, what am I using his FOR? What purpose have I given to it? Why did I choose this on purpose?

And this is also tied into recognizing that EVERYTHING has a purpose. Whether it be God creating you for the purpose of joy and extension of the Kingdom, or you choosing to suffer for the purpose of escaping from sin. Sickness similarly always has a purpose, a reason why you are sick, a decision you made as to how you would USE sickness to ACHIEVE something. What is it for? Why did you choose it? How does it serve you? What are you getting out of it? What is its FUNCTION? Everything has a function even in dreams. Even fear, guilt, sin, sickness and death.

Once we can identify what was the true initial inspirational purpose for something, we can see WHY we chose it and made it happen, what we WANTED to achieve. Why we are using it this way. THEN, there is now a opportunity to make another choice, to GIVE the thing as NEW purpose, the Holy Spirit's purpose, to USE IT differently as a way to recognize that you made a choice and want to choose again, or that you would rather USE this thing to reflect truth and healing and acknowledgement of reality, rather than use it to deceive yourself further.

This re-purposing of the world, of all events, all feelings, all perceptions, all experiences, allows you to use what YOU made for purposes of attack, for purposes of forgiveness. When you decide, I will no longer make this ON PUPROSE for THAT PURPOSE that I originally made it for, admitting that you were doing this for some kind of personal gain, you can now decide not to continue with this purpose, which now gives the thing the purpose of release and freedom. You can now "use it" differently, see it differently, and let go of the ego purpose you were using it for before.

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve. Here, YOU are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and One with Him. This is the state of true creation, found, not within time, but in eternity. To no-one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not 'til you go PAST learning to the Given; not 'til you make again a holy home for YOUR creations is it understood."

"Who can resolve the senseless conflicts which a dream presents? What could the resolution mean in truth? What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this that will DETERMINE the outcome. In the ego's procedure, this is reversed. The SITUATION becomes the determiner of the outcome, WHICH CAN BE ANYTHING. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it. It IS aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no POSITIVE goal at all.

Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it has ALREADY HAPPENED. Then you look BACK at it, and try to piece together what it MUST have meant. AND YOU WILL BE WRONG. Not only is your judgment IN THE PAST, but you have no idea what SHOULD have happened. No goal was set, with which to bring the means IN LINE. And now, the only judgment LEFT to make is whether or not the ego LIKES it; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome, SET IN ADVANCE, makes understanding doubtful, and evaluation impossible.

The value of deciding, in advance, what you WANT to happen, is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to MAKE it happen. You will therefore make every effort to OVERLOOK what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that THIS approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's SORTING OUT of truth and falsity. The "true" becomes what can be used to MEET the goal. The "false" becomes the useless FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW. The situation now HAS meaning, but only because the goal has MADE it meaningful.

The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome MUST be peace. And this is quite APART from what the outcome IS. For, if peace is the CONDITION of truth and sanity, and CANNOT be WITHOUT them, where peace is, they MUST be. Truth comes of itself. If you experience PEACE, it is because the truth HAS come to you. And you WILL see the outcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. And you will RECOGNIZE the outcome, BECAUSE you are at peace. Here, again, you see the OPPOSITE of the ego's way of looking. For the EGO believes the situation BRINGS the experience. The Holy Spirit knows the situation IS as the goal determines it, and is experienced ACCORDING to the goal."

If you're open-minded to the idea that heaven is a place you can go, which is not the Earth, the retelling of a profound near death experiences will be clarifying and validating for you.

After leaving the body, we travel to a kind of summer land, a beautiful "other side" dimension (which is not Earth), complete with beautiful landscapes and people etc ... likely what we might call the astral plane or "lower heaven". Then we move on to a direct encounter with God in his higher dimension of heaven.

For me this is roughly the "structure" that I believe "exists", ie Earth and spacetime are a much denser lower-order realm, above is the astral "spirit world" dimension where people typically hang out between lifetimes etc, and then beyond that is heaven proper where we are one with God.

A Course in Miracles does lend itself to these ideas because as it states in Song of Prayer:

"If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate" This "gentler climate" is the astral spirit world - still a dream perhaps but a higher dream and more beautiful than this lower denser world we call Earth. I do SOMETIMES wonder if "the real world" spoken of in ACIM might be perhaps in some way a reference to that "summer land", another dimension beyond this one yet short of heaven.

One possible clue is when Jesus speaks of rivers which never waste away - which have been spoken of in various near-death experiences.

"when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision? And AFTER vision, who is there who COULD refuse what MUST come after?"

I guess we'll find out. For sure I am firm in the belief that this physical level of human bodies and bullshit is not and never could be God's Kingdom. Beyond this world there is at least another entire dimension, if not many. When you hear people speaking of actually experiencing it, we can no longer remain closed-minded or regard the spacetime of the "physical universe" to be real, or our true home in God. Ultimately, it is nothing.

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world (Earth/Spacetime) is NOT your home"

"The (physical) body can be made a home like this BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home (when you leave it behind) where God abides (in heaven)."

When I am reminded of things like this, which sometimes are thought to be outside of "acim teachings", but nevertheless hinted at by them, I feel more in touch with my own inner truth. I recall that there are indeed other dimensions, life beyond the physical, and a heaven that is not of this world.

"Your Kingdom is not of this world (Earth/Spacetime) because it was given you from BEYOND this world (Heaven)."

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world (Earth/Spacetime) does not exist because what they behold (Heaven) must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

If you believe that the body can remain sick and that you need to become at peace with it being sick and just accept it, you will have NO HOPE.

The only way to have hope, is to accept that the body can only be sick IF YOU CHOOSE IT TO BE SICK, and THEREFORE... IF you were to become able to truly choose again, your body WILL HEAL.

The belief in an unhealable sickness is a BELIEF IN HOPELESSNESS. You DO NOT WANT THAT!

In that taking of responsibility for everything you are experiencing, THERE IS HOPE, because a CURE is possible. Do you really believe God has no ability or will to HEAL YOU COMPLETELY?

Believing that the body is sick for any reason other than that your mind made it so, wanted it so, and maintains it so, and that your mind can UNDO THAT if it chooses, can only leave you hopeless and in despair.

But to admit to that level of responsibility is not going to be PRETTY, because at first you will think it means you've done a really dumb thing to yourself, that you're terribly guilty for attacking yourself. This is an ego defense. You have to go past that to realize that taking responsibility means YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING ENTIRELY INNOCENT.

In that innocence, which is accepting the atonement, you will be CURED of all sickness and suffering. And that is VERY MUCH WORTH believing in.

Liberation from ego requires only that we RECOGNIZE what is true and what is false. In that recognition, nothing needs to be added to the ego to explain why it is false. You don't need any special beliefs to organize it in a particular way. You don't need labels for it or anything. You only need to see clearly what it IS.

It's kind of like this... you're looking at an orange sitting on the table and you see it clearly. You can tell clearly its an orange. It's not an apple. It's not a banana. It's just an orange. But then if you enter into ego, you start taking things out of context, and you switch around your idea of what is true and what is false. So then you start thinking, well, maybe it's an orange-colored apple, or, maybe it's a squished-together banana.. and before you know it you don't even see it AS it is anymore. And you're insane.

So then all you need to do is become clear. Get your awareness back to clear seeing - vision of Christ - which is able to simply see without any distortions. And when it sees the ego for what it simply is - that is is an illusion, it is not real, it has no truth to it, it's a mistake, it isn't doing anything, it's imaginary and doesn't even really exist. That's the truth of it. That's seeing it WITH truth.

And then you don't need to really DO anything about the ego. You don't need to defend against it or control it or fix it or change it because you simply RECOGNIZE it isn't even really there. You recognize it is a completely ridiculous, unbelievable, wholly false idea with absolutely no value or meaning or purpose whatsoever. And then it is absolutely effortless to dismiss it.and let it go. It IS nothing and it never was.

The only struggle we have is when we believe that things which are false are true, or things which are true are false, and we're just not seeing clearly. We're mistaken. We become severely mistaken about all the ways we are stuck or sick or unhappy or lacking or deprived or abused or whatever... all these reasons which says... the truth is not true, the truth is false.. and this suffering and the need for it is true instead. That can only be perceived with a distorted, unclear perception. You must be seeing wrongly and it produces a vision of something which IS NOT TRUE.

So everything that you think is keeping you from love and happiness, is not TRUE at all. Anything anyone seemed to do to you, they didn't. Every piece of ego that you believe has the power to keep you from God, NO, it doesn't have any power.

This is all we're doing to wake up to the truth... sorting out what is true and what is false. Becoming clear. Becoming able to SEE clearly. And that's all we need to do in order to recognize the ego does not even exist. There IS NO SEPARATION. There is no sin. There is no death. This is TRUTH. But if you can't see it, you will believe otherwise (or you'll believe otherwise SO THAT you cannot see it).

We're presented with an interesting challenge. Before you seems to be a brother who seems to have a body, seems to have a personality, seems to have a history, seems to believe various things and perceive in various ways.

But then, at the same time, your REAL BROTHER, is actually a spirit being, a soul, who is an absolutely perfect light of Heaven, completely invulnerable and immortal, absolutely awake, totally free from sickness and suffering, perfectly sane, happy, free, and full of love.

So now the question is, when you "relate" or interact with a person, are you going to consider that their bodily limited self is REALLY the person, or are you going to consider that their HOLY self is really the person? And if you acknowledge and relate only with the holy self, does this not show you that the bodily self is NOT WHO HE IS? Does it not frame all of his illusions AS illusions and as lies and falseties about him, that you are not supposed to believe, or see, or confirm, or hold against him?

It becomes now a matter of, are you willing to overlook everything about him that seems to be "here", as a body self, a worldly self, an ego self, and completely IGNORE all of it, and connect and relate ONLY to a REAL SELF, that is hidden by the body, obscured by false perceptions, and lurking in and BEYOND the body as your ACTUAL BROTHER?

Are you willing to realize that all of these body persons are actually not real, all of these forms and differences are illusions, no-one is really a body, no-one is different or unique, everyone is equally a brother and equally lovable? And are you willing therefore to LET GO OF, the belief you've had for thousands of years, that these "people" populating the dream that you thought were "real", they are just shadows of real beings who are temporarily invisible to your body's eyes, and who are absolutely perfect?

At some point we have to become willing to disregard these illusions that are being presented to us, these obstacles to peace, and learn to overlook them. This is literally forgiveness, which changes your perception, awakens your mind and shows you with CHRIST VISION the true nature of the brother that stands before you. And that means learning to question, let go of, ignore, not believe in, not take seriously, and basically disregard, anything and everything about a person that seems "traditionally human", and to instead look PAST THAT, to what can ONLY be the truth about them. That they are still perfectly the Christ as God created them, flawless and immaculate, perfect in every way, unconditional and universal, and free from all suffering, sin, guilt, fear and death.

It's a strange thing to do. Because we've been so used to looking with the body's eyes and seeing "people" and thinking this is all there is to them, looking at bodies and taking them as first-hand reality, looking at behaviors and appearances and differences and thinking this is TRUE of the person, and generally interacting with DREAM CHARACTERS. And these dream characters are NOT REALLY the depiction or representation of your actual brothers. Not unless, perhaps in currently rare cases, your brother is using his body to accurately symbolize his immortality. And even then, he is not his body.

Are you willing to overlook EVERYTHING your body's eyes show you? Are you willing to start interacting with the "higher self" or holy true self of your brothers? Are you willing to stop dwelling on bodies and what bodies do, and start peering deeper into people into their minds and souls? Are you willing to disbelieve anything about your brother that is not given by God, is not in accord with God's laws, and does not represent God's perfection? To recognize that all the rest is NOT TRUE of them or you? And to realize that all of your brothers are your perfect equals AS GOD CREATED US?

This is what it means to forgive your brother. To totally overlook ("to forgive is to overlook") the illusions that hide your brother from you, and learn to SEE the TRUTH of Him, which is absolutely as perfect and permanent as He has always been and forever will be.

"Look at your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead you there."

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS."

"Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both."

"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "

"And to ACCEPT the limits of a body is to IMPOSE these limits on each brother that you see."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality."

"When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours."

ACIM's simple teaching: "This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

Do you believe this fully and deeply, that only God's truth is true? Maybe in theory, to an extent. But that's not what matters. What matters is if you REALLY believe it deep down.

We're simply being asked to ONLY believe God's truth, the truth of heaven and reality, and to disregard all lies and falsehoods. That's all. But we have to be CONVINCED and deeply fully believing that God' truth is true, AND that we want it.

The entire "process" of waking up entails just sorting out the true from the false. Reason being that we've mixed them together and are confused and lost. We have to clearly identify what the truth IS, and we have to in contrast recognize what things are false. And then we have to be willing to believe ONLY the true things.

This is likely to be met with ALL your resistance, because the fact is that EVERY single belief you have that is false has to be brought into question, and had to be recognised as NOT true, and you do NOT WANT to do that. You think the opposite is false and want nothing to do with it, unwilling to even entertain its possibility. You literally will have to give up everything you think you know and be very open to being extremely mistaken.

There really is nothing more to it than that. We identify what is REALLY true in God's terms, we contrast it against what is OPPOSITE, we recognize that they can't BOTH be true, we reject the FALSE in favour of what is TRUE, and accept the truth - which is atonement. The Holy Spirit helps us in this sorting out:

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."

"The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true."

"You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid, and what to seek."

"The contrast between what is true, and what is not, is PERFECTLY apparent, yet you do NOT see it. The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that ALL THIS IS NOT TRUE."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false."

"Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are One Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is true."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose." - Lesson 152

This is an extremely black and white level of responsibility. If you give your CONSENT, then sickness and death will occur. If you do NOT give your consent, then sickness and death of the body become IMPOSSIBLE.

Paraphrase: What you use the body for it becomes to you. If you use it to attack it becomes weak and sick and dies. If you use it for love it is healed and sickness is reversed and death becomes *IMPOSSIBLE*. "A sane mind heals the body."

This as Jesus says is a CENTRAL TEACHING of ACIM - that sickness and death of the body are OPTIONS THAT YOU CHOOSE (or not).

The body is not supposed to die or go through the death process. The body is not supposed to get sick. Death is nothing but another more extreme form of sickness, and sickness is just an earlier form of death. It's all the same thing. The ego mind attacks and kills the body as a result of a belief that sin and death are real, in an ARROGANT attempt to symbolically kill the Son of God. If you do not have that belief, you will not attack the body, it will not become sick, and it cannot die.

"Use it (the body) to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

The mind makes ALL decisions about the body's condition, including whether it is sick, and whether it dies. It CANNOT DIE if the mind does not CONSENT and CHOOSE to kill it. "From the ego came sin and guilt and death" .... "The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would kill it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience".

The body then becomes a "symbol of immortality" in the dream, as a DEMONSTRATION that your mind truly believes in God's laws over the egos. It is useful purely as a communication device.

"The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become IMPOSSIBLE."

You will then retain the body, which is really nothing, but in this state effectively is invulnerable and cannot be destroyed. This produces a supernatural protection because "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed" and therefore if the mind IS healed it WILL heal the body. It must.

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

When you have ceased attacking the body, "a sane mind heals the body", the body will be restored miraculously to "perfect health" and become "holy", in the dream. It is used to bring God to those who need help, to perform miracles and raise the dead. And then when its usefulness is done, the body is DISAPPEARED, not laid down on the ground to rot and die. The dream of death is not left by death, but by truth.

Anyone whose body dies does so because THEY BELIEVE IN DEATH AND HAVE CONSENTED TO DIE. Death is a choice against God's Will. Death is NEVER a doorway out of dreaming. Death is DENIAL OF GOD.

Jesus describes how he finished dreaming not through death but through the recognition that the body was nothing/illusion and thus made it literally disappear:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

Death of the body is optional and is a FAILURE to live according to the Will of God. Whatever you believe you demonstrate. If you demonstrate death, you MUST believe in death. If you do not believe in death, you CANNOT demonstrate death. We are to demonstrate "immortality" of the body, in the dream, before we can stop dreaming. "There is no death, the Son of God is free" applies ONLY AFTER PROVING IT by making the body free of death, as demonstration of your actual acceptance that you are under no laws but God's.

Truth = Reality.

So if you change what is true, and you believe something that isn't really truthful, it will change your reality.

Your reality changing is what we call hallucination. You believe something is true which isn't. You believe something is out there which isn't.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there" is one of the first workbook lessons.

You see something that is not there because you believe it is a part of your reality. You believe it's part of reality because you believe there is truth in it. You justify it, explain it, prove it, emphasize it, focus on it, magnify it, rationalize it, and create it, all to demonstrate it is the truth - and you will then experience it.

When you "make" up the truth, you make illusions. You will experience those illusions as if they are real. And you'll think this is reality.

So because your perception, your mind, has to experience a reality that exactly matches what is true for you, if your belief about what's true changes from God's truth and turns false things into a truth substitute, then your mind is going to have to hallucinate in order to match that belief.

When you're experiencing your so-called reality, if it is not completely God's reality, you're still going to think it's real. You will take it for granted like it's just a given. Without questioning your truth you will just stay right there in your private hallucinated world.

The only way you can shift "reality" back to God's reality, is to change the truth. You need to look at, discover, realize and recognize what is true and what is false. Like, the real truth, not just something you want to be true.

This "sorting out" is a big part of the awakening process. What is true, what is false. And to transition from false to truth you're going to have to have "a little willingness" that maybe your "reality" is actually not showing you the whole truth - that you're seeing things that are not there - and that this is upsetting to you.

It's totally understandable that you would be upset by seeing something that doesn't exist. Scary as hell. To return to peace you need to stop hallucinating, which means you need to get really straight about what the truth really is. You can't keep playing ego games. You need to get super honest and discerning and find out, with Holy Spirit's light, what's really going on here.

When Jesus said heaven is not a place he meant only it is not part of spacetime.

In the following section He talks about this. Notice the section is called "beyond the body", not staying in the body.

"VI. Beyond the Body

1 There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within."

Anything outside of heaven, which means this universe of illusions, is not part of Heaven, is not real, and does not exist. There is no world. And "there is no life outside of heaven" meaning anything outside heaven (Earth) is not life.

Also, ask yourself this. Where is Jesus? Apparently he is not in a body. He left bodies permanently 2000 years ago. So where is he? You cannot experience heaven while being in a body still. The body has to be disappeared in the overcoming of the illusion of death, before you can be freed of the limitations that the body places on awareness.

Many times Jesus states "in Heaven."

Jesus is in heaven. He is not in a body or in this universe. ACIM was comminicated to Helen through channeling from another dimension.

Being in the reflection of heaven, which is the face of Christ, in this world, is not being in heaven. Heaven is an awareness ONLY of God as real. Abstract, pure, holy and eternal. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in every way" tells us if you are "in Earth"you are not in Heaven. Otherwise God created this world, which is bullshit.

"God is in everything I see"applies only to seeing the face of Christ in this fictional world, which is only preparation for the transition to heaven. It does NOT mean God is in this world or that God is lurking behind its forms. Who can be at peace with death and destruction, or accuse God of creating such a cruel world, when death is a sign of hatred? God is love, not hate, and eternal life does not mean bodies that suffer and die.

Read the lesson "no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth". It takes you BEYOND even the real world, beyond true perception, beyond the face of Christ, beyond the forgiven world, escorted by Angels to Heaven. And Jesus says He can take you to Heaven any time. He wouldn’t exactly have anywhere to take you if being in the world meant you were there already.

Heaven is not Earth. Earth is not real and does not exist.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.

God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon God's single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time."

"You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light."

Nothing real can be threatened.

If this is true, it means God cannot be threatened.

It does not mean that God is threatened but handles it or recovers. It means God literally is incapable of being hurt, threatened, or damaged in any way. Absolutely invulnerable, impervious, immortal. Incapable of suffering or sickness or death.

There is something about God which makes God impossible to be threatened.

God is permanent. God cannot change. God cannot be changed. There is no will capable of willing against God's will or changing God's will. You cannot change God's mind, and you cannot change what God is. The whole "separation idea" is the fantasy that it IS possible, which is untrue.

Now.

If nothing real can be threatened, this means that if you do not choose to suffer or die, there must be a way that this is IMPOSSIBLE. It's not just wishful thinking or denial. It literally must mean, there is a state you can get into in which it is literally 100% absolutely physically and metaphysically IMPOSSIBLE for you to be hurt, affected, changed, or harmed in any way. Like, even more written in stone than the laws of physics. Built into the fabric of existence, even beyond the quantum level.

It does not mean like, this is "a nice idea", but you can't live it. Nor is it impractical. Nor is it something you can't experience. Nor is it wishful thinking. Nor is it a hopeless cause due to the inevitability of death.

Nothing real can be threatened because what is real is permanent and cannot be changed by anything, not even by God.

So you, who are immortal, cannot be changed. Ok? You cannot die. Because you are real. And nothing real can even be threatened, at all.

So this means, if you get this, that LITERALLY, you cannot be threatened or hurt in any way.

It also means, LITERALLY, that YOU CANNOT DIE unless you attempt to PRETEND that you can die. Because even though the secret to salvation tells you that you are doing stuff to yourself, you CANNOT EVEN destroy yourself. You can pretend you are. You can dream you are. You can go all the way to make death seem to happen. But it cannot happen to YOU. You are NOT that which dies. So it's fake.

You literally cannot die. Ok? This is what the Course is teaching. You are immortal spirit. You cannot be threatened and you cannot die and there is no real death and all sickness is a lie. How can the immortal become mortal or at the effect of anything? It's impossible.

There is no death. The son of God is free.