There is a pivotal moment when you let go of the ego's hand and decide to take the hand of Christ.

This can and will happen in many scenarios and many times over. And it's going to happen in your "real life" in relation to people and your beliefs about people.

Cate Grieves gave a good example of this recently in relation to her daughter where she would clash with the "ego" in her daughter, or rather, her own inner fight with her own ego projected there, but after having enough, one day she finally decided to recognize the Christ in her and to relate only to that identity, not to the ego. And everything shifted. That's an example of letting go of the ego's hand and taking the hand of Christ.

Similarly I had spent many many years believing in sickness, thinking it was real, irreversible, truth. Each time I saw it I had reactions and grief. I believed it was real. It was actually horrifying to see disability and very upsetting because I believed it was real, and how tragic it was what had been lost as a result of it. All that suffering was ego bullshit.

I had gone through many many periods of trying to heal it, fix it, rescue the person, trying to learn about what caused it, diagnosing it, figuring out why it happened etc. All of these ways that I was actually continually using the ego to try to find some kind of truth outside of me. Always it would lead me to dead ends and failing to find anything that made sense. It was infuriating. I tried and tried and tried to explain why and how the sickness happened and all that did was justify and keep it.

And this was all because I believed my own ego, my own intellect's ability to diagnose truthfully (which is impossible), and that if I would seek externally for truth I would actually be able to find it, if I looked hard enough. But this was all classic seek-and-do-not-find tactics. It was all based on me believing that the problem was real.

One day, I was getting to where I had really had enough, like, fucking hell I cannot put up with this bullshit any more. And I was starting to recognize with Jesus' help the ways that I kept trying to solve this "real problem", and He was just always trying to get me to surrender and stop doing that. When I was in 'fix it' mode my mind was just lost like in a tunnel vision of thinking that I was going to find the answer, not realizing and not having the awareness that this was fundamentally impossible. The entire basis for my searching was flawed and based in the ego, so I was trapped and failing before I even started.

Somehow enough of these events of futility and failure and gradual tiny steps in becoming aware of this, led to a moment where it started to dawn on me. I started to finally get it. This had all been based on the idea that sickness was REAL. And that also fed into an awareness that was growing in me that there just was no truth out there whatsoever. I had been looking in the wrong place - in the ego - for a truth that doesn't exist there. And that maybe this whole world had no truth in it at all.

Up until that point I'd been believing that the world was real and sickness was real and sin was real. Even if some part of me understood otherwise. And my belief that there is somehow a truth in this world just met with a total loss in finding it. That was GOOD, because it revealed to me that this ego pursuit was totally a distraction, and a pointless one at that. There IS no truth in the world. The truth is NOT out there. This really started a MAJOR shift in my awareness that has been leading to just a tremendous flood of insight and awakening lately.

But the main thing is, I had to question whether sickness was real. And that meant even going against everyone else who said sickness was real. Going against the doctors and the neighbors and the family members and even those closest to me who all believed in real sickness. I had to find enough certainty and be pissed off enough and fed up enough to finally say FUCK THAT. There is no truth there. So I decided, or at least found enough of a sense of conviction, like a ray of light peeking through the window for the first time, to open up to the idea that sickness is not reality, because this world is not reality.

This was a major turn of events because this has now laid a foundation for really huge strides forward, a foundation for hope, a foundation for miracles, and a foundation for healing. That would not have been possible had I remained in the ego belief that sickness is truth. So in this same way, I became able to let go of the ego's hand and take the hand of Christ. And because it took such tremendous frustration and desperation to exhaust the ego's bullshit and to really reveal to myself that this fundamentally major world-wide claim about real sickness was total f'ing bullshit.

So now something is different for me. It's a turning point, suddenly instead of looking at, believing in, and reacting to "real sickness", I am learning how it is an illusion, I am starting to actually overlook it, which means I am finally actually forgiving it. My mind and awareness are shifting and I'm seeing sickness in a whole different way. I'm no longer allowing the ego interpretation of it to be the limit of my belief or awareness, and instead am opening up to the Christ perspective that sickness is not the truth. It's not real, and because it is not real, it can be undone.

These shifts happen in big ways and small ways. Each time you come to question or doubt the ego and see that it's been leading you on a wild goosechase, and its claims are not the truth, you gradually let go of its hand and shift allegiance to Christ. You go from perceiving FORM as though it's real, and looking beyond it. You go from seeing people as real bodies, to no longer regarding them as "just that". Your vision no longer stops at sight of form and it starts to see a truth that transcends it. The person is not their body. The person is not their ego.

This basically means you are gradually de-coupling yourself from form, and are actually letting go of your own body at the same time. Everything in front of your eyes is an attempt to get you to see it as real, and to fail to overlook/forgive, leading to judgement. We need to learn to not believe it! It's not real. It's not truth. Form is just an effect of an idea, not a solid reality. Nor is it fixed, and nor is it identity.

Form is not the truth about a person. Their body is not the truth about them. Their personality/persona/shadow is not the truth about them. They actually are more than that. Even when they are filled with hate and rage, that's still not true about them. Their real self, holy and innocent, is still in there somewhere, just temporarily covered up. It doesn't go away! This justifies unconditional love at all times.

When there are ego beliefs which say, there is some truth to something opposite to God's truth, you will not be willing, ready, or able, to accept atonement.

You'll want to accept it but there will be something in you which objects or nags or gives you a sense of suspiciousness, that something just isn't quite acceptable or true about God's truth. No matter how plainly clear God's truth is, how clearly presented, or how obvious, the ego STILL distorts perception and can't quite see it squarely, suspecting there is some kind of deception going on, which is its own.

This is why the ego ranges from suspicious to vicious. At best, it does not quite agree with God, and so has this in-built fear and doubt that makes it "not believe" what the truth is saying. This is because it believes something else and has loyalty to something else.

What needs to happen in your mind is that you undo ALL beliefs which are false or saying something out of accord with God's truth/will. Until you do that, you will not be willing to accept the truth.

So if you have a belief that you are afraid and fear is real or fear causes something or you can't stop the fear, there is no way you are going to be willing to accept God's truth. You won't be able to see that it makes perfect sense, or that there is no other reason NOT to accept it.

So then you have to look at the fear and recognize why its an illusion, recognize it as false, unfounded, non-causal, and the fact that it is actually an EFFECT of something deeper. Fear covers up guilt and makes guilt go unconscious, and is being caused BY guilt.

So you have to then dig out the guilt and make it conscious and then do the same thing. You have to come to recognize and accept that the guilt is not true, it's a lie, you're not really guilty, the guilt isn't causing anything, it's just an effect of a belief in sin. Guilt is denial of sin.

Same thing applies to sin, it has to be uprooted and examined, and its at this point that you are bringing into question whether something even happened at all. If the sin occurred "in reality" and thus this world is reality, then you can't let it go. But if you can recognize there is no sin because whatever seemed to happen was an illusion in a fictional world, you can recognize the sin did not happen in REALITY, only in a dream, and thus is not a "real sin". This allows you to let go of the belief that you are sinful.

Once you've got your mind and BELIEF to the place where you recognize that "it makes sense" to you, that you have not sinned in reality or against God, and therefore no REAL effects can have happened, it simply LOGICALLY justifies to you that you MUST therefore STILL BE INNOCENT.

You have to get to that point logically and in terms of it making sense to you, for you to believe that this is correct, accurate, and truthful. THEN, it is absolutely effortless for you to see that God's truth makes sense. That means, you will now be not only ABLE to accept it, but also WILLING to, simply because you don't see ANY other reason not to, and your reasoning (truth) has set you free of all the contrary opposing beliefs. You basically run out of excuses or beliefs as to "why you shouldn't".

This makes you able to accept, fully, and embrace, the atonement. The atonement means nothing happened, you are still as God created you, God still loves you, you did not DO anything at all in reality, there hasn't even been a real sin, you MUST still be innocent, and therefore you MUST BE WORTHY of God's love. This makes it possible for you to ACCEPT that God loves you and RECEIVE HIS LOVE. Acceptance is receiving. What you accept you will receive into your mind and it will be REALITY to you.

Your accepting of this truth without any objections or counter-arguments, allows you to RECEIVE LOVE, and therefore this is what it means to RECEIVE A MIRACLE. This reception also means, since you are willing to recognize that you are WORTHY of being loved, that you also recognize that EVERYONE is ALSO worthy of being loved.

So your willingness to receive atonement/truth/love entails the automatic extension of that worthiness to everyone. And this is also why your receipt of the atonement, the receiving of miracles, puts you in the position of BEING PART OF THE ATONEMENT ITSELF, and therefore you now have received miracles and CAN GIVE MIRACLES TO OTHERS. "You can only give the miracles you have received". To really RECEIVE a miracle requires acceptance and willingness to receive God's truth, even for a moment.

You then are an expresser of the atonement, of God's will and God's love, to others, to help others to also get to the atonement through miracles and correction and teaching. And this is your FUNCTION at that point. It is everyone's function to become part of Jesus's atonement plan and to then be an ACTIVE WORKER in the world helping to demonstrate the truth is true through miracle working. There is much "work to do" at that point, in the "Great Awakening" or "Great Crusade" as Jesus calls it.

So this can only happen for you when you are willing, ready, and able to accept the truth, to see that it makes sense to you and therefore to logically have no other reason NOT to. This is why all other opposing ego beliefs have to be let go first.

As a special final note, I want to make it clear that you do not have to undo ALL of the ego in order to accept "some" atonement, or to receive a miracle. "One moment of love without fear is all that is necessary that all this occur" even if fear returns afterwards (paraphrasing).

You can for example, if you are working on a specific issue, e.g. maybe you are forgiving a parent or an abuser or something, you can undo all beliefs surrounding it and go ALL the way to the atonement principle with it, accepting God's love. You WILL be able to experience SOME measure of love and worthiness, and will therefore be able to receive SOME healing. And this WILL give you a miracle, and you WILL become able to give this miracle to others at that point, even if you still have OTHER seemingly separate issues to undo. There are obviously some limits to this but the first time I did this Jesus told me, "you can perform miracles now."

The final atonement happens when you have basically atoned on ALL issues and have no ego left whatsoever.

Atonement is also the same thing as forgiveness, so when you are "applying forgiveness", you really SHOULD be taking it ALL the way to the atonement and accepting and receiving God's love at the end, otherwise you are not doing a COMPLETE forgiveness.

On of the most life-changing things I've learned from ACIM, is simply realising this idea that we "scapegoat" in order to get rid of our own guilt. That we start out first attacking ourselves, making ourselves guilty, and then we project that guilt through seemingly justified anger onto other people. This whole "blame game" is of finger pointing and finding people to be sinful, trying to enforce people's guilt through anger and attack, so that we can get rid of our own guilt and come off innocent.

Most people in the world are blameful and believe that who they are angry at is the one who is wrong. When I first got this idea that "the person who is blaming is the one with the PROBLEM", it was a 180-degree paradigm shift. It was a revelation that it's not the person being blamed that has the problem, it's the person doing the blaming. Because for the most part it is easy to believe that anger is justified, and the person we're angry at must be the one who is wrong. But it's always the projecting person who has a problem.

If more people could adopt this, relationships would be 90% healthier. In a vast majority of special relationships in the world, even marriages, there is rampant scapegoating, anger and blame. People essentially have unhealed wounds, inner guilts, unforgiven sins etc, which are triggered off, which lead to an eruption of emotion and a hurling outward of it to try to pin it on someone else. When it gets really bad, it's just one reaction after another back and forth, keeping score and trying hard to make sure the other person is guilty.

To realize that we have to take responsibility for what we feel and experience is key. Instead of it being other people or the world who are responsible for what we're feeling, we have to take back that power and recognize WE are the ones doing it to ourselves. WE are the ones who are "to blame" for this suffering. It's the secret of salvation. If they aren't the ones with the problem, it must be me. And that takes honesty.

If I am upset, something is wrong with me, not anyone else. If I am getting angry at someone, something is wrong with me and not anyone else. The more angry I get, the more I am in denial that I have a problem. The more I am in denial, the more I split my mind, the more I reinforce separation, and the more I dissociate my mind from itself. The more dissociated I become the more I believe something "not me" is to blame, and become extremely convinced that I am NOT the one with the problem.

The key is that we have to forgive ourselves all the guilts that we've piled onto ourselves. All the self-accusation and self-hate and self-destruction. All the hidden sins and hates and unworthiness and all the rest of the ways we attack ourselves. Without that guilt, we have nothing to project, and no reason to project it.

I think one thing I feel quite good about is that after all these 20+ years of working on this with ACIM, I've managed to heal quite a lot of guilts and shames and hidden sins and hates and all that - to do with myself, that I don't very often scapegoat anymore. You can't scapegoat unless you need one, and if you aren't full of guilt it's harder to be triggered by stuff. I have become more benevolent and softer and more loving, kinder and more peaceful, and that's a good thing.

I see a lot of relationships where this simple thing hasn't been learned. The absolute default for the ego is to just go into rage mode whenever someone triggers off some guilt. Then there's defensiveness and anger and hurling abuse and separation. There a war of words, broken relationships, abuse and all the rest of it, all springing from wounded people getting their insecurities and unhealed stuff triggered off. And not taking responsibility for it.

It's tough at times to keep having to come back to this idea that, I'm the one who is responsible for this suffering. But it's a vital practice. If I'm upset, it is never for the reason I think. If I am angry and I think it is justified, anger is never justified. The cause and reason of the problem is in my mind, not out in the world or in anyone else. No-one is doing anything to me or causing me to be upset for any reason. It's all an inside job. If the world could learn this we'd have absolutely incredible relationships and the end of so much conflict.

If someone or something outside of you is the cause of you, you are powerless to stop it affecting you and are playing a victim role. Only if you are invulnerable to the world are you no longer affected by it. Its a transition from victimhood to the impossibility of being a victim, from vulnerability to invulnerability, from mortality to immortality, from effect to cause.

And that means recognising your immortality. It always comes back to you being an immortal being, nothing can happen against your will, so if you think someone's causing you to suffer, you're deceiving yourself. You have to get really honest and own up to what you are doing to yourself and admit you are mistaken, be willing to have humility and step back with the blame game. To totally own your causal power and how you are using it against yourself, is forgiveness. Coming from a position of not being in conflict and at war with yourself, so that you look out from that peace onto others.

Blaming someone splits your mind. The mind hallucinates that it's talking to another separate person in third-person speak like "you're doing this" while the person isn't even in front of them. The more angry we become the more we enforce separation and guilt. That's literal insanity, to project guilt in an attempt to get rid of it, while causing it to get worse.

Anger increases separation and splits the mind producing mental illness and ultimately physical illness. It's in all our best interests that we learn to own up to who and what we are, take responsibility for our own shit, and stop putting it onto everyone else.

Whenever we feel compelled to look outside ourselves for a cause or will or power to explain why something is happening, we're lost. If we can totally take full responsibility for what we are, such that we no longer accuse anyone of being the reason why we are what we are, we will be completely forgiving and kind and benevolent - to ourselves and others.

The whole of ACIM is simply geared toward this goal of complete undoing of the separation in the mind, the removal of all guilt, the end of all blame, and the complete reversal of all conflict. And without guilt there is no ego.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." W5

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." UrT30G1

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts." W281

"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 which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail" UrW195L5

"It can be but myself I crucify." W196

"Only the self-accused condemn." UrT31C

"You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack." UrT31C

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further." UrT6C3

"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making HIM invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt." UrT11J6

Here’s what I‘ve learned from ACIM and recent experiences.

1. The body does not really exist at all, except as a temporary projected 3D image coming from the mind. It is an illusion. It has no mind, soul, will, power, or causality.

2. When the mind believes in separation and goes into ‘ego’, it regards its identity as an illusion and materializes an illusory self image, which shows up as the form of a body - a device for separation. It then confuses its identity with the body and becomes unaware that it is making it show up. Even tough the mind is projecting the body, and continues doing so unconsciously, it now believes it IS the body. (The body needs no healing for it cannot make itself sick, but a mind that believes it is a body is sick indeed.)

3. When the mind believes it is the body it’s projecting, and starts reading ACIM talking about how you are not a body, and since the mind in this state is unaware it is projecting the body, it takes this to mean 1) the body exists separate from the mind, 2) the mind isn’t putting it there, and 3) therefore I must "detach" from and transcend everything to do with the body and go into my mind. "Seek not to change the world", "I am not a body I am free" etc is all geared toward DIS-IDENTIFYING with the body. Remembering that you are NOT the 3D image you are projecting.

4. Since mind in that state is unaware it’s projecting the body, it tends to think this means "body and mind are separate", and "I must change my perception OF the body, and the world, and this is all I CAN do", as though the body and the world exist ON THEIR OWN (separate from your mind), and not because of your mind. So the mind sets about divorcing itself from the body and trying to shift away from it. This is accompanied by the belief that you must learn to accept the body and the world "as it is", in whatever state it is in, and do NOTHING to try to change it. This justifies never performing miracles, and not being responsible for having power over sickness and death.

5. As mind takes notice of all the teachings which speak of changing your perception OF the body and the world, in order to transition your IDENTITY back to mind/cause, you will start to experience increasing AWARENESS that you are causal. Level confusion and cause-effect are corrected. You realize more and more that mind causes everything, including the state of the body and the world. You have to now question the prior belief that you just "ignore" the world and go home, and realize now that it is coming from you.

6. The previously unconscious projective power of the mind, which is making the body show up, starts to become unavoidable and conscious. To be not a victim does not just mean transcending a sick body and letting it die, it now means acknowledging the second piece of the puzzle that you were not aware of before: your body is coming FROM your mind, at all times. While it’s still true that you must learn to NOT BE THE BODY, you must now take charge of what it is and the form it takes, what it represents, what it symbolizes, what it teaches and what it demonstrates. Because the body is now starting to become TRANSPARENT, meaning it is becoming a window into the mind, rather than a cover over the mind.

7. You realize eventually that even though "you are not the body" is a huge central teaching of the course, and you’re supposed to recognize yourself as not being affected BY it, that inevitably leads to a causal relationship where you are the CAUSE OF IT, rather than it being the cause of you. There is no middle ground of "body doesn’t cause me but it exists on its own." The body MUST have a causer. Someone is making it show up. YOU ARE!

8. This is the deeper KEY to the mind-body relationship that few ACIM students are willing to see or accept. It’s not just about changing your perception OF things, it’s about realizing YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF THEM. "Projection makes perception" doesn’t just mean that you project ONTO what is there. It means you LITERALLY PUT STUFF OUT THERE and THEN perceive what you put there and interpret your perception! "There is no world apart from what you wish" "The world IS perception". You also have power over your projections - you are a creator. And when you exercise that power, miracles happen. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this." It’s not JUST about dis-identifying with the body, the world and external causes. It’s ALSO about realizing YOU ARE THE DREAMER, and if you weren’t dreaming, there WOULDN’T EVEN BE A WORLD TO PERCEIVE! "There is no world."

9. This leads to having to admit that there is a CONNECTION between your mind and your body. It is not merely something to transcend or separate from or leave behind. There is a direct line of causality coming from the mind to MATERIALIZE the body. MInd is the projector. And this is the TIE that "unconscious projectors" deny even exists - a reason why your body is under the authority of your mind, why it symbolizes and represents your state of mental health, and why "sick bodies are accusers". Your body is an image you hold up to represent what your MIND believes is true of you and others. Your body is an image IN YOUR MIND, that your mind is fully responsible for.

10. This ultimately MUST lead to the resurrection state, in which the mind FULLY IDENTIFIES WITH SPIRIT. This doesn’t mean it just separates from, denies, drops dead, or leaves behind the body. How can the body STAY showing up WITHOUT a mind to project it? It cannot lay on the ground looking dead WITHOUT a mind putting it there AND MAINTAINING IT. "The mind being sane, heals the body." And when the mind is fully sane, and is done with dreaming, it will STOP DREAMING THE BODY. It will stop projecting one. The body DISAPPEARS, literally! When the mind regards its identity as SPIRIT, it becomes empty of all illusions, and does not hold a picture of an illusory body in place. The body becomes *transparent*, its image fades, and it CEASES TO EXIST becaue the light shines it away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." This is the only way out of the dream, not through death or sickness or old age!

"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision that is responsible for the body’s condition."

"The mind that made the body can make another."

"At no time does the body exist."

This is the central teaching of the course. It is simply the principle that MIND is the CAUSE of everything - your body and your world. It has power OVER everything it projects. It chooses WHAT will appear out there, and then perceives it. It PUTS OBJECTS THERE. It materializes matter. "Your mind has the power to create worlds." There IS NO WORLD other than the one YOU ARE PROJECTING. It’s NOT just about you projecting ONTO stuff, onto the world, onto people, or onto your body. You are the one who puts that stuff there in the first place! This is the responsibility we all have to own up to. "Your brother thinks he made the world with you."

The world is a fluid, flexible, non-fixed liquid pool of mental possibilities and illusions. MINDS are dreaming it into being. Bodies are showing up because body-identified minds, which are sick, are trying to manifest illusions and make them seem real. None of this is really here. We’re just collaborating in a grand dream. The world is NOT OBJECTIVELY REAL and nor is the body.

I summary, your task is to:

1) Dis-identify from being a body and realize you are immortal spirit and causality is in your mind.

2) Remember that your mind is MAKING your body show up and the state or health of your body REFLECTS your mental health.

3) Recognize your body is an illusion that YOU were believing in, and without your belief it CANNOT EXIST. Thus you reach resurrection, your illusion of death disappears, and you return to what you alway were - pure spirit in heaven.

Everyone has free will. If someone uses their free will to choose to be mistaken, that's up to them. If they use their free will to try to be a sinful evil-like person, that's up to them. If they use their free will to be angry and violent and abusive, that's up to them. If they use their free will to wage war and murder, that's up to them.

It's actually not a 'right' of ours to judge that the choices people have made are sinful. The choices they have made might be very mistaken, very ineffective, very backward or confused, but it's still their free will to make that choice. We don't actually have a right to hold their mistakes against them or to decide that they are sinful because of what they've chosen.

This means that we have to allow people the freedom to be very wrong, the freedom to attack, the freedom to hurt and damage, etc. That is their free will right. This is not to say that they are sane in those choices, or that it's 'morally right' or justified or loving behaviour etc. But it is still their freedom. If they want to suffer, if they want to produce suffering, that's their freedom.

We therefore have to find a way not to judge such choices as sins. We have to be more like, okay, if that's what you want, then you're totally allowed. Whether or not there are actions or counter-measures or defences or protections or whatever after that point, is another matter. Whether there are consequences of legal actions or imprisonment or whatever, that's another matter. But the person does have the free-will right to do what they want.

What this means is that regardless of how someone is different, regardless of the form it takes, what choices they make, what they seem to want, we have to have an attitude that these differences don't define them as guilty sinners. We can't be judging them for it.

If we start going into modes of like... you did this thing, it's a bad thing, therefore you are sinful, therefore I'm justified in blaming you and shaming you and punishing you .... now we're on shaky ground.

What it means is that we actually want people to have poor choices so that we have an opportunity to see them sin. If they sin, then we can find them guilty. Then we can project our own guilt onto them while making out that they're the guilty one, and it'll all seem nice and tidy and covert. We ourselves as "with sin", and we are trying to cast stones at people we want to be sinful.

As Jesus says in the bible "He who is without sin should cast the first stone." In other words if we're busy judging people and hurling stones at them to punish them for 'sin', we should be a bit more honest and look at the ways we ourselves are being sinful before finding other people to be sinful. We don't really have a leg to stand on. And only those who are forgiving and sinless would be in a position to judge, and would refrain from doing so.

In effect, if we are judging people for making poor choices, seeming to suggest that we think that shouldn't be acting that way, we actually DO want them to act that way, because we get a great opportunity to scapegoat. And that means we can shove some of our guilt onto them and justify it on the basis that they are the one who deserves it, and our anger is justified. Thank God they chose to sin so that we could have a chance to be innocent.

To be more honest we have to stop judging people as being sinners for what they've chosen. But this also does mean that even in the face of people seeming to do what we might classify as horrible things, abusive things, evil things, we have to STILL find them not guilty. We have to still not judge them as evil or wrong or bad people. They are just mistaken.

Criminals, murderers, rapists, child abusers, terrorists, war-mongers, thieves, bullies, you name it... yes they are making quite poor choices but they are not sinful for it. Nor are we supposed to be pointing a finger of blame and saying they are the guilty ones. Or holding it against them, or shaming them, or wanting to counter-attack them, or punish them for it.

If we're doing that, trying to use the things in the world that seem less than holy as justification for revenge and hate and accusation, then we're in our ego. Because the ego loves to judge harshly and find guilty and make wrong. That means we are being "judgey". As "judges" we act like "judge and jury", some kind of God or authority that has the 'right' to determine who is innocent and who is guilty, and to sentence the sinners to death.

We're judgemental and unforgiving. Instead of being forgiving toward them for their mistakes, we step out of forgiveness and go into judgement. We reason that we're not being forgiving BECAUSE the person is judged to be wrong. The judgement tries to justify NOT forgiving, by pointing out how the person is obviously sinful and MUST be judged. So then we're justifying unforgiving attitudes on the basis that people are doing wrong all over the place, which is itself the perceived result of not forgiving them in the first place.

Bottom line is, we are not supposed to be judging anyone or anything. Judging is just another form of attack and projection. At times it can seem to not be angry, maybe just a subtle annoyance, but it's still a way to project guilt. All the things we judge against, we have to find a way to stop doing that. All the ways we say people are wrong, and hold their acts and choices against them, we're being unforgiving.

So ultimately it means that in order to be forgiving, we have to forgive everyone and everything. There mustn't be anything that we single out for punishment, no-one that we call names, no one that we hate or are offended by, no-one that we see as deliberately evil, and no-one that justifies our anger or revenge.

People in their differences need to be allowed to be different. It doesn't mean differences are true or real, but if people are choosing to be different that's up to them. If in any way we categorise their choices as wrong, we're being judgemental. No matter how weird their choices, how strange, how unnatural, how fake, how immature, how selfish, whatever.... we have to still let them have the freedom to make those choices and not accuse them of being stupid, sinful, evil, bad, wrong, guilty, or any other negativity because of it.

We don't have to agree with the differences, we don't have to choose the same things, we don't have to condone it or support it, we don't have to go along with it or let ourselves or others be in the line of fire. We don't have to go into inaction or being carpeting or a martyr or letting people walk all over us etc, but at the same time we must not be having such unforgiving attitudes towards them.

It requires infinite patience. And it requires a willingness not to be at war. In judgement we are unforgiving and cold and heartless and unloving. Only in forgiveness - an earthly form of love - can we be kind and supportive and truly helpful.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is." UrW220W14

I find very often that if I am not constantly "rebuking" everything the world seems to portray, I will fall into temptation and buy into problems. Then I'll have reactions based on ego and form and bodies and appearances, and will suffer, wondering how to get out of it.

The fact is that we're presented with a false word, right in our faces, 24/7, every single day. The body continuously reports on it as if it's real and makes it seem real. Every single sensory input is a lie to the mind, suggesting that something untrue is true, something impossible is possible, and something that can never happen in reality is happening.

It may seem completely casual, living our everyday lives, interacting with objects, doing household tasks, looking at things and commenting on them, seeing bodies, etc... as though this is totally normal and natural. We can just "live an ego life", a body life, functioning the same way we always have. Immersed in space and time and physicality. Interacting with the world as if it's just another day, things are just ticking over as they always do, as is this is totally normal.

But as we start trying to wake up to reality, we start to find that the world is absolutely opposite to reality. And now we're tasked with trying to peel ourselves away from absolutely everything the world throws at us. Every appearance is false, every body sickness is a lie, every picture of death is unnatural, every problem isn't really there. If we don't counteract these inputs, they become overwhelming and we just sink down into them like it's what everyone does.

It seems then that we have to constantly fight against illusions. Every second. The kind of life we live without even thinking about it, as if it's normal, is riddled with deception. If we drop our guard and just go through the motions acting like everything in the world is how things are supposed to be, within seconds we'll find ourselves thinking and speaking and acting based on what the body says is real. And now we're lost all over again. And every morning we wake up immersed back into the same dungeon of deception and darkness.

It sure as heck seems that if we aren't CONSTANTLY asserting God's truth, constantly denying what is not of God, constantly stating and affirming that body states are not fact, constantly PUSHING and broadcasting God's truth and light all the time, repelling sin and hell, then we will just once again fall for the next subtle trap. The next little everyday seemingly insignificant scrap of an illusory world which is just as deceptive and distorting as all the rest.

The impression I'm getting lately then is that we have to eventually get to a state where we are "professing christ" all the time. And I mean like, being on our guard at all times. In a sense, praying a higher prayer all the time. Giving off happier more loving vibes all the time. Teaching only love, all the time. Refusing to accept anything we see in the world, all the time. And that means being really heavily centered in God's truth and laws and mindset and just constantly vigilant for staying in that mindset as much as possible, even when the world is sandblasting you in the face with visual lies.

Jesus says in the course that atonement is our natural profession. That we should PROFESS christ. Which means to express, emit, teach, radiate, give christ at all times. To counteract and fly in the face of the world. To be coming from God at all times. To be healers at all times, in the world but not of it at all times. Under no worldly laws but God's at all times.

Because, quite frankly, what I've found is that if I DON'T attempt to do that, I will just sink right back down into ego land, body sensations, false perceptions, reactions to bodies and sicknesses appearing real. At every turn, someone's sick body is attempting to testify to them having been changed and corrupted against God's will. And it is our task to NOT believe that, to assert and SEE and claim the truth of the person that they are still as God created them. Which is in complete defiance of what their body looks like, staring you in the face with its fake suffering and temptation.

The degree of temptation is just so totally off the charts. It seems that if we don't rise above it and stay above it and continually REPEL it every minute of the day, we're just going to keep falling back into it. Maybe over time we can talk ourselves into such a state of conviction that we can more effortlessly remain in the light and the truth and not have to make such an effort of it. But meanwhile it seems like a constant fight, a constantly struggle, to get out of hell and get back into a more heavenly state. Day after day after day of the world trying to pull us back down.

"The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."

If we are to INSTANTLY meet every perception with forgiveness, that means we have to CONSTANTLY be in a state of forgiveness every single second. We have to be on our toes. We have to be totally ready and right minded at all times. As in keeping our mind right-side up at all times and sane in order to be ready to perform miracles.

"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do. You must be READY to listen WILLING to learn and ABLE to do"

To stay OUT of deception and temptation and distraction is difficult. Everything the world believes is not true. Everything physical matter shows is false. We have to pierce the veil and push past the body and connect with the divine. To have "reality contact".

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."

It really seems to me that in order to be a consistent miracle worker we have to be practically from another world, a temporary visitor here, come to help and heal and uplift, siding entirely with God, falling for no temptation, buying into nothing the world suggests. As if we were briefed before we came, that the world was going to try to eat us alive, and that we had to stay on our toes and not for a second believe a single bit of it. To float above the battlefield constantly lest we fall off the wagon again and again and again. To clarify just how extremely difficult it can be, Jesus even says that the most advanced teachers still succumb to temptation at times.

The world can seem insurmountable in its immensity, its diversity of illusions, its deceptions. Gradually the mind HAS to be trained away from believing any of it. Has to learn to see through and past illusory things. Has to learn NOT to believe in what the body reports. And that takes time to reinforce the mind's attitude over and over and over and over again with affirmations and restatements and reframing.

"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world."

Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, we have to be watchful for buying into the world. Over and over again we will keep slipping back down the slippery slope to hell, and have to keep pulling ourselves back out of the muck again and again and again until we can learn to fly enough that we stay out of it for good.

If you're carrying around some guilt about something you did wrong, you need to let that shit go.

How long are you supposed to suffer before it's enough suffering to make up for your sin? Do you want a bit more suffering? How much do you deserve?

10 years? 50 years? The rest of your life? Are you so worthless that you don't ever deserve forgiveness? When is it enough suffering that you're done? And what is going to happen when you decide its enough?

Your offering of 'being guilty' is supposedly your GIFT to the world, in an attempt to ATONE or "make up for" the mistake you made. You think that if you walk around feeling guilty about it, that you're appropriately ashamed, and you actually agree that you're supposed to be shameful.

You think this gift of guilt is actually a helpful offering, something that is called for or wanted by everyone else. You think if you remain guilty and carry around your sob story about how awful you are, that you're making up for what you did. And if you be guilty long enough, you "pay back" the suffering that you think you caused someone else.

This is bullshit. Offering guilt to the world to make up for something you did wrong is a DOUBLE OFFENSE. You not only did something wrong, but then you followed it up with this righteous self-punishment agenda where you punish yourself, on behalf of everyone else, to try to make up for it. Like, as if you can atone through suffering. And you think this is your gift to the world but all you've done is a) committed some sin, and then b) followed it up with a prolonged period of moping around acting like a guilty asshole, as if this is helping the situation. So now the world is not only hurt by you, but it's also got to put up with your guilty portrayal of yourself which, while seeming to be self-correcting, is actually just pulling everyone down even more.

How do you compare being guilty to being loving? How is being guilty for doing some wrong BETTER for other people than REPENTING FROM THIS SIN, receiving CORRECTION WITHOUT PUNISHMENT, and then being restored to being LOVING? When you are restored to being loving - which includes loving yourself - you now are in a far better position to actually 'atone', if you will, to make up for what you did. You can now offer a true gift of love and support. You can be more present. You can be more truly helpful and more attentive and available. You can't do that if you're carrying around a big heavy weight of guilt strapped to your ankle.

IT IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE if you forgive yourself and let yourself off the fucking hook, and give yourself a frickin' break, and say hey, I made this mistake, ok... it was a mistake, but it calls only for loving, unconditionally loving compassion and correction, so that I can correct my position to one of LOVE rather than one of being heavy weight of guilt around everyone else's ankles. I need to DROP the guilt and be freed from the burden of sin and shame, otherwise what USE am I to anyone else? How can I actually give anyone anything of TRUE value - true hope, true blessing, true understanding, true love, if I'm totally captivated by my own guilt?

We have to stop believing that guilt IS love. We have to stop offering guilt to everyone as if we're blessing them with it, and especially not taking guilty actions to try to 'make up for' doing something wrong. Guilt-driven actions are further attacks! We have to stop having this stupid ego-driven "guilty conscience" which we seem to think is our judge and jury and which governs and justifies us being punished for making mistakes. Each time we listen to it, it will always say, yup, you did something wrong, you guilty fucker, you deserve to die. That's it. That's how it works. It never says well, you made this mistake, because you were wrong about yourself, because you attacked yourself, and ended up projecting it onto other people as well, but really you deserve LOVE and love is all you need. So throw the guilty conscience away. It paralyzes your entire life and it's purely an ego device!

If you're feeling guilty, you need correction and love, not punishment and hate and shame. When are you going to drop your guilt? When have you suffered enough, needlessly (ALL suffering is needless except to use it to learn that you need not suffer because you're innocence)? When will you stop listening to everyone else's bullshit ego that says, yup, you gotta suffer a really long time you guilty asshole? When will you stop your own agenda of self destruction, for which you ARRANGED events to turn sour, so that you'd have an excuse to chastise yourself? And then it's like, oh, poor me, I guess I do deserve to suffer because I did something wrong, you're right, go ahead and destroy me. Its bullshit.

You need to stop making yourself guilty for every little fucking thing you do whether it's a mistake or not. And you need to drop all of the guilt that you have accumulated which enforces your STORY about WHY you are justified in not being loved by God (which is the secret purpose of your guilt-hood to begin with), and CHOOSE AGAIN to RECLAIM YOUR INNOCENCE. It's the best thing you can do for yourself, for everyone else, even for anyone that you might've harmed in a moment of confusion. The BEST thing you can do for everyone concerned is to RETURN TO LOVE. And this is the best thing you can do even for people you might've hurt because even if THEY can't forgive you continue to project THEIR guilt and hate onto you, you MUST choose innocence for yourself otherwise you're just making the whole situation worse.

And if we're sane about this, we have to say, that we should be ENCOURAGING all of our enemies and attackers and abusers and everyone else to BECOME LOVE, to be forgiven, to be recognized as innocent and to become OUR SAVIOR. This is the only way that our brother becomes our savior and Jesus speaks on this at great length in ACIM. You brother isn't going to be your savior if you can't WANT for them to be restored to a state of perfect innocence. And you can't BE a brother to someone if you're not willing to FORGIVE YOURSELF and ALLOW YOURSELF to be innocent. It's in everyone's best interests for anyone making a mistake to be healed and loved so that they can return to equality and unconditionality, otherwise they will ONLY drag down the entire brotherhood. It is counter productive to keep enemies as enemies because it only ensures that YOU are more likely to be attacked again. You can't remove attackers by punishing them, only be healing them. Rehab!

You're useless to the world when you're guilty. Stop it. Stop playing the "poor me, I'm guilty and unworthy, you better not love me" card. The secret purpose of this card is to have an EXCUSE for why God should not love you. Your failure to forgive yourself requires you to justify it with explanations for why you SHOULD suffer. "He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive" - ACIM. Stop justifying why you need to be guilty, for anything. YOU DESERVE COMPLETE FORGIVENESS.

You are God's creation. You are God's child. You are INNOCENT FOREVER. Stop putting yourself down and stop using other people to put you down, and stop using your stories about your mistakes to enforce why you should be stepped all over or why God can't possibly love you. You implicitly DESERVE ALL OF THE LOVE IN THE WORLD. Period. Unconditionally. Right now. Your guilt facade isn't helping anyone, least of all you.

Nobody really cares if you're guilty or ashamed or not. If they really want you to be guilty, THEY have a problem with making themselves guilty. That's their game which they are projecting onto you. Fuck em. You need to take back your power and stop being a deliberate victim about the mistakes you made. They are just mistakes. There is not a single mistake in all of the history of the world that calls for punishment. All mistakes are a CALL FOR LOVE. God is not holding a single thing against you. You cannot sin. You haven't sinned. You will never sin. You're just having a case of mental illness and thinking that you're sane when you're confused, and making mistakes in error because you've lost touch with the truth. That's all. Nobody is to blame for this. All you need is HEALING. That's all. Mistakes call for healing and restoration and for your RETURN TO UNION AND ACCEPTANCE with everyone else.

Take your life back. Everyone else can fuck off with their judgements and shaming. You deserve to be forgiven.

Do I even know what the heck the world even is and how to look at it and forgive it?

"The world is horribly cruel."

What kind of a statement is this? What's happening in the mind? Is the world inherently cruel, or is this some kind of judgement?

Certainly a sentiment of accusation, blame, finger-pointing, hating, anger, etc towards the world for "being the way it is", is a combination of the world plus a projected attack thought.

"I can escape from the world (the horrible interpretation of the world) by giving up attack thoughts."

If we take away the attack thought, ie the judgement, what remains of the world? Is it still cruel? If bodies are still dying and people are still screaming, is it still cruel? Is it cruel if your interpretation of the meaning of the scene is different?

We are asked not to be DECEIVED BY the world, which means the world is potentially deceptive. We must recognize it as false or as a neutral mirror. "The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

But at the same time we're being asked to love it and forgive it. If the world is cruel somehow, that would suggest it is unforgivable. How can you overlook a murder scene or a slaughterhouse?

But are such things cruel because they are, or because we say they are? Have we given it a meaning of "that's cruel"? Is it fundamental to what's there? Are we to look upon a slaughterhouse with laughter and happiness as we regard how shiny and beautiful and new the dismembered bodies seem to be? Or, would we perhaps indeed not even SEE these images?

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

Is not the real world an attempt to look upon the same world which you regarded as cruel, but without the judgement that it is cruel? To still see the slaughtering but "with love and happiness"?

Can you remain in happiness and peace in the face of such a scene? Maybe. ACIM clearly wants us to look at how awful and hopeless "the world" is. But it also clearly wants us to forgive. Does this forgiveness enable us to still see the same stuff but in a happier way? Can heaven gloss over the world's chaos and make it seem somehow a reflection of perfection? How can "Earth can reflect heaven or hell" work? How can earth, a false world, a cruel slaughterhouse, be seen to reflect heaven?

To love it IN SPITE of itself? To detach the "how do I see it" from the "what is there to look at"? To love regardless of the miserable scene? "They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. "

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

So, we take away some kind of guilt "layer" that we were projecting onto the physical world, the false world, and thus lift "hell" away from it. But it remains sort of hell-like given its continued slaughtering. But somehow the lack of guilt "for doing so" renders it lovely and lovable?

"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death."

What is the world of death? Earth in its falseness of form, or the layer of projected guilt upon it? And in essence isn't he saying then that the real-world state of mind is so filled with reinterpretation and translation of the slaughterhouse, that every single aspect of it seems SOMEHOW just wonderful and lovable? Which prevents you even seeing any sign of "that's a death" interpretation, replaced with "that's a beautiful image of a body in a certain state" interpretation?

"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

Ok so now there's a world that was "made" (seemingly long-term, like an objective earth), which symbolizes death... indeed earth's cruel-seeming system symbolizes punishment and suffering and destruction. So the real world "replaces" this somehow. Yet the real world looks UPON what we made to replace it, or translates it, into this vision of the real world.

"The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."

So.... take the cruel-seeming death-symbolizing world of earth, the physical, and remove the projected guilt from it, by undoing the guilt in your own mind, and now you'll see that same world anew in another light. "You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see?"

So you made a world (earth) AND mis-judged it, which made it seem to reflect hell. And now you are to re-judge it with the holy spirit to see that it reflects heaven somehow?

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it."

So if you stop projecting guilt crap onto earth, it somehow becomes "clean" in some way such that it CAN reflect, and now you see God's reflection/image in it.

"Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."

And being in the present is required.

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth."

"The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything and by everything. It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts which give rise to this picture. My loving thoughts will save me from this perception of the world, and give me the peace God intended me to have."

"Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes return again to bless the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And we will sleep no more and dream of death."

So the vibe here seems to be 1) you made the world earth, and 2) you hated it initially which made it seem like hell and 3) you forgive it and see it with light and in the present and suddenly it seems to reflect heaven, regardless of its strange twisted ways and forms, which this higher vision immediately glosses over and does not dwell upon?

"It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one." "In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty." So... this "seeing it not"... perhaps is like you so very lightly see the body that you barely notice it and you don't focus on it and you see through it to the light. This is "overlooking" which is forgiveness, which really means "not to see what isn't really there".

"It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

This vision "looks upon" everyone/circumstances/happenings/events meaning, those which are occurring in the physical world still, but they are so lightly seen that the vision still remains transfixed upon the light beyond them?

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

So by him saying the world is a fact he's talking about the physical world.... and then is saying that we have to find a way to look at differently - a better way of looking at it, a more forgiving loving way, which causes it to be seen SOOOOO extremely differently that it doesn't seem like an evil world at all. Or shall we say, false, but forgiven? Unreal, but harmless?

So forgiveness/vision/true perception/salvation/the real world/the world God loves/the forgiven world is a different way of seeing the world we made, from a loving vantage point unlike the world, which changes how the world "strikes us", including categorizing its forms as FALSE, without accusation, while also overlooking them and seeing only a reflection of truth in them. God loves the re-interpreted version of the world, but not the version we see in false perception. This same world that we HATE, can somehow be seen with LOVE. And its hatefulness and harmfulness can be lifted from it.

"Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him."

The slaughter-house was only seen AS a slaughter house when we were slightly lacking in our loving vision? When we've risen fully above the battlefield without condemning the falseness of the world, we thus "forgive" it and see the reflection of christ in it. We don't dip down into the fragmented conflicting experience of the world, we remain floating just above its surface appearances.

"The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in strength and health to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love."

"For He Who LOVES the world is seeing it FOR you, without one spot of sin upon it, and in the innocence which makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven."

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it!"

So ultimately what it all seems to say is that 1) We made a world in hate which produced the physical world with its forms 2) We judged it with ego to experience it as hell and label it as cruel and other made-up meanings 3) we must find a way to love that same world we made and forgive it and not condemn it, so that we can experience it through a more loving vision and regard it as in fact harmless and beautiful and a seeming reflection of heaven. So that you can even EXPERIENCE EARTH AS HEAVEN-LIKE even while you're in this world.

"And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is here. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

You mean to say, after all this time, I have to actually love the goddam world that I thought was cruel and hell?!!!!!! WTF. Hah.

Very simply the entire separation from God is a matter of becoming confused about what is true and what is false. That which is really true (God's truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is false, and that which is false (ego truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is true. This produces a state of TOTAL CONFUSION. But this all hinges around your BELIEF in what is true and what is false.

Wherever you place your sense of "what is true", you will anchor yourself to that and BELIEVE that it's completely true. You'll also believe you are 100% sane to believe it. And you'll defend it to the death because you think it is your life. Even if you're becoming identified with something very untrue and you are very mistaken, your BELIEF that it's true will blind you and distort your perception.

You will SEE or regard genuinely true things as enemies, the opposition, false, unwanted, attacking you, trying to steal away your truth. And only anything that supports, resonates with, seems to confirm or justifies your current truth will be seen as accepted, truthful, allowed, welcomed. So you could be right in the middle of being extremely confused, believing something totally false is true and real, defending it with your life, trying to keep everything else from undermining it, believing you are TOTALLY justified and sane, while simultaneously being very very mistaken.

So wherever you are AT right now, whatever your belief system is, whatever is TRUE for you, you actually believe you are FULLY in the truth right now. Doesn't matter how mistaken you actually are. Even if you believe death is life and hell is heaven and the Holy Spirit is your sworn enemy, which the extreme of ego does believe, you'll think you're totally totally "right" to believe what you do, that's it's reasonable and makes sense to you. And any insinuation that you might be mistaken will be experienced as a threat, an enemy, an attack, by some person who is obviously "wrong", and are seen as someone you have to defend against and counter-attack to keep them from infiltrating your sacred truth.

Everyone does this. Every single person with an ego is doing this. Because every such person believes something is true which isn't, is mistaken and confused, and wants to protect and defend all the lies that they think are not lies. And so what happens is, if you try to tell someone something that isn't "their truth", it will conflict with their truth instantly. And this will be experienced as conflict and there will be a war that comes from it. Particularly if a person is very strong willed or stubborn, they will resist being questioned or undermined moreso than others. Or in other words, there is an unwillingness to learn, and too much faith placed in being right/true already instead of humility or self-honesty.

Others may be in general more open minded or more willing to listen and consider alternatives which may well lead to them having to question their own beliefs. And that's a position of greater self honesty and willingness. It takes a "little willingness", therefore, to be willing to open up to the possibility that you might be mistaken. That what you really firmly think is true, might not be. And if indeed what you believe is not actually true, but you think it is, you will make no progress towards God without being a little bit willing to question just how true your beliefs are. His truth cannot become true for you, until you can accept that your fake truth is FALSE.

This is more or less why the majority of people (truth defenders) do not agree with each other, and also is why most of those who do agree with each other are either mutually sane or just happen to share the same delusions. This is how the ego forms "allegiances" with people who seem to oppose their truth the least, forming a circle of "friends" who support and uphold their mistakes without questioning them. This is all begun in the ego's FIRST law of chaos, which says that the truth is different for everyone!

Everyone believes they KNOW the truth. They HAVE the truth. This is a fundamental carry-over from BEING the truth prior to the separation. Everyone attached themselves to SOME kind of truth no matter whether it's true or not. It's only a matter of sorting out what is *actually* true in terms of God's truth, from what is a fake truth in terms of ego, in order to proceed in the direction of Atonement. While we cling to lies, we are kept in the dark and away from eternal life.

The thing is, you can present a greater truth, you can explain it, you can show it and demonstrate it as clear as day, but if someone is not WILLING to undermine what they believe is already true, and doesn't see a reason to abandon their existing false beliefs, they simply will stay right where they are. Because they think they already have all the answers. All of the truth. And that they're very right about it, having convinced themselves over and over again WHY this truth is supposedly true. And this especially becomes a problem when very abstract or fundamental "cornerstones" in the belief system are upheld, supported, and reinforced, by a whole host of beliefs that keep the person highly unwilling to question fundamental issues such as whether the body or the world are real, or whether you are supposed to die, or what miracles are capable of.

We build great defenses against admitting to being

mistaken. We resist it. We in fact experience "the real truth" as an opponent or enemy, come to war with us and destroy us, and it keeps going on and on about this and that as if trying to make something "false" true, when you obviously know better. In other words, the real truth, at first, is experienced as the very thing we DO NOT WANT. Our ego ensures we see it as our nemesis, come to destroy us. The idea of oneness alone is enough to scare the pants off the ego since it implies the end of separation and thus the undoing of ALL false beliefs and false identities. This is why the ego wants NOTHING to do with the Holy Spirit. And this is why we have profound RESISTANCE to accepting the atonement.

Anything of the true nature of God, anything to do with God's laws, anything to do with the Holy Spirit, anything to do with breaking the laws of physics of this world, anything to do with performing extraordinary supernatural miracles which would probably shock most people, anything to do with Spirit, anything to do with receiving input from outside of this dimension, anything which would prove you are not a body or that God did not create the world, or that death is fake and can be undone, anything like that... which would bring doubt into the mind about what our MISTAKEN beliefs say is true, is seen as a THREAT, and a danger, and an attack. And WE DO NOT WANT IT. And seeing it as a threat we put up defenses against it, which by the way induces sickness.

And yet, all of these things are truth based, all of them are of God, and all of them are benevolent. So it is not that the truth IS an attacker, it's that it SEEMS like an attacker when YOU are an attacker. When YOU believe in a false truth you are believing in attack while BELIEVING you are peaceful, BELIEVING you are being neutral and objective, but are seriously biased away from truth. This is why most people DO NOT WANT the truth, they do not want miracles, they do not want the Holy Spirit to do anything. The very idea of Him having a power that causes things to happen that you can witness scares the pants off people who would much prefer to be in control of life and keep A Course in Miracles nice and small and safe and tolerable. Which has resulted in the various watered down "sanitized" versions of ACIM being spread and taught.

So this is a fact.... if you are not in God's truth, you will experience God's truth as a sworn enemy that you DO NOT WANT, and which you think is WRONG. And that means in order to approach the truth and genuinely wake up and become spiritual, you may well have to encounter or at least deal with, your false perception OF the truth and therefore get past this belief that true things are false, that holy things are hateful, that life is death and that the Holy Spirit can't be trusted. It more or less means... opening up to accept what you DID NOT WANT TO accept, and that REQUIRES you having a "little willingness" (eventually total willingness) to question your beliefs about what is true already. And that's going to require some radical self honesty and impeccable reasoning.

The Holy Spirit only wants to help you and heal you and give you love and support. He is not a threat at all. But He DOES represent the opposite of the FALSE truths (lies) that you've told yourself, and that means THROUGH those truths you will defend against him. This is how we chose AGAINST Heaven in the first place, substituting truth for another truth. We tried to MAKE God out to be evil and opposite to what we want. We tried to replace life with death, and now *actually believe* that death is salvation. That means the road back home MAY SEEM to be unwanted, uncomfortable, undesirable, upsetting, frightening and something you DON'T WANT, merely because of how confused you are. It may seem to had in the WRONG direction, just as Jesus says that often our greatest advances are SEEN as our worst retreats and vice versa.

WILLINGNESS is key to going home. No-one comes to the Atonement without it. God does not coerce. And the Holy Spirit will not do ANYTHING on your behalf until you are willing to invite him to do so and trust him to do so. Your free will is respected. But you DO have to be willing to want a different truth. To reconsider that what you believe, may not be true. That maybe even though you have *A* truth right now that seems consistent and whole, maybe it's NOT. Maybe it's not actually God's truth. And maybe that means you're going to have to surrender and let go some stuff that you valued, believed, and wanted, that isn't serving you on the way home. This is the work we have to do. And it takes a lot of willingness and honesty and surrendering of what is not true or worthy of a Son of God.

Moving towards God can ONLY occur through your FREE WILL. And this is why there is a required "development of trust" and a "sorting out" of what is really true and what is really false. Trust has to be developed by gradually putting aside fear and TRUSTING the Holy Spirit to do something for you or "to you" on your behalf, for your highest good. To accept HIS truth and way of perceiving with forgiveness. What is false has to be sorted out from what is true so that you are not confused about which is which, and can have accurate true perception. True perception is a state where the truth is RECOGNIZED as true, and what is actually false is RECOGNIZED as false. It's not merely a state of only perceiving the truth, it's a state of perceiving TRUTHFULLY so that false things REGISTER as false. And only in that state of SANITY and clarity and accuracy are you ready to go Home.

A little willingness is all it takes to get started. To be a HAPPY LEARNER, willing to learn "new tricks". Willing to question what you assumed was always true. And willing to open up to a new truth that's bigger and more true than anything you dreamed of.

"The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS WILL. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare YOURSELF for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to YOU to establish the conditions for peace. GOD HAS ESTABLISHED THEM. They do NOT wait upon your willingness for what they ARE. Your willingness is needed ONLY to make it possible to TEACH you what they are."

"****Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING****."

"It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

When you accuse someone of something you are splitting your mind. Splitting your mind isn't exactly a healthy thing to do. It means dissociation and denial and mental illness. Not to mention a profound loss of identity.

The fundamental fact is that you and other people ARE ONE. You are a PART OF other people. We are all joined together. We are all connected and SHARE everything. Part of you IS other people. You are in them. They are part of you. We are a collective in unison. "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

To appropriately relate to others, knowing that they ARE YOU as well as themselves, is to acknowledge that they are part of yourself. How you treat what appears to be "them", is the SAME as how you are treating yourself directly, because part of you is in them.

When you begin to SEPARATE OFF the other person, putting a fence around them and believing they are NOT PART OF YOU, that they are not yourself, not in your mind, not one with you, you are excluding A PART OF YOURSELF from yourself.

Part of you lives in other people. If you like, think of it as though part of you is in all the other bodies besides your own. When you single someone out and attack "them", in order to turn "them as you" into "only them without you", you are SPLITTING yourself.

Your mind splits because it has to dissociate or not-associate with the SELF that is IN your brother/neighbor. It is sectioning off a part of itself and calling it "not me", while labelling the other part of it as "me". That's one mind, split into two minds, at war with itself, attacking itself from the inside.

This is what happens when you accuse, attack, condemn, judge, find guilty, make sinful, or in any way reject anyone for any reason. You cannot do anything to other people WITHOUT doing it to yourself.

Anything that is done to them, IS done to you. And by your own hand. This means if you attack anyone for any reason, you are literally attacking yourself. You hurt yourself when you hurt others. You cannot escape from these consequences. This is the golden rule. It is the law of God.

If you identify anyone as "not me", sectioning them off as not SHARED with you, as not one with you, you are literally doing something unnatural to your mind. Your mind in its NATURAL condition is not isolated to your own body, nor is it exclusive to you. Mind HAS TO BE SHARED. All real mind is shared by everyone. You inherit and share the mind of God. Everyone shares the christ mind.

To identify that someone is not part of you, is to say they are not part of christ, and are not sharing existence with you. It's like you exclude them. And then you think in this separation that it is only THEM that you are targeting. This is where the ego is coming in and giving you an illusion. It will seem as though, if the other person is NOT YOU, then you CAN attack them WITHOUT experiencing consequences.

Another way to put that is trying to get away with murder. To cause without being part of the effects. To give without receiving. To attack while remaining safe. To judge as guilty while remaining innocent. As soon as there is this split in the mind, the mind starts believing this "ego message" that what applies to others DOES NOT apply to you. And now there is a rift, with the two of you on seemingly different levels, experiencing different things.

The world would say, in physical terms, that this is PRECICELY what is natural and normal. That you can, for example, on a physical level, damage the body of another person WITHOUT damaging your own. This is because bodies are separation devices and are designed to facilitate this illusion. They play along with it and make it seem POSSIBLE that you can attack without being attacked. Everything in spacetime does this because the whole system is a lie.

If you think you can cause without being affected, you have bought into the illusion of physical form. Bodies now testify that you can get away with murder, that you can in fact sin, because you can now attack another against their will without receiving any consequences. And if this were the truth of absolute reality, separation would be real.

It is because the physical world is rooted HEAVILY in separation that all physical objects testify to murder. This is their nature, to portray the son of God as attacked and split apart, to portray the sonship as broken and fragmented, to make it seem like one brother is NOT all brothers, that each is isolated and confined to their bodily prisons, and nothing ever applies equally to anyone. This is a PHYSICAL rejection of the Golden Rule, an attempt to break the law of God.

The fact is, however, that God's laws CANNOT BE broken. You can accept them, or you can deny them, but you cannot stop them from functioning. The golden rule ALWAYS applies at ALL levels at ALL times. This means even when you THINK you are doing something without receiving consequences, you are deceiving yourself. You cannot attack WITHOUT being attacked. You cannot judge WITHOUT being judged. And you cannot destroy without destroying yourself.

Your body might SEEM to get away with it, but YOUR MIND DOES NOT! And if your mind splits in this way, thinking it has isolated the effects to ANOTHER person, not yourself, your mind IS STILL in a state of self-attack, and IT WILL take this out on your own body, making you suffer and sick! You do NOT escape the consequences!

You are ALWAYS ONE with others. They are ALWAYS part of your self. We all share identity in christ. We are all part of God's collective family. When you single anyone out and label them and isolate them and exclude them, when you point a finger and say "this applies ONLY to you", you are in denial. You're denying that you are literally HURTING YOURSELF by splitting yourself off from the PART OF YOU which IS your brother. Other people are LITERALLY YOU.

This is the truth and the nature of reality. This is God's law. No one ever escapes this fact. Mind can only function naturally when it is being SHARED by everyone. It is only healthy when it is embracing WHOLENESS. It is only alive when it is being GIVEN AND RECEIVED equally.

When you disturb this by trying to force part of it to exclude another part, which you do through the ego's use of projection - blaming "others" who are "not you" for whatever reason, you are not only in denial, you are driving a huge divide between the you that is "here" and the you that is "there". This is like cutting yourself in half.

Seeing yourself as "only" one half of the mind, which is split off from the other half, correlates also to identifying with your body. The body now seems to symbolize the split mind, whereby one half of your split self is "in your body" and the other part which is "not you" is "in another person's body". Your body seems to be you, and their body seems to be them, and the two have NO relationship. Attacking anyone for any reason on any level therefore CONFINES YOU to the body prison and SEPARATES YOU OFF from relationship. "Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME."

No one is exempt from this consequence. Attack anyone and you are attacked. Try to hurt anyone and you are trying to hurt the entire sonship. Try to attack another but not yourself, and you will STILL hurt your mind. Pretend that just because your body got away with murder without experiencing the consequences, does not mean your MIND got away with it. Illusions can always seem to defy God's laws, but YOU are under no laws but God's.

Stop hurting yourself. Stop hurting everyone. Be us. That means that YOUR INTERESTS are the SAME as your brother's, thus your interests are shared, because you recognize that your brother IS part of your self. Therefore, how you treat them, you are also treating yourself. So you have a vested INTEREST in treating them well, otherwise you will treat yourself poorly. So now YOUR needs and your brother's needs are ONE. Acknowledging this is what it means to be a teacher of God. You MUST love your brother otherwise you will fail to love yourself.

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

"Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so will you behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness of others."

"The Holy Spirit is in BOTH your minds, and He IS One, because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself."

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's. Once he has done that his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God, even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God."