This is key to understanding what this world of spacetime is. The mind makes IMAGES of things. Pictures of things. Visual thoughts. They are along similar lines to imagination, or visualization. We produce pictures in the mind. This is also the same process as dreaming, and as hallucination.

We imagine things and imagine their form and appearance and picture them mentally. And as Jesus is saying, this same process was used to make physical bodies, and therefore also the physical universe.

This means that this world we're in, it's not really an "actual existence", or containing any real objects. It's in fact just a 3D thought-driven PICTURE, an image, like a 3d hologram, pictured and maintained in the mind, which LOOKS LIKE a world.

But a world that is merely an image, is imagined. A world which shows up as visual objects, is really just a collection of pictures. It's not at all the same as a real creation, which has substance and existence. It's a manufactured, wishful-thinking, hallucination, dream, projected visualization, taking on the shape of a planet in a galaxy. As a result of wanting to see it, and therefore of "daydreaming" it.

Obviously the things that you daydream don't really exist, although they seem to exist while you are dreaming them. The mind is basically inventing a world, picturing it, imagining what such a world might be like IF it really existed. But this is not the same as causing it TO exist. It's really just a blueprint or photograph of such a world. A "what if". Like if you were to imagine a pink elephant and see it in your mind.

The body was formed to use precisely this kind of seeing, focusing on images and believing them to be real. When in fact it's a form of hallucination. The body forms pictures and presents them like little photographs to the mind. Like a realtime 3d movie feed of an imagined artificial world.

This is how the world is nothing, even though it appears to be something. This is how the body is nothing, even though it seems to show up as a picture of form with a shape. It's not REALLY there, because dreaming of something is nowhere near the same as it actually existing permanently in reality. The whole world is just a mad idea.

"And what you SEE there, YOU will recognize as what it is; a picture of what YOU THOUGHT WAS REAL, and nothing more. For, BEHIND this picture, YOU WILL SEE NOTHING."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain and NO reproach at all."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

"The picture of your brother that you see means nothing."

"The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been."

"The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything and by everything."

"Forgiveness paints a picture of a world where suffering is over, loss becomes impossible and anger makes no sense."

"The picture of Heaven and eternity grows MORE convincing, as you look at it. And now, by REAL comparison, a TRANSFORMATION of both pictures can at last occur."

"It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition."

"Do you LIKE what you have made? A world of murder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer, before it overtakes you, and you disappear. YOU MADE THIS UP. It is a picture of what you think YOU are; of how you SEE yourself."

"This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world." "Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within."

"The world you see is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining."

"No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it."

"And what are YOU who live within the world, except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?"

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief."

"It is my own attack thoughts which give rise to this picture."

"Seen through understanding eyes the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself."

"Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see."

"What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real, and guarded as one's own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth"

"And when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world, refuse to lay this chain upon your mind"

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction."

"If you are not a body, what are you? You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind."

"An idol is an image of your brother, which you would value MORE than what he IS. Idols are made that HE may be replaced, no matter what their form. "

"Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness."

"Parents do not create the image of the

ir children, though they may perceive images which they do create." "It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing."

"My thoughts are images which I have made."

"The images I see reflect my thoughts."

"Let graven images you made to be the Son of God instead of what he is be worshipped not today."

"If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist."

"Once again, images are perceived, NOT known."

"Images cannot see."

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. "

"Images are symbolic, and stand for something else."

"The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images because you look on them as through a barrier which dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity."

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

There is part of you which is already in heaven with God. It never left.

That means your spirit-self is already awake and one with God.

Jesus says that like you, He has everything that God gave Him. The only difference between Him and us, is that He has nothing else.

So there is a part of who we think we are, which is "foreign" and not *actually* who we are.

Our only job is to clear away the illusion of that "extra self", a second self, which pretends to be the only self, to reveal the True Self that you are already.

There is already a "second self" - your higher self, which exists already, in "addition" to your ego self. It seems like it does not exist at all, or that it is separate from "you". But you are it, and the "rest of you" that is ego is not.

You cannot make yourself become spirit, or therefore cannot "become" spiritual. You also can’t turn your ego into spirit. You can only stop trying to be something you are not. What is left after the fight against God is surrendered as not necessary, is who you always have been.

You are already immortal spirit. Your confused identity which thinks it is either partly or entirely something else, could in fact communicate with your spirit-self (or higher self) right now, here in the dream. I have even seen an apparition of someone’s "spirit" a couple of times.

Your awakened self already is awake and already exists. Holy Spirit loves to look upon the face of Christ. You as Christ can already communicate with "you as ego", in terms you might accept.

I’ve spoken with my own ‘higher self’ on occasion. I’ve also spoken with the higher self of other people on occasion. It’s interesting that they respond when I am thinking about or talking to some person who is ‘in a body’ and their already-awakened self steps in and says something.

Strange dynamic isn’t it, that the awakened self we are trying to "become" already exists. We are just waking up TO it, not building it from scratch for the first time.

This is also why God/Holy Spirit can communicate with you even while you are in the dream. You don’t have to "make" a Holy Spirit in order to do this.

You are already as God created you, and you are still as God created you. This real self is simply a bit covered up with some illusions which pretend that you are something else. You cannot remove or change what God created, you can only deny it.

This is also why you cannot make yourself die, in the biggest picture. What God has created, no man can put asunder. You cannot change God’s will, thank God.

Become who you already are.

As humans with egos, we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as "separate people." This is because of the ego. We have identified "self" with an individual body, and not the bodies of others, and thus perceive that we are ISOLATED and SEPARATE.

It is from that perspective of being an isolated, cut-off, separated being, that we interpret what ACIM seems to be saying about your perception, your mind, exactly what is inside your mind and what seems not to be. This has led to a great deal of misunderstanding of Jesus's teachings about perception and correction because it's all being viewed FROM a state of EGO.

"What is the Body? The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is."

You have to recognize that the Sonship, which contains all souls God created, are not just a sum total of many individuals. It's not simply "7 billion humans" all lined up next to each other. There is an essential part to the nature of God's holographic creation, which is SHARING.

The minds of each Son, WHEN in His right mind, is very much shared with other minds. Or let's say, "open to" or "joined with" or "connected to". Each Son is one PART of the holographic creation of God, and each PART contains the WHOLE. So while each Son seems to be an individual, and there are many individuals in Heaven, each individual is ALSO a "container" or medium through which the WHOLE also expresses. It's like being plugged into God.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing."

The ONLY parts of this that turns into the ego, is when you unplug yourself from God, unplug yourself from the collective shared mindset, disconnect yourself from the Sonship, and see yourself as ISOLATED.

See, people think that you cannot be an individual and be in Heaven or that individuality is ego. This is because, as a starting point, they think that the individual is "separate" from others, and that this separation is therefore ego. But this is starting from a false premise. In God, the natural state of things is that everyone SHARES and is JOINED WITH everyone else, is open to them and shares and extends love with them. It is the reduction of the SHARING which brings about the ego, NOT their individuality. You could say, ego makes a person "more individual", it does not establish their individuality.

So if you can picture a soul in its natural state, it is an individual BUT IT IS ALSO sharing all of itself with the WHOLE of all creation, the entire sonship, and all of God. It is a part, but totally joined to the whole. And there are many parts, joined to the whole. As though everyone is sharing a collective experience, which is what we call oneness. But this oneness or sharing does not obliterate the wholeness of each individual soul.

It is ONLY when a soul unplugs itself from the whole, stops sharing God's mind, stops being one with the sonship, and "withdraws itself" from the collective, that it becomes ISOLATED. It seems isolated now because it seems cut off and separated off and DISCONNECTED from the whole. This state of isolation requires "walls" to be erected around the individual. Or to put it another way, we stop sharing with others and recoil into a defensive position of suspicion and conflict instead of lovingly embracing others. These are not walls which define the individuality ITSELF. They are walls which BLOCK SHARING. As if putting a blindfold on someone, or preventing them from ever touching anyone else.

These artificial "blocks to awareness" ARE the ego. They are what keep you CUT OFF from others, versus being JOINED WITH others. These walls are NOT what make you an individual. Your individuality is a state of being individual AND JOINED. What makes you an ego is ceasing to be joined, so that ONLY your individuality remains, as though you are now orphaned or blocked from sharing anything with the collective. It is an attempt to leave the Sonship and go off on your own.

The result of this isolation is that you end up seeming to STILL be an individual, but without a sense of being connected to the whole. Since it is normal and natural to be joined with the whole, when you are NOT joined with the whole there must be some kind of BLOCK in the way which is "separating you off", rather than allowing you to join. Joining DOES NOT UNDO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. It SHARES IT. This makes total sense in a holographic model of heaven but not the ego's thinking.

Now, you as a "human" in "a body", this is an idea of you being separated off. As though in prison, or not allowed to share with anyone. Isolated, alone, separate, unable to join. That is what makes for an EGO. The ego is the idea of being separated from unity, but the ego is NOT the idea of having an individuality. Individuality actually is an OPENNESS TO LOVE, like a loving individual, whereas ego is an unloving individual. You can still be individual and love your family, or you can be an individual and hate your family. The hate is the ego, not the self, but the hate forms a FICTIONAL IDENTITY which you overlay on top of yourself. That fake self is a SUBSTITUTE for your real individuality, not the antithesis of existing as a self.

So you then think, ok, I am one of many separated humans in one human body. What's inside my body seems to be me. I've become separated from all others BY my body, and whatever is outside my body is not me. So that leads you to perceive, that you have a "personal mind", which is your own separate mind. You actually DO have an individual mind which God created, but it is not supposed to be isolated. It is kept in a box when it is kept inside the walls of the body. The body is a device for LIMITATION.

So you get used to this. And then you think to yourself, ok, here is A Course in Miracles, it's talking about "my perception", so it must be talking about what is INSIDE MY BOX, within my limited mind. And therefore, I need to change my limited isolated mind, my personal perception, in order to change my personal hell, and accept a personal atonement just for myself. No. That's not what the Course is telling you.

The Course completely acknowledges in fact that you SHARE illusions with other people just as much as that you have a personal set of illusions trapped in your own little box. It teaches that the content of this "world", physical objects, wars, bodies, death, sickness, lack, conflict, murder, etc, IS PART OF the illusions which are taking place in a JOINT ENDEAVOR of wrongful thinking, on the part of many many individual souls who COLLECTIVELY are DREAMING this entire universe.

So what appears to be just your personal mind, or your personal thoughts, or your personal ego illusions, which you are working on, and which the course DOES tell you to correct and heal.... that is only PART OF YOUR PERCEPTION. That is only part of your MIND. Because your mind, in its natural state, is not just that which is "isolated" within yourself like a separate cut off mind. You are not supposed to be applying the course ONLY to the part of mind which you've sectioned off and called your own.

The purpose of the course is to remove the LIMITS you placed on your mind, to undo the BLOCKS TO AWARENESS OF LOVE (awareness of the whole) which you placed on your mind, and to lift away the artificial barriers which made you think your mind was "separated off" in the first place. That means, that your mind is actually not JUST your personal private hell within your "little self". Your mind is ALSO OUT THERE, very large, very powerful, very spacious, SHARED WITH and joined with all other minds.

This is because you as part of the Sonship which God created, are not just a separate individual in a box. You RADIATE LIGHT AND LOVE outside of yourself, you extend love, and you SHARE LOVE AND MIND with all other minds. So that means, that "your perceptions" are not just limited to your boxed-in perceptions. Your perceptions ALSO INCLUDE perceptions being had by the parts of your mind which are more WHOLE, and the parts of your mind which are SHARING with other minds.

That then means, you have to look at what it is that the COLLECTIVE SONSHIP is dreaming, what the WHOLE is imagining, and recognize that this entire physical universe is actually an IDEA OF SEPARATION, within the SHARED MIND of the Sonship. And your mind IS PART OF THAT. So that means your mind also encompasses this entire universe, your mind is part of that which is dreaming this entire universe, all of the physical objects in this universe are IMAGES IN YOUR MIND, this entire world IS PART OF YOUR PERCEPTION, and the forms which are showing up are actually THOUGHTS AND IDEAS that you are having. Not just you, but many souls, collectively contributing to this mass visualization of hell.

So as you remember, ok, you are not a boxed-in separated mind, you are a JOINED connected mind, which is SHARING mind and will with the whole sonship, you are FAR LARGER than this universe and everything taking place in it even on what SEEMS LIKE a physical level,is actually happening WITHIN YOUR MIND - within all our minds. Not all illusions are totally "cut off and isolated" inside your head. There are illusions outside your head also. And even your head is an illusion. Your body is a separation device to make it seem like your mind is not part of the mind that's dreaming the world.

So if you think, ok, all I need to do is fix my own personal mind and claim atonement for myself, you are falling short. You're forgetting that you are an aspect of something much larger. And because PART OF the process of correction IS to do with correcting "your thoughts" and "your perceptions" and "your beliefs", you can find many many parts of the Course which support doing that. But if it's considered to be entirely within a context of "my separate self", you are missing additional parts of the picture.

You are MORE THAN the separate isolated self that you have come to think of as you. You are MORE THAN the self which thinks "about" this world as though it exists without your doing. You are MORE THAN the self that perceives itself to be so isolated and separated by its body, from what is "out there", that it thinks its mind is not even out there at all and is entirely housed within a box.

You are MORE THAN a perceiver OF forms which show up out there as if by magic. Who put them there? Who made bodies appear? Who invented planet Earth? YOU DID, along with many others, in a collective shared idea. Jesus says even ideas of separation have to be SHARED otherwise they cannot be ideas at all.

Separation is not just something you did alone, and it is not something that you will just undo alone. The acceptance of the atonement is NOT JUST FOR YOU. That is the selfish ego making itself special and trying to keep your mind from sharing itself with other minds. Your responsibility is to accept the atonement for yourself BUT ALSO SO THAT you accept it for others so that you can help them join you. It is not a selfish act. It merely means you must accept atonement so that you can GIVE IT because you are PART OF THE PLAN of atonement and need to become a miracle worker so that you can HELP OTHERS. This is spelled out in several quotes, like those below:

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only HEAL (others). By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of OTHERS."

"The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take forgiveness for yourself. The miracle that you receive [into your own mind], you give [to others]."

"This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts he has received. Yet he must first accept them."

"When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. 6 As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. 7 The power to work miracles belongs to you."

"The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. 2 Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. 3 Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. 4 Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations."

So open your mind and eyes to recognize that the course is not a selfish course, it's not about your separate selfish ego doing the course for itself. It's not about maintaining isolation. It's not about you choosing something in isolation which has no effect on anyone else.

It's about you taking up your NATURAL FUNCTION as the light of the world, to share and extend the truth to others through miracles, to learn to give as you receive, to reclaim the role of being part of the WHOLE MIND which dreamed the world, to purify the perception that IS THE WORLD, and to therefore UNDO THE UNIVERSE by recognizing it is an illusion, even in its physicality, because it is nothing but a mistaken idea shared by the Sonship of which you are a PART AND WHOLE. Being "a part" does not mean "being apart".

The world is perception. Forms are ideas and thoughts. Objects are visualizations. Matter is an hallucination. Your mind is dreaming this entire universe along with other minds. The mind that needs correction is far broader than just your isolated little human self, yet it includes your separate self which needs to have its limitations lifted away to realize and recognize that YOU ARE THE WHOLE. You are the ONE SON OF GOD as much as you are ONE OF MANY sons of God.

Reclaiming your IDENTITY as the One Son of God is also part of recognizing your function in the Sonship and the part you play as one of many equal sons. To go from believing you are ONLY a part of God, to realizing you are part of God AND share the whole of God and his creation, is the identity shift that needs to take place. This is not a course in fixing up your ego identity, or making your isolated self happier or more at peace with an external world that you have no power over and no responsibility for and did not put there. This is a course is GOING BEYOND your identity to reconnect with the whole, the oneness, the sharing of love, which is far larger and more encompassing than you think.

Your mind IS responsible for the physical world showing up. It IS responsible for making wars happen. It IS responsible for producing mountains and deserts and forests. It DOES have that power. Not in isolation, but as part of its shared power with the Sonship. This course is not just about you. Nor is it about the ending of your individuality. It is about taking your separated-off individuality and plugging it back into the SHARED MINDS of the Sonship, and also into the collective unity of the One Son which is one with God's mind also.

That means your perception and your perceptual errors INCLUDE the world ITSELF, not just your isolated view OF the world, and not just the content of your individual isolated mind. Bodies were made by the ONE SON of God to separate "Himself" apart and make believe He is many separated parts. The One Son of God includes the Sonship, which ARE PARTS, but also are not separated off like the ego is. Instead they are JOINED NATURALLY and yet divided NATURALLY. Unnatural division is ego, not whether or not you are individual. In-dividual means 'cannot be divided', because it is A WHOLE. And wholeness means SHARING. So any whole must be shared with any other whole, and therefore all individuals must be part of a whole. This is the nature of God's creation.

1) You already have eternal life because God creates only that which is permanent and lives forever.

2) It is not possible to change eternal life or to bring an end to it.

3) You do have the freedom however to DENY whether you have eternal life by PRETENDING that you don't.

4) Denial of eternal life does not stop it. All it does is it puts you into a mindset of blocking out awareness of the fact that eternal life is still there, causing you to HIDE it from your awareness as if to pretend it is not there.

5) Denial of eternal life shows up as death. It's a fictional attempt to make it SEEM as if eternal life is not true, doesn't exist, or has ended.

6) Death as "denial of life" is not END OF LIFE, it is an illusion PRETENDING that real eternal life can be affected in any way whatsoever.

7) You can become quite accomplished in making it look like you are mortal and can die. But it is fake. And it can therefore be easily reversed, because it has no truth in it. Death is a lie.

8) Given that you already have eternal life and are just pretending otherwise, at some point you might as well stop being in denial and just return to being eternal. Immortality is your natural inheritance.

9) When you stop being in DENIAL of eternal life, you will simply accept it and "live with it" and experience it, allowing it to be your truth without resistance or denial.

10) When you accept the atonement you are accepting the pre-existing truth that you already have eternal life, it cannot be removed, it's always been true of you, and you literally are incapable of really dying. In this, you are accepting that you are immortal and therefore CANNOT die and never did. And in this acceptance, death is recognized as and becomes impossible for you.

In heaven, we’ve had an innocent little idea. We’ve wondered, what it might be like if things weren’t the way they are.

Nothing happens. We just have an idea. Like a daydream. We use our "imagination" to imagine what it MIGHT be like. We visualize it.

As a human, I can similarly take a moment to IMAGINE what it might be like, if I were a different person. I can imagine myself perhaps from a different country, with a different body, a different lifestyle, doing different things. I can imagine it in a fair amount of detail, maybe even imagine sights and sounds and smells and experiences, which seem partly real to some degree.

But my imagining what that might be like, is a far cry from what it would mean to *actually* be another person. When I stop daydreaming, I come back to my senses and remember the obvious fact of who I "actually am". Who I imagined myself to be is simply dropped, like a discarded toy. My body didn’t actually turn into another person from another country. Who I seem to be is not changed at all. I was just having an idea.

When I wake up from my little visualization, it no longer exists. I was just dreaming. Imagining. There are no consequences to "this" reality from my little daydream. Everything in the daydream does not exist and never really did.

The Son of God is having a little dream like this. Except the Son of God’s mind is VERY powerful. It is able to have really, really big ideas. When the Son of God imagines He is not as God created Him, his little fantasy is *extraordinarily* sophisticated. Very, very elaborate.

He dreams of an entire universe, with billions of planets, all kinds of creatures and objects and strange things happening. A massive history of time spanning billions of "years’, and even an illusion of time passing very slowly.

He also dreams of planet Earth, complete with human bodies and plants and animals and mountains and oceans. He does this in such extraordinary detail, with such POWER, that it produces a massive massive dream. A huge visualization.

But remember, this is just an IDEA. He’s having a thought. He is not CREATING it for real, it is entirely him "wondering", exploring the idea, thinking about it, imagining it. This universe "showing up" is HIM THINKING. An idea.. what MIGHT it be like IF I were separate from God. This IDEA contains the entire physical universe and the Earth. It’s a huge idea. Everything that seems to happen is INSIDE that idea.

"Ideas leave not their source" ultimately means that the universe we made (this "world", containing Earth), did not LEAVE the IDEA. Nor did any causes in the dream leak out" and effect reality. Nor did any of that idea of separation *actually happen*. It ONLY IS AN IDEA. A "what if?"

This idea, did not ACTUALLY produce a separation. God is sitting there totally happy and unaffected. The Son of God is just a little bit asleep having this really really big idea. And that’s all. Nothing else is happening! Just an idea.

The entire "universe of separation" is inside of and part of that IDEA. It’s just a dream. A fantasy. Imagination.

There is a MASSIVE difference between, an IDEA of separation being dreamed, and an ACTUAL separation happening in reality. Separation does not happen in reality or in truth, at all. All that happens, is the Son has an idea. And everything he imagines INSIDE that idea, is still just part of the idea. It‘s got nothing to do with reality.

Since we as the Son are dreaming, having an IDEA, we are seeming to currently experience what it’s like INSIDE the idea. And inside the idea, it seems huge and elaborate and convincing. This makes us THINK, that "it is really happening". We even think, we really are a body. We even think, there really is a planet earth!

But the truth is, there is ONLY an idea of a body, there is ONLY an idea of a planet earth, and there is ONLY an idea of being separate from God. A visualization, an imagined image of what it MIGHT BE LIKE, *IF* it were to happen. Not *AS* it happening.

We are mistaken when we believe this idea is in fact HAPPENING. We are mistaken when we believe we are ACTUALLY a body. We are mistaken when we believe that the universe we are IMAGINING, is actually existing. We are mistaken when we think the PLANET EARTH, actually EXISTS.

All of this, is inside of an IDEA. Just a THOUGHT. Not a thought which "DID make something happen". Not a thought which "DID happen in reality". It’s a thought that DID NOT HAPPEN IN REALITY, or TO reality, or outside of the IDEA.

An idea of being separate from God, is NOTHING LIKE *actually* being separate from God. Being actually separate from God is IMPOSSIBLE. Being separate from God HAS NOT HAPPENED AT ALL! The *idea* has had no REAL consequences outside of itself. In other words, the DREAM of what separation *might* be like, did not cause anything to happen OUTSIDE of the dream. It had NO EFFECT on God, no effect on the Son of God, and no effect on reality.

Separation from God is just an idea. "We" as humans are living INSIDE A THOUGHT ABOUT SEPARATENESS! Not inside a real separation. Sin, the idea that we actually DID separate from God "for real" and that separation had "real consequences" on "reality", ie something *leaked out* of the dream/idea and did something IN REALITY. If this were true, God would have been affected, and you as the DREAMER would no longer be as God created you.

For example, in this dream, when something *seems* to happen, we tend to believe something REALLY happened. This is a belief that sin is real - that dreams affect reality. Then we believe there are "real consequences", that something "real" was affected and changed. And this of course produces guilt.

We therefore need to become able to recognize, that whatever seems to "happen" inside this huge IDEA, is not actually happening in REALITY. It is not happening TO reality. Nothing is REALLY happening. Therefore whatever appears to happen "as a sin", is not being done TO reality and has NO REAL CONSEQUENCES. God is not affected in the slightest. Your real self, which is dreaming this whole thing, has not been affected. Your real self, your dreaming self, having an IDEA, is STILL as God created you.

Since sin did not happen IN reality or TO reality, that must mean, that you are only having an innocent idea. Your idea has no reality. Your idea has no consequences. It’s FICTION. Which means, whatever you think you DID, you DID NOT DO IT in reality. You only do it INSIDE AN IDEA. Inside a dream. And it does not leave the dream. God is unaffected.

Which means....... drumroll...... that you are STILL 100% INNOCENT, you HAVE NOT sinned against God, there HAS NOT been a separation, there ARE no consequences, you are NOT guilty, you are STILL as God created you, and your idea is ONLY an idea.

When your dream ends, when you stop having the idea, when you stop imagining that you can be something you can never be, what has happened? Nothing. Just an idea. Just a thought. Just a little daydream where you wondered what separation might be like. You don’t return from a real separation. It was NOT a real separation. It was nothing more than an IDEA. And ideas ARE NOT in any way anything like THE REAL THING.

Your idea is an idea of impossibility. "It is the world you see that is impossible." This "world" is the content of EVERYTHING inside the idea. An entire universe of fantasy separation. That includes the entire planet Earth, the sun, the moon, and the whole rest of this universe. This is the world you MADE UP. You did not create it. You did not make it ACTUALLY EXIST. You just dreamed of it.

This means, even the Earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe, all bodies, all physical forms, all creatures here, the oceans and mountains, has never ACTUALLY existed in REALITY. It has only seemed to exist inside an IDEA. A dream. A fictional fairytale. An imaginative visualization of something impossible seeming possible.

So when the Course says, "there is no world", it is saying, this entire "world" - dream existence - that we thought about for an instant, and never actually created, DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. This world, including earth, does not exist. It does not exist IN REALITY. Dreams do not exist in reality. Sin does not exist in reality. "The Earth" does not exist in reality. This whole physical universe does not exist in reality.

Were just having a little idea. That’s all. The idea has no real effects. Having the idea doesn’t create the thing we’re having an idea about. The world we made-up is a figment of our imagination. It’s not there!

There is nothing in, or about, the Earth, which will ever be a part of reality. It is made of thought. IT’s an idea. And this tiny mad idea was over the instant it seemed to be thought. It’s already over. The thought of limitation has been limited. The idea of an end has ended. Not a single note in heaven’s song has been missed.

The really key thing to realize is, AT NO TIME did Heaven stop being Heaven. At no time did you stop being as God created you. At no time did God change. Your inncence was NEVER affected. You did not sin, requiring you to have to undo the sin. There is no sin. There is no death. There is no world. Your real self, did not stop being real. Even when you had this little idea, your true self did not change even slightly. It is as God created it RIGHT NOW, always has been, and always will be. Just because you are having a MAD LITTLE IDEA, doesn’t change anything real AT ALL.

When you dream at night of all manner of strange things happening, perhaps that you have a terrible disease and people are chasing you down a dark alley, you wake up the next day.... where is the terrible disease? Did it leak out of the dream and affect your body? Not at all. Where are the figures who seemed to chase you? They are nowhere to be found. They were fiction. A dream. NOT REAL. Not happening. Nothing. Just a temporary idea, which seemed convincing from inside it, but was utterly unconvincing from outside of it.

You are just inside a dream. IT’s not happening. There is no earth. There are no bodies. There is no death. The son of God is FREE! Separation has not happened. There is no sin. You simply had a little idea, and it is already over.

An idea of something happening is not the same as something happening. Nothing has happened. There is no world. Accepting this is the atonement. Stop dreaming. Wake up.

It's true that separation is impossible, because God is everywhere, so you can't leave heaven and go to another world. In what we call "the separation", or fall of man, or detour into fear, the rebellion against God etc, we didn't actually separate either. It is always impossible.

What is possible is the BELIEF that we have separated, and that belief can produce all manner of visual hallucinations, apparent worlds, spacetime, dreams, images and imagined happenings.

But these things aren't ACTUAL. The world isn't actually a world, the body isn't a real body, and spacetime isn't really spacetime. There isn't any real sin, real guilt, real fear, or real death.

What we've done, in truth, is we've just IMAGINED what it MIGHT be like, IF we could be separate. It's like imagining what a place might be like if you could travel there - somewhere you've never actually been, without actually GOING there.

You imagine what it might be like there, you picture it, you dream of its qualities and its environments, and you wish that you could be there. But you don't actually go there. You dwell within the daydream of "what if I could be separate", but you don't actually go to where separation is. You NEVER CREATE the place, you just stay in the "planning" of it.

In this way, the body is not really a body. It's actually a PICTURE of what a body might be like IF bodies were possible. The world isn't actually a world, it's a PICTURE of what you IMAGINE a world might be like if you could go and be in a separate world.

So you're not inside an ACTUAL separation, in an ACTUAL world, in an ACTUAL body. You're just dwelling somewhere else - in heaven - dreaming of exile. Imagining and visualising what you think spacetime would be like, IF it existed. Not a real actually created spacetime, just a daydream ABOUT a spacetime.

This is in no way the same as actually CREATING IT and going there. Instead, you are making it up. You've never gone to a real space-time, or been in a real body on a real earth. You've only pretended and rehearsed what it MIGHT be like IF you could.

This is important to remember because while you are inside this seeming world, you DO actually BELIEVE that you HAVE in fact separated from God, that you HAVE sinned, that you HAVE pulled off the impossible, you HAVE made a world, and you HAVE produced a body to live in. But you haven't. You've DREAMED OF doing it, but you haven't actually done it in truth.

There's a huge difference between actually doing something, and just believing that you are doing it. Between imagining what it might be like if you could do it, and actually doing it. The truth is that we are not living inside an ACTUAL SEPARATION. We're not in a real spacetime. WE're just CONCEIVING of what we THINK spacetime might be like, IF it were possible.

It's like drawing up the plans for a new city, and then visualising the plans, and then imagining that you're in the city by being "in the plans", without EVER building the actual city.

This is why you are forgivable, and everything is forgivable. Because you haven't actually SEPARATED, you haven't sinned, you're not guilty, and you can never die. All you've done is deceive yourself that you've done something impossible.

Spacetime isn't an ACTUAL attack on God. Bodies aren't ACTUALLY bodies. The world isn't ACTUALLY here. Death doesn't ACTUALLY happen. It's a dream in the mind, an imagined picturing of wishful thinking, a kind of hallucinating of a world that we wish COULD exist, but DOES NOT.

Because it doesn't really exist, and you have not really therefore separated, you must be innocent still. You must be MISTAKEN, simply because you believe that this NOT A WORLD, is actually a world. That you having NOT SEPARATED, is actually a real separation.

You really think you've done it, pulled it off, made an opposite to God, proven that God's son can die, that you can suffer, that you are something you're not. And because you THINK you have done this, you think you are guilty. But thankfully you haven't ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING AT ALL. You're just a bit confused and lost in the blueprint for another world, thinking it's actually been created when all it is is an idea of what it could never be.

This is why you remain always innocent, because you have not done what you think you've done. And if you believe you have really separated, you are mistaken. If you believe you are really a body, you are mistaken. If you believe you're in a world here, you're mistaken. Believing the IMAGINED WORLD to be ACTUAL, is the only mistake.

Actual separation never happened. Only the faulty belief in it, a dream of a world that never was.

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

"There is no peace except the peace of God because He has one Son, who cannot make a world in opposition to God's Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing. Can you REALLY devote yourself to nothing?"

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind."

"This ____ is an image which I have made."

"That ____ is an image which I have made."

"An idol is an image of your brother"

"Here is an image that you WANT to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It GIVES the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. IT PROVES ITS OWN REALITY TO YOU. Thus is the body made a THEORY of yourself, with NO provisions made for evidence BEYOND itself, and NO escape within its sight."

A few quotes about working miracles for others...

"In time, you have been told to offer miracles as I direct, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you. (T-15.V.10:7)

And you will offer miracles because you are one with God. (W-pI.77.1:3)

No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. (T-27.V.1:6-7)

Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead. (W-pII.349.Heading)

Offer Christ's gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles, offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, attune you to reality. (T-13.VIII.7:2)"

The tiny mad idea, a thought of separation, produced a "dream".

The dream is comprised of illusions. Thoughts of separation must always be illusory because reality is not separate. A thought of separation is also a thought of death (opposite to life).

Thoughts of separation must always produce "form". Form is a limited illusion. It just means, the "form" that the illusion takes - its appearance, which differentiates it from other illusions. All illusions are limited. All illusions are forms. Forms can be subtle, mental, energetic, emotional, or physical. They are all dreams, but of varying degrees of deception or "solidity". As Jesus says, waking dreams and nighttime dreams differ only in their form - both are illusions.

A thought of separation HAD to produce what we call a physical universe in order to fulfill, in the extreme, the death-wish which was put in place when we "sinned". Sin was believing that separation was possible, which began the dream in the first place. As soon as it began, death was written into it and this HAD to lead logically and consistently to what appears to be a "universe", containing a "world", in which there are "bodies", which can seem to die.

People within that world, inhabiting bodies, have in their minds *identified with* illusions and are now experiencing a layer of illusions ON TOP OF the illusion of the physical universe itself. They mis-interpret it and project stuff onto it. This is a *secondary layer* of illusions. The first layer of illusions was dreamed by the whole of the Son of God, and the second layer is added by individual ego-identified people.

When this layer of illusions (delusion) is seeming to happen, people mis-percieve "the world", or the physical universe in general, and do not recognize it. They distort it, attack it, judge it, and see their own sin in it. This is a false perception of a false perception. The universe was false perception in the mind of the Son of God in the first place, and now we are further mis-perceiving it even more.

"Individuals" have their own mis-perceptions of the illusory world, but also the illusory world itself is a mis-perception in the larger shared mind.

When we apply forgiveness, we are correcting mis-perceptions, which are beliefs in sin being real, and are taking back our projected hate from the illusory world. This causes us to BELIEVE LESS that the illusion of the world is actually reality. We were deluded so long as we thought the world was real. What we thought ABOUT the world was a mis-perception OF the world.

Believing the world is real, is believing an illusion is real. The world is not real. I it an illusion. It is a dream of a world. And being part of the physical universe, the same applies to the whole universe.

When the mind is purified of these mis-perceptions OF the world, we come to a CLEAR perception OF the world, which is "True Perception". This true perception looks "with truth" upon what the world "is". It *recognizes* that the world is an illusion, NOT a reality. "Making real" the physical world enforces upset and victimhood. Making it unreal, recognizing its urneality, frees us from suffering.

Being able to clearly perceive that the world is actually an illusion, is sight of the "real world". It is the real, as in actual, world that's there. Or to put it another way, we're seeing the "true state" of the world, which is that it is not real.

Jesus referred to it as the real world ONLY to contrast it against a perceived "unreal world" which is what you perceive when you are attacking yourself and projecting it onto the illusion of a world. Self-attack distorts your perception and shows you a world of hate. A forgiven self shows you an illusory world which is forgiven - the forgiven world, the "real" version of the illusory world - recognizing that it is NOTHING MORE THAN AN ILLUSION.

At that point, you have true perception and are seeing correctly, recognizing the world was never real and the physical universe that seems to contain it is not real whatsoever. This is where you then have a tiny step to take to cross over to the "REALLY REAL" "world", which is God's Creation, God's universe, which is beyond all physicality. In the light this produces, the physical world, which was an illusion, eventually disappears from the mind of the collective Son of God, BECAUSE it was not real. All the stars disappear in light, etc.... and the "truth of" the "real world", the true-perception of the lie, easily allows you to translate that to mean that only God's reality is true. The world is forgotten, and God is remembered.

The world out there, or in which your body-self is located, is a dream. It does not exist. You are dreaming it. It is no different to dreams at night. It is entire symbolic and filled with symbols. To awaken must mean the dream comes to an end. This means the world must disappear completely.

"Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (--the physical world is just a dream you're having)

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams." (--see, you're dreaming the entire world)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (--there is no love inside the dream of death, even if you see it with love - love is incompatible with dreams and would end them)

"They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams." (--recognizing the world is a dream is the key to awakening from it)

"Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see." (--dreams disappear when you awaken to the light of truth. In truth dreams do not exist and do not happen. They are unreal. There is no world.)

"To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams." (--can you have the peace of God and be inside the dream? No. This means you are still dreaming and are not at peace.)

"Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes." (--the split mind has multiple wills conflicting with each other - persona and shadow, and must be chaotic. There is no perfect dream or perfect world)

"The miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence." (--miracles are applied to the dream world to undo it!)

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." (--dreams can become happIER, but when the happiest possible dream is perceived, its usefulness is done and it will disappear and dreaming will end)

"Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world." (--the world is a sorry place, a dream of death. Beyond it is God's reality, which is not of this world and demonstrates this world does not exist)

"A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release." (--all dreams (the world, the body) are dreams of weakness - the world is attempted suicide)

"Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams gone. Let truth correct them all." (--you cannot die, it's just a dream of death.)

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you." (--enough said - we are to stop dreaming entirely and help others to do the same)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate." (--the world is a place of sleep, unconsciousness, and unawareness. Its condition or state cannot continue if the state of awareness increases and there is awakening. The dream must end. The world is over. ONLY heaven is real.)