In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"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 (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "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. "

"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"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. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

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

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) YOU accept, if ***only it can serve to punish him***. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. ******Death seems an easy price*****, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

"What you would **prove to him** you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but ***testifies to what you teach to him***. ***Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him.*** And ********in its healing****** can it *******offer him mute testimony to his innocence*******. It is THIS testimony that can speak ****with power greater than a thousand tongues****. For here is *******his forgiveness PROVED to him*******. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ****he will look on his forgiveness there****, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is ***the proof that he has NEVER sinned***; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, ****or ever had effects of any kind****. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*****. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"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. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

I want to make an important point which I think many people overlook with what the Course is teaching.

There is something that you may not have realized about this world. It is not what you think it is.

Physical matter ITSELF, is an ILLUSION, of such profoundly convincing proportions, that you do not even suspect that there is something unnatural about it.

Its form and appearance are so deceiving, and so successful at convincing you it is "natural", that you don't even consider that there is something untrue about it. It is SO BLINDING that it is assumed to be "just the way it is", as if any universe would have objects like this.

This blindness about form has led many ACIM students to not even question physical form, as if it's just there and is real. Like it's a given, so vast and seemingly consistent that it seems to be outside of our minds and impossible to influence directly. And this then leads to a severely mistaken interpretation of the Course.

If physical form is natural, and it's not even up for question, then the only thing that seems changeable is "inside your mind", which will be interpreted to mean "inside your personal non-form self", separate from the world.

You will then start to interpret the course as meaning you should only change your mind "about" the world, because it seems to be the only part of "you" that CAN be modified easily.

It's as if, the world is a separate "thing", so big and so unchangeable by you, that you don't even begin to question its nature. The Course then becomes entirely about you accepting atonement "for yourself", you changing "your mind" ABOUT the world, you not changing the world at all, and you not having any miraculous power to do so.

What also results from this is a false sense of context, that your "perception" is kind of a personal thing, inside your mind, inside your body. Everything physically external to your body is considered to be something else.

Indeed there is barely any consideration for this entire universe being "inside your mind" in any way - that seems like FAR too big of a responsibility or a magnitude of identity FAR too big to be able to accept or relate to. We have become SO USED TO LITTLENESS, that we do not think big at all.

I want to make it clear just how BLINDING form is, and WHY it is so deceiving, lying, unnatural, false and unreal.

I also want to reframe this entire world as being inside the collective mind of the Sonship. This leads to a very important point, which is, that the appearance, manifestation, physicality and nature of "physical matter" is actually nothing more than a STATE OF MIND. Or to put it another way, it is PERCEPTION.

The Course literally says "This world IS perception." This does not mean perception OF the world, which is once removed. It means literally, the mind of the Son of God which is dreaming this universe, is having a false perception, which is showing up as a tree, a car, and a young child. These seeming forms are not really physical matter, they are IDEAS IN THE MIND. And all of these ideas are just thoughts. And thoughts are nothing more than PERCEPTIONS. So this seemingly physical universe is in fact the Son of God mis-perceiving, and the hallucinations He's having in his false perception are showing up as IMAGES which we think are physical objects.

There is a huge camp of people in the ACIM community who generally do not see or believe this. As described above, they think that this world is somehow real and natural and that we are only supposed to change our "little" minds about it, to see IT differently. Not realizing whatsoever that IT ITSELF is perception, INSIDE A MIND, a mind so vast and powerful that we don't even conceive of it as being who we really are or what we are capable of.

Now. How is it that form is blinding, or an illusion, and exactly HOW does form deceive you? How is it lying to you? What is it trying to DO? And what is its PURPOSE? Remember the Course tells us to ask, "what is it FOR"? What is form FOR?

Physical form is a device for massively obscuring the nature of God, by presenting a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" (ACIM terms), so that you see something completely UNNATURAL presenting itself as if it is "the nature" of existence, so that God's presence will be HIDDEN.

This entire world, this planet Earth, this universe and everything with it, IS A LIE. It is FALSE. It is unreal. And it does not exist. This is reflected in "there is no world". IT IS LITERALLY TRUE. So exactly how is physical matter lying or covering up God's nature?

In terms of how the ego thinks and how this world SUGGESTS things are true, it seems to us that physical objects cannot occupy the same space. It is also suggested that whatever is contained within one area of space, cannot be contained elsewhere. It seems there is only so much material (matter) to go around, and that in order to make something presence elsewhere it has to be *removed* from where it was, thus indicating a lack or limitation to "how much" there is of anything.

This is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the nature of God. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere, fully, at all times. If you were to think of God as occupying "space" - as an analogy for the sake of explaining this - then ALL of God is in one location, AND, God is also fully in another location, at the same time, without any lack, any diminishing, or any limitation. All of God is in America, all of God is in Africa, all of God is in Europe, etc. This does not mean God has sectioned off 1/3rd of himself to be in the USA so that there is "some left" for the other places. He is fully 100% present in ALL of these locations simultaneously.

To the ego, this is absolutely impossible and absolute nonsense. In terms of physical matter it is impossible for some amount of substance to be fully located in more than one place. So physical matter inherently has this "belief system" built into it, of finite limitation, lack, difference, competition, murder, attacking (causing) without being affected, the opposite of abundance, absolutely no sharing, no unity, no stability, no sameness or equality, no constancy, nothing permanent, everything changing. Physical matter is the EMBODIMENT of the ego's thought system. THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE IS THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM!

Given that God's nature is to be everywhere fully, simultaneously, at all times, without lack, and completely defying all ego laws, when we are presented with an image of FORM, we are being presented with a picture of the OPPOSITE to God's nature. It is a massive lie. It is DELIBERATELY DESIGNED to obscure God's nature, to paint a picture of attack and crucifixion and death, to make it SEEM AS IF there is absolutely no sharing or abundance, that it is "natural" to lack or have limitations.

Even the way that one physical object seems to be separate from another, sharing nothing with it, unable to merge or be "one" with each other, different in their properties and which "physical laws" (ego laws) apply to them, influencing each other differently and unequally, is specifically INTENDED by the ego to LIE TO YOU, so that you will be convinced that it is normal and natural for things to be this way. It is NOT NORMAL OR NATURAL for objects to not share space, for there to be limitation and lack, or for there to be DIFFERENCES or different appearances.

So the fact is this. You are surrounded by a massive, very solid-seeming ILLUSION, which IS PART OF THE EGO, part of the ego thought system, and is inside of MIND, and is being thought by those who are separate from God, and is coming from a state of belief in sin and separation. Physical objects are SIN. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

Whenever "events" seem to happen in this world, and something seems to go wrong, this is an IDEA playing out, an idea of sin made real. This is why the REVERSAL OF THE PHYSICAL STATE represents a supernatural MIRACLE. To rewind time, to undo the symptoms, to cancel the chain of illusory cause-effect, to modify the outcome of sinful events, is an expression of miracles. Physical form is the idea of sin made flesh, and to reverse that IDEA will make that flesh DISAPPEAR. It must disappear because it is an idea in the MIND. Physical forms are IN THE MIND. Change your mind and "the world" MUST CHANGE ITS FORM, or disappear entirely.

This presents an entirely radically different view of some of the Course principles, that somehow PHYSICALITY is actually INCLUDED IN changes that are made to mind. The body is not outside the mind, nor is this world. They are not solid or real. They are IDEAS OF SEPARATION. That means as mind changes, physical form must change as well. This is why the physical body can become a symbol of immortality, why all sickness must be reversed, why a broken body is PROOF that the MIND has not been healed, and why there is a VERY PHYSICALLY ORIENTED aspect to performing miracles.

Miracles, true miracles, are not restricted to the "scope" of your LITTLE MIND. Nor are they limited to the scope of what you THINK of as mind, separate from matter. Miracles apply to THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, because it is inside the mind, and IT IS perception. Physical matter is misperception of God. Period. You can change how "you" seem to perceive it, to see God "in it" etc, but if you are still seeing physical matter according to ITS ILLUSORY LAWS, and still think of yourself as separate, then you are still not perceiving correctly.

Fact is, because physical forms are IN THE MIND and are thoughts/ideas, changing the mind HAS TO CHANGE THE FORM. So what that means is something very interesting.... there is a direct connection between "changing your perception" and changing PHYSICALLY. So if for example Jesus changes water into wine, he is not really changing water into wine, he is CHANGING HIS MIND and it's showing up as water changing into wine.

This means, we have to stop thinking of physical bodies and forms as "separate from mind". That's part of the ILLUSION that they are trying to convince us of, that they REALLY ARE SEPARATE, because forms "prove" that separation IS REAL. Believing forms are real is falling for the illusion they were intended to convince you of. Instead we need to think of physical matter as IDEAS or THOUGHTS IN THE MIND. And that means, we are not living in a physical world, we are living INSIDE A MIND, and as the Course says, "everything is an idea". That means, if you HAVE A DIFFERENT IDEA, it will materialize as an image of a form.

It also means if you change your ideas/thoughts, IT WILL show up as things changing in the world. And this testifies to the POWER OF THE MIND, which most of us are scared shitless about. We literally MUST change forms if we change our mind and form MUST ALWAYS REPRESENT our state of mind. There is no matter separate from mind. There is no matter separate from our ideas and thoughts or misperceptions. Whatever form is showing up, that testifies to what we think about God. So a change in perception is not without power - a change in perception LITERALLY MUST show up as a change in physical images, because we are LIVING INSIDE A MIND and everything is fluid and changeable. Form is not "solid and fixed" implying that mind is only that which is flexible. Form IS WITHIN the mind.

This is NOT a physical world. This "world" is a THOUGHT. It is an idea, in the mind. Inside a VAST mind. The mind of the Son of God, not just the mind of a little separate human. If we are to be miracle workers, it MUST MEAN that we demonstrate that this PHYSICAL WORLD IS A LIE, by showing HOW it is a lie, by changing it, in order to SHOW that it is a lie, so that people are educated experientially. The course literally tells us to do this, and that our demonstrations will exonerate our brothers from belief in sin.

When the Course also teaches, which it does, that we are supposed to demonstrate a PERFECTLY HEALTHY BODY, free of all sin and symptoms and signs of death, it tells us this because our physical body is an IDEA in our MIND, which we are presenting to our brother. If the body is broken, the MIND IS DREAMING OF A LIE. So that proves the mind is not healed.

So if we show sickness to a brother, to his physical eyes, we are actually presenting a THOUGHT OF DEATH AND ATTACK, which shows up in what we call "physical form", but is really an IDEA in the mind. So now our physical body HAS TO BE USED as a "medium" through which God's laws are demonstrated, and the mind is SHOWN to be healed, through the miraculous absence of all signs of mental illness.

You cannot have mental health without physical health, and you cannot have sickness without mental illness. "All sickness is mental illness." And that's simply because, the body is IN THE MIND, so whatever state of mind you have it WILL SHOW UP as the body. And when the mind is perfectly purified, the body will disappear entirely.

What this reveals is that in A Course in Miracles, which many people think is about the mind (inside the body), MUST INCLUDE the transformation of FORM, as a symbol of truth, to use form to demonstrate the truth, and to use form to show that form is a lie. And these demonstrations are what the Course refers to as MIRACLES. They DO incorporate changes of mind, because form IS IN THE MIND. The body is not separate from the mind, nor are physical objects, nor is the world.

And this is why our PROVING of God's truth and laws must take place IN THIS WORLD, using miracles which demonstrate SUPERNATURALLY (beyond the illusory nature of physical matter), that the truth is true. If one object is multiplied into two objects, with no lack or limitation, this is a miraculous demonstration of the fact that the EGO'S LIE, which is physical form, does not apply to the nature of God.

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves that the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS." Miracles can ONLY demonstrate this by showing that the mind can HEAL the body, mind is more powerful than matter, mind is free of the ego's laws of physics, and therefore the mind has SUPERNATURAL POWER over physicality. This is a central, core teaching of A Course in Miracles.

"What you use the body for it will become to you." tells us that if you use the body with love, the body should BECOME A PICTURE OF LOVE. If it is being used for attack, IT WILL become a picture of sickness, proving the mind is not healed. The body is literally A REFLECTION OF YOUR MENTAL STATE. Because it is being projected by your mind. Just as this whole universe is being projected by the mind of the Sonship. And everything which seems physical IS NOT, it is in the mind. And so if you change your mind, THE WORLD MUST CHANGE.

We are not inside a physical world. The physical world is a lie inside our mind. Nothing more than an idea or thought, or a false perception. It is a visualization of mental illness. And because it is IN the mind, within the scope of the mind's influence, it can EASILY BE CHANGED by someone who is purified in their awareness of love's power.

So ACIM is not just about hey, I'm going to heal my mind in isolation, regardless of what other people do, in private, and not have ANY EFFECT on others or on the world. There are entire sections in the course talking about how we are afraid of the FACT that thoughts produce effects. "All thought produces form at some level." Therefore, all form is a thought, therefore it must be within the mind, therefore it must be changeable if the mind changes.

Form is the "form of error". Error means the unforgiving idea of sin and death considered to be real. All physical form is ERROR. It is an IDEA of attack, separation, difference and UNNATURAL conditions.

There is a great section in the course talking about how the body's physical eyes were designed to look upon FORM (of error) and make it real, BLINDING YOU to true vision or the ability to REALLY SEE or recognize the ILLUSION that matter is.

”The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly?"

In this section we are told how the ego made form (matter) as errors, vs mistakes, and made the body with physical eyes, to be BLIND YOU, NOT to see. Physical sight is an ILLUSION, pretending to "see" when in fact it is like burying your head in the sand.

From the perspective of the whole of existence, in which you can see everything at once, the body was made to ISOLATE YOUR VISION, to trap you in an illusion, like going inside a closed box, in which you are only allowed to see the inside of the box. It's like being forced to look at a tv screen forever and ever, never allowed to look away or look at anything else. It gives you pre-presecribed images to look at, and to ONLY look at them in a certain way, so that you will NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL.

Physical matter, and sight of it with body eyes, was INTENDED by the ego to BLIND YOU, so that you would never question that physical forms are illusions, or can be changed, or have anything to do with mind, or that you put them there through dreaming for the sole purpose of LYING about the nature of God.

You cannot and should not believe your eyes, or any body senses. They are designed to FAIL TO SEE, to FAIL TO SENSE, and to NOT BE AWARE of what is real. Body sensory organs are LIES, pretending to be able to be "aware of" something when in fact these sensations BLIND YOU to true awareness. This is why pain and pleasure both make the body real. Sight of form, belief in form, and assumption that physicality is natural, is part of the ego thought system.

Demonstrations that it is false and limited is a miracle, revealing the TRUE NATURE OF GOD. If miracles could not demonstrate that the ego's laws, its world, physicality, matter, are NOT REAL OR TRUE, and are not governed by the laws that the ego made up, we would have NO WAY to prove that God's laws are true, there could be NO HEALING, and the ego could not be undone. As Jesus says, the mere fact that illusions CAN BE CHANGED by miracles proves their impermanence.

So open your mind. This world is not what you think it is. It is a huge lie. You are not little, isolated to a body. Nor do you have a private awakening. Your mind is not stuck in your body. You are bigger than this universe, and more powerful than anything this world can demonstrate. This world IS perception and it must be corrected. That's how it turns into a happy dream, not just a happy interpretation of hell, but the TRANSLATION of hell into Heaven, initially through the transformation of matter towards symbols of Heaven, and then its disappearance.

"Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY WAY." And that could not be more true - physical matter and its "nature" are SO OPPOSITE to God's nature, they have nothing in common. Matter is a lie. Objects are fiction. Bodies are illusions. Worlds and planets and stars are fake. There is no separation, no difference, no appearance and no forms. There is only God's nature governing the TRUE LAWS of existence, which we are to demonstrate through miracles HERE in this illusion so that we can teach others that this world is NOT NATURAL, and that the truth is therefore SUPER NATURAL.

I took a deep dive into every single statement about "the real world", to find out all possible implication of what it IS and IS NOT referring to.

It is clear to me that what Jesus calls "the real world" IS "the borderland of thought" in between the world we MADE in false perception, and the reality of Heaven. The real world is a REFLECTION of heaven, seen in forgiveness through the eyes of Christ. It includes your ability to see WITH love, looking with forgiveness upon/past the world you made, so that the world you made in attack is seen in the holy instant present as the forgiven world.

The real world also clearly comes BEFORE your re-entry to heaven, and this is backed up in numerous statements. It is entirely within the realm of perception and consciousness, as the highest state of consciousness possible prior to awakening to knowledge. It is still a DREAM but it is a happy dream, a forgiving dream, in which there is no idol worship or illusion or fantasy. And Jesus does distinguish that it has "reality" to the extent that it shares or reflects the reality of heaven.

The real world was also given by God to REPLACE the world you made. In essence, you MADE hell, which is an illusory world of sin and death. Then the Holy Spirit answered this in the co-making of the real world, which is like an alternative dream. A dream of forgiveness and light and love. It REFLECTS heaven, but is not heaven. It is true perception, salvation, atonement, the miracle, right mindedness, and is GIVEN by God. God GAVE you this real world to replace the one you made, made by the Holy Spirit.

God loves the real world, because it is seen WITH love, and seeing the world you made WITH love makes it impossible to see the world of sin and death. Forgiveness overlooks bodies and looks beyond to the light of the real world, the face of Christ. BY loving the world, the UNREAL world is not seen, because love influences perception. And by projecting love, the HOly Spirit projects the real world for you to see, IN PLACE OF the unforgiven world.

What I found also are many statements clearly discerning that the term ILLUSION refers to an UNFORGIVEN world only, to false perception. The world we originally tried to make without God/Holy Spirit. The world of sin and death and sickness. The world of bodies and forms and planets. That is the world WE made, through unforgiveness, and through attack and guilt and sin and fear.

Jesus refers to THAT world as "an illusory world" and quite consistently, all references to ILLUSION appear to refer ONLY to that world, not the forgiven/real world. Because IN the "real world" state you reflect truth and DISPEL all illusions, RECOGNIZING what is there. This is why true perception is ACCURATE perception.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." thus refers to the false perceptual world of bodies, UNFORGIVEN, unreal, untrue, in which the truth is obscured and lies seem like truth. A world seen without any reason or sanity or light. A world of deception. When you approach true perception, ILLUSIONS are seen through and undone and removed, and so true perception does not see an ILLUSORY world, it sees "the real world". The world as it is WITHOUT the distortion of illusion, and free from the ego's shadow. It's kind of like the world with minimal ego.

The real world, or the sense of it "having reality", doesn't mean it IS reality as in Heaven, but it does mean it is "as is", founded on love, and is not MIS-perceived. True perception is accurate perception and LINES UP WITH what knowledge or direct sight would see. It is truthful.

I also saw references indicating that THE VEIL, which is a reference to the physical world hanging in front of the face of Christ (whereby the face of christ is another synonym for the real world/true perception), refers ONLY to the unforgiven world. The veil entails the world of bodies, the granite block of sin, the forms of error, the gap, etc.

This veil is SEEN THROUGH AND PAST to see the real world/face of Christ. Also when you see the real world you DO NOT SEE the unforgiven world of sin and bodies. It is forgotten. And in its TOTAL forgetting you ONLY see the real world. And as Jesus says, you will barely have time to thank God for this before he takes you home. The veil of illusions parts, the real world is seen, then you go to heaven.

There are numerous references to you FIRST arriving at the real world, the borderland of thought between the world of sin that you made, and actual Heaven which is God's Kingdom, and THEN God taking the last step to take you home. Out of time, into eternity. Out of bodies, into the light of eternal life. There is a clear distinction between Heaven and the real world, whereby the real world is at most Heaven's REFLECTION, and is seen through the eyes of Christ. And also interestingly, we are to recognize Christ FIRST, before we move onto the love of God.

So the "real world" is a state of light and awareness and wakefulness, WHILE still dreaming. It is a DREAM OF being awake. And in this sense as you approach the real world you DO seem to be waking up, becoming more aware. And at the real world you are practically fully awake, but slightly asleep still. Only moving on from the real world INTO heaven do you fully awaken. But prior to this you can be exceedingly wakeful while still in a body.

The real world, being a reflection of heaven, also is a state that reflects sharing. Holy relationships reflect real relationships. There is equality and a kind of oneness. There is a lack of separations and divisions. A kind of unity is seen spread across chaos. And what used to be a world of sin and death is reinterpreted in such a way that a hidden song of gratitude and light is seen and heard radiating from it. Sights of war and death are reinterpreted, through perception, as harmless and gentle and welcome. And the healed peaceful mind projects peace and love and sees only peace and love in it.

Note that seeing from love, you look toward love, which is a light BEYOND BODIES. The illusory world, the veil, is seen through, and overlooked, by forgiveness, through extension, which is christ vision. The world is seen as "forgiven" because it is recognizes as an illusion and is not seen as real sin. It is seen PAST. And this overlooking makes the illusory world seem holy and forgiven. But simultaneously sight (spiritual eye) reaches beyond the illusory world TO the light of the real world. Eventually it sees ONLY this light, as the veil disappears, fully revealing the face of Christ.

After this, the real world DOES END, because it IS a dream, except for the eternal love that was reflected in it through thoughts of love, which are saved as gifts. Because the real world IS still a dream and it vanishes as true perception is converted into knowledge. Being FULLY in the real world is like being on the OUTSKIRTS of the world, standing on the edge, not involved, not confused, not caught up in the world. Being passer by. Seeing from love and truth. Illusions recognized and dispelled. In a state of mind outside of separateness and form. Awareness of dreaming. A borderland of thought just shy of heaven and outside of heaven's gate.

I have a lot of quotes, but here's a handful of the clearer snippets that I highlighted along the way...

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven"

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made"

"your new and ONLY real perception"

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight."

"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven"

"When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you, and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself."

"If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son ARE the world’s reality, the real world MUST be IN HIS MIND"

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

"For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal." (eternal means something a bit different than "will be there forever", because the real world does end).

"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."

"relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you"

"Make the world real (loving, innocent etc) unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit"

"In His sight, the Son of God is perfect" "He will SHOW you the real world"

"The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world"

"And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen" "He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you"

"we will look upon the world as God "created" it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen"

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE. But take it from the hand of Christ, and look upon it. ITS reality will make everything ELSE invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL perception"

"And perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the ONLY reality."

"as His from Love. And He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. "

"Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake" (sleep means false perception, waking is true perception, but is not the FINAL awakening FROM sleep)

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other.

"The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance"

"You will first DREAM of peace (the real world), and THEN awaken to it (heaven)."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is SO little and SO easy to cross that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all ugliness, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

"The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone"

"by YOUR OWN forgiveness, you are FREE TO SEE. And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it."

"the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose."

"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness"

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the T(634) - 461 - past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home (heaven). "

"For salvation IS the end of dreams, and, with the closing of the dream, will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation? "

"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness (the veil is the unreal world seen in false perception only!); the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery"

"The holy relationship, a MAJOR step toward the perception of the real world, is LEARNED. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew."

"In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."

"The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will, JOINED with the Will of God."

"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."

"There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and WHEN you reach it is APART from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS, received instead.

This is the journey’s end. We have referred to it as the "real world.""

"Salvation IS a borderland"

"Salvation (real world/forgiven world) stops just short of Heaven, for only perception NEEDS salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so can not be saved. "

"The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence which can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion"

"The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray (idols are part of false perception)"

"And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. "

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone, because its purpose is forgiveness, NOT idolatry."

"The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived, but wanted not."

"Thus is the real world’s purpose gently brought into awareness, to REPLACE the goal of sin and guilt. "

"Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror"

"This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror."

"The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified."

"As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. "

"Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come. We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world."

"and the sight of the real world which has come to replace the unforgiven world you thought was real."

"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth"

"Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered."

"Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts. The real world pictures Heaven's innocence."

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear (world you made without hs, false perception), and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found."

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. "

"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."

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

"hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear. There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes. "

"How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon."

"There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. "

"Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the ONE-MINDEDNESS of the Christ Mind"

"Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. "

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"THE FACE OF CHRIST has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the Face of Christ is perception"

"But the Face of Christ is[5] the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world."

"Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God. "

It can be very difficult to forgive abuse. Typically in abusive situations, both persons are identified with their bodies. One person does something to the other person's body, which is taken very personally and hurtfully.

It seems that one person has power to affect the other, to do something to them against their will. And the whole scenario seems to paint a very closed picture of unfair treatment, unwilling participation, obvious fault on the part of the abuser, and total helplessness on the part of the victim.

If you look solely at what is happening at the physical level, and if this is believed to be reality, then all of this makes sense. The abuser physically does do something. The victim physically or emotionally or mentally does seem to receive the fallout of the abuse. The separation between the bodies and wills seems to portray the victim as "not wanting it" etc. At a purely surface-appearance level, this is all very real and threatening and traumatic. As if the is the whole story.

But viewing the situation purely in terms of surface appearance, is actually an unforgiving perception. It means the form of what happened was blinding. It means you were identified with your body, such that anything happening from the outside in seemed to affect your actual self. There is no recognition that "its just a dream." And there certainly doesn't appear to be any hope of escape from the hellish nightmare.

The difficult part comes when you start to explore how to heal this, forgive it, undo the consequences, or to become free from the aftereffects, some of which can be debilitating and even life threatening. But at some point, there has to be a willingness to entertain the possibility that there was "more happening" than met the eye, and that there might be a different way of looking at it. It is this unwillingness to remain in pain, that inspires the beginning of opening up to spirit.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

Even if you are left with pain and scars, emotional hurt, physical damage, psychological wounds or forms of insanity, carrying this baggage around forever becomes intolerable. Pain is not pleasant. Constant fear is a nightmare. The sheer weight of suffering can potentially inspire a person to try to find a way out of hell, unless they become so distraught that it leads to suicide.

For those who do find at least "a little willingness", there becomes a glimmer of openness to at least the possibility that, just maybe, there is some way to heal and be free of this. That maybe if you look at it from a different vantage point you might find out some hidden facts, previously unrecognized influences, or even some ways that you might have caused it. Of course, for abused people, leaping to "I did this to myself" is a pretty huge leap, when everything the physical reports testifies to "they did everything to me and I did nothing."

It can even seem horrendously offensive to a person who is very heavily believing in "what appeared to happen" as the only reality. When pain backs it up, when suffering seemed to come from it, and when the person didn't seem to want any of it, there is tremendous resistance to healing and forgiveness. It is in fact, part of the pyschological blindness that placed their mind in an unforgiving experience to begin with, and this denial may even have been increased through the abusive experiences.

This is why it can take time, a lot of willingness and gradual transformation, to work through the ins-and-outs of everything that happened, all the pain it entailed, to be able to purge and purify the suffering, to even get to a point where you might be open to another way of looking at it. But if there is to be another way of looking at it, it can't be at the physical level. It can't be just another attempt to frame the situation in terms of "it was real, but the person had their reasons."

True forgiveness has to entail moving away from the sheer physcality of the abusive situation, away from appearances and forms, and away from the illusion of causality. It has to rise above the "he did this to me" and the "she did that to me". And it has to go into the "Maybe I had something to do with this." Given how intense and horrifying abuse can be, and the seeming unhealable wounds it leaves behind, even being open to that suggestion can be a seemingly insurmountable stretch.

The key factor which lifts a person out of perception of abuse, is becoming identified with spirit instead of the body. And that all by itself is a journey. And it also requires that you recognize that you can be free from suffering, even if people seem to be vicious and hurtful. As the Course says:

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true.

Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

To allow there to be a maximum amount of viciousness and attack by others, yet to be in such a state of mind in which this has NO effect on you, seems like a very tall order. But it is not impossible. It entails the recognition that this world is a dream, and not a reality. Yes it will seem like the abuse was VERY real, with disturbing memories and wounds to show for it, but in the really big picture it nevertheless was still part of a dream.

Jesus suggests that if we can approach the awareness and recognition that this IS a dream world, and not a reality, we will become more identified as spirit, or as the dreamer of the dream. We are the mind/soul that is beyond the dream which houses it within ourselves.

With willingness, it's going to become apparent that the events in dreams are something WE are contributing to. This produces a profound shift in how we look at what the other person "did to us", because now we're starting to question not only whether it really happened in reality at all, but also who was really causing what.

It can seem to be a bitter pill to swallow, that we would be hurtful to ourselves, that we ourselves might've agreed to or arranged or produced suffering, that in effect we wanted to be abused for some other purpose of scapegoating. It's especially heinous to many people to suggest that someone in a victim role is not entirely faultless, that they in fact are using the opportunity to position themselves as victim in order to be ABLE to find the abuser guilty. And as the course says, this has a tremendous payoff in allowing us to position ourselves as innocent, as a way to asuage our OWN guilt for our own sense of sin.

Could it be then, quite a shocking but deep truth, that we may well not only consent to abuse but even encourage it and bring it upon ourselves, because of the benefit to us psychologically - that we can convince ourselves that if the other person is especially evil, it portrays us as especially good. And given that we are loaded with uhealed guilt over the separation from God, it provides a wonderful opportunity to exonerate ourselves by finding someone else to be especially sinful. We may in fact be using the abuser as a fall-guy for our own sin.

This then completely turns the tables on the situation, and is the secret hidden truth that the abusive situation seems to reject. While the situation said, "they did this to me, I did nothing", in truth the fact is "I did this to me and used them to make myself look better." That is not something that is easy to admit to, but it has to be admitted to if you want freedom.

Here is Jesus saying that we are even willing to BE KILLED, if it means the payoff that we can find someone ELSE to be the sinner and to exonerate ourselves. And that we may even welcome being highly severly abused, attacked, afflicted, murdered and destroyed, as a tremendously opportunistic bargain, if it means we can be found guiltless. Even that what WE get out of it is even MORE than they get out of it - a great deal!

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This isn't simply a teaching about sickness and how we use the body to try to show proof that our brother caused us to be sick, so that we'll be exonerated of sin. It's a general teaching that in many ways, abuse included, we try to position ourselves as victims in order to get a great payoff. That we're even willing to enter into highly abusive, detrimental, suffering situations, with terrible power loss and mistreatment, if it means that secretly this causes the OTHER person to seem like the sinner. What did abuse turn you into, if not someone justified in anger and blame?

Jesus doesn't hold back, in that he is even saying that we are WILLING TO DIE, if it will provide us with an opportunity to point a finger at the CAUSE of death, other than ourselves, and say "look there, that's where the sin is". And thus to say, "Look at me, I didn't do anything at all." We even lay down in death in a kind of passive way, totally hands-off, making ourselves appear to be COMPLETELY at the effect of something outside our control, so that it paints a very vivid picture of unfair destruction, un-asked for killing, and unwanted torment. In which we appear innocent.

The driving force behind all of this is the guilt that WE feel in OUR mind, over a situation which doesn't even have anything to do with these abusers. It's the fact that we are bringing some very heavy shit, TO the situation, from our past. And we're causing and involving ourselves in relationships and situations which afford us opportunities to PROJECT, dissociate from, and disown this hidden secret suffering, in order to try to deal with it.

What could be so big and deep and hidden and painful that we would want to go so far as to ALLOW ourselves to seem to be destroyed by another, if it would mean escaping it? What possible severity of sin could we have possibly either committed tor accused ourselves of, that we would ENCOURAGE sickness in an attempt to be seen with pity and favor? What kind of hideous act did we commit which could possibly require death as the only "solution", in which by accusing anyone OTHER than ourselves of TERRIBLE mistreatment, we can try to make a dent in it and be seen as the innocent one?

Don't doubt for a second that the ego's entire drive is to use denial to its full extent. It denies who you are, it denies God through sin, it denies sin through guilt, it denies guilt through the face of innocence, and it denies the face of innocence by destroying the body through "a will of punishment not my own." Denial upon denial upon denial are used to gradually remove you from existence and to disown everything. Even in abuse we are disowning the way in which we are abusing ourselves.

All of this is really based on our secret sins and hidden hates, the self accusation, the condenation upon yourself BY yourself, the belief in the reality of sin, the authority problem and desire to overthrow God, and indeed the belief that you HAVE attacked God against His will. It is really the original sin, the belief that you opposed the entire Kingdom of God through evil, that you are running and hiding from. And it is the unforgiven guilt for that perceived sin that you try to push onto others when you form abusive relationships.

Those who feel particularly guilty are apt to not only cause physical sickness, they are also apt to be vicious and very accusatory. They project heavily because trying to dissociate that unconscious guilt from their minds seems like the only way to hide from it. By putting it onto someone else and framing them as an abuser or attacker, it SEEMS to make it look like they are more evil than you, thus you are partly exonerated for your belief in sin against God. And those who are especially OPEN to being a victim, unfairly treated, abused, in fact are the most deceptive and blameful. He who has "been destroyed against his will" has gotten away with the crime of the century.

So now as the tables turn, we find out that a person who on the surface seemed to be the innocent party in the abuse, who was purely victimized, who asked for nothing and who made no contribution to it at all, actually turns out to be the ONLY one who was really doing anything at all, who did it all to themselves, and EVEN went so far as to USE the "abuser" for their own aims. What more benefit could a guilty person find than to position themselves as helplesly suffering, if it would create the illusion that SOMEONE ELSE is guilty? And how sick is it that we would actively WANT to do this, even if it meant we had to suffer to pull it off?

You can see why the truth of these situations is so hard to accept. It litearlly suggests that "the abused" are abusers, that victims are in fact victimizers, that those who are afraid are vicious, and that this is all a secret plot to GAIN from suffering. Even that we would happily die if it meant someone else would pay for what we've done to God.

"We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. " On the surface, the world being so back to front, it always seems at first glance that those who are suffering are NOT the ones doing the attacking. And that those who are seeming to be the cause of the suffering, are NOT the victims. But this is literally what Jesus is telling us. And it is this complete "180" that our minds have to go through in order to heal this psychological conditioning. And that's not easy.

If I was abused, even if the abuse and the emotional pain tells me that it happened, it was unfair, I did not ask for it, the abusers were evil monsters, and they ought to receive a death sentence, my act to MAINTAIN this position is in fact driven by a motive of wanting to keep BENEFITING from it. And that is not an easy thing to admit to. Yet alone to look at the fact that I was the one doing the abuse to myself and to the abusers. That I was USING them as a scapegoat, and WANTED to be abused in order to get away with FRAMING THEM for my own murder.

It's even harder to admit to any of this if the victim is a helpless innocent young child who appears, at the face of it, to be utterly devoid of sin and guilt, and who has no power or ability to stop anything happening. This all sets up the perfect scenario for the ego to manipulate the situation and USE it to its advantage. Not o much to cause the child to suffer cruelly, but to cause the child to WANT to suffer in order to develop a wonderful collection of scapegoats. Of course, saying something like this is NOT going to be popular with most of society.

Admitting to all this is, nevertheless, the eventual place our mind has to get to if we truly want to be free from pain and suffering. We have to approach the secret of salvation. We have to be willing to admit to what we are doing and the part we play. And we certainly have to completely let the abusers off the hook, otherwise we cannot experience psycholgoical repair. So long as we are looking to project and get rid of our own inner guilt onto these people, we keep ourselves in a prison of denial and suffering. And we can't feel happy while we're AVOIDING the original guilt that we were using the abuser to try to get rid of.

It begs the question, far more importantly, not "why did they do that to me"... but "why did I do this to me?". That's the really deeper issue. Why did you accuse yourself of sin FIRST, before you arranged for someone to sin against you? Why did you believe in sin, at all, before inviting others to seem to sin against you? Why did you fall into the authority problem, prior to ever needing an external authority to pretend to have power over you? Why did you attack yourself first? Why were you overtly vicious against yourself and God, before portraying yourself as a helpless victim? That's the bigger deal to heal.

"I but accuse my brother of my own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"You are doing this to yourself."

"There is no sin."

Self destruction and self attack and self victimization and self punishment, are far more the problem and death-inducing than the two-times removed scapegoats that we find externally. The abuser isn't even the beginning of the process, they're a device that we use later down the line to try to deal with what we've done to oursevles. And the ultimate freedom can only come when you find YOURSELF to be innocent, having never sinned in reality, forming the basis for the total lack of NEED to have an "abuser" take on the burden for you.

These external influencers are not even the cause of anything. They're scapegoats that we use to project sin and disown responsibility. And until this power is taken back and reclaimed, a "victim" cannot feel empowered or free of victimization. It's kind of a two-way street. You can't be secretly victimizing, which all victims do, if you want to be free of being victimized. If you believe in victimization you become a victimizer and pretend you are the opposite. Obviously that's not a sane position to take.

There is hope for healing and true release from all suffering, all abuse, all symptoms and effects, all baggage and all pain. But it does require that you take full responsibility for your choices and your participation on making happen what you thought happened against your will. You cannot see yourself as being an unwilling participant if you want to find the power of the wil. And the only way to be truly free is to accept the atonement truth that you never sinned in the first place, such that you don't need anyone to exonerate you through suffering.

Who is the abuser who really needs your forgiveness? It's you.

A glossary of christianity terms reinterpreted and clarified by Jesus in A Course in Miracles.

Here are some elements of ACIM which may sound christianity-oriented, but of course Jesus redefines and clarifies their meaning.

1. Heaven - is the kingdom of God which God created one with Him and which is immortal and eternal. You are part of it, as is everyone. It is reality. It is a living creation in which all things are alive forever. It is not Earth.

2. Hell - the attempt to oppose heaven, reality, God, yourself and others, by believing in a state which really does not exist, as if it does. A state opposite to the nature of God, which lacks everything and is therefore devoid of meaning. Onto this empty shell you can project ideas of hell or or heaven, which are seen as a reflection. A belief that hell is real turns the nothingness into hallucinations of something evil. Earth is part of the empty shell, the veil of illusions.

3. Being cast out of heaven - if you are not in heaven, you are dreaming of being exiled. God didn't cast you out, you left. Or at least, you believe you are no longer where God is. This produces an illusion of a world outside of heaven, which includes the Earth. God didn't abandon or reject you, you wanted to not have him be your father and to receive nothing from him. You became the prodigal son who thought he could be better off on his own.

4. The devil - anyone who denies God is against God. They are also against Christ, making them the anti-christ. Being against God you are attempting to turn yourself into a devil. The devil is your belief in an impossible opposite to God. It is your ego. Every separated individual is the anti-christ. But these states are not real. They are make-believe fiction and fantasy in which someone who is confused believes they are something they can never be. Thus there is no real devil or anti-christ, only people with mental illness.

5. Sin - the idea that separation is possible and real and has real consequences. That you can cause reality, therefore you can cause God. Therefore you have committed the "original sin" of trying to attack God. Except nothing real (immortal) can be attacked, so sin is really just a mistaken belief that sin is possible. When correctly recognized as a mistaken belief, it is regarded as error, and errors can be corrected without punishment. If sin were real, punishment by death is inevitable. But if sin is a false idea, then there is no death.

6. Salvation - to the ego-oriented person, salvation is anything opposite to God which takes you further away from God. In this light death is seen as salvation from life. In truth salvation is the return to God through willingness and acceptance that only his truth is true. To be saved is to be free from sin, ie error. Which means simply to be sane and to recognize correctly what is really true. Salvation is the same thing as atonement, true perception and true forgiveness.

7. Atonement - to the ego-oriented person, this is punishment for sin, demanding death. To pay for what you did. Ego says you attacked life so your life will now be attacked. Real atonement is the recognition that attack is impossible, there is no sin, and only what God created really exists. Atonement is the final miracle in which you recognize reality for what it is and reject anything not of God. Where you realize that only God's Kingdom exists and there is no world. That you are still as God created you, causing you to wake up from your dream and return to reality.

8. Evil - the notion that some power other than God exists and can cause changes in the immortal. Evil is nothing but mental illness, insanity, confusion, and just a belief in an opposite to God. It's an attempt to overthrow the kingdom and rebel against reality, making a person seem insane. Believing truth is false and false is true, all properties of nothingness and evil are assigned to God, while all properties of God are assigned to nothing. This produces hallucinations of enemies and attack and hell. There is no evil because it is nothing but a false belief in something impossible.

9. Repentance - you must repent of sins, or choose to stop being a sinner. In truth you cannot really be a sinner because sin is not possible. You can believe you are a sinner, however. And it is this belief that must be undone. To "choose again" is to repent by aligning yourself closer to God and rejecting the ego/devil.

10. Confession - really means to admit the truth, but only to admit the truth of God is true. To admit to having seemingly done something that is impossible in reality, may seem like honesty, but it's really admitting to something unreal. A true confession admits that you are christ and are purely innocent forever.

11. Word of God - the true nature of God expressed and manifested in creation. God's authenticity and honesty and trustworthiness. The expression of God's love, his voice, and his creations. It is the whole kingdom and its truth. 12. Faith - similar to trust, in terms of who or what you are placing your faith and allegiance in. Faith in the ego/devil means trusting a lie and moving towards death. Faith in God means trusting the turth and moving towards life. It's also tied into what you give "credit" to, and therefore what you value or want. If you value God you want God and credit him with being true. Therefore you trust him and side with him, and therefore have faith (know) that his laws are the only laws.

13. Resurrection - A return to life, meaning a return to immortality and eternity. This is possible only in the context that currently those who reject God are to some degree "playing dead" and are trying not to live. Resurrection is the assertion of pure life and is the opposite of choosing to die. It surmounts death and abolishes it and has power over it. It might be expressed or demonstrated as in Jesus's resurrection in which he showed through physical form that death has no power over him. It also includes the power to abolish sickness and death in all its forms, including physically in self and others.

14. Savior - Jesus is an example of a savior in that he united his will with God's, therefore uniting the will of the whole sonship with God's for us. Part of us therefore became united with God again in Jesus's resurrection. In this sense he has now in a position of being able to save ie help us - to become saviors.

15. Prayer - Ultimately communion with God in which everything is given and received. Love is received and love is expressed. It is a request for and an acceptance of everything. In its lower forms it devolves into specifics and requests which include a wish for some kind of attack or control or special favor.

16. Revelation - a true revelation is a state in which fear is totally abolished. It is a one-way communication from God to a child of God, and is like being imprinted with God. In the experience it is deeply personal and there's only you and God there. It does not include others. But its content can later be shared with others. It is not a mere insight or download or slight upgrade, it's a powerful world-blotting-out intense expression directly from God.

17. Soul - God created many souls which are individual beings who comprise the sonship and are the Kingdom. They are simultaneously all one as the Christ, also known as the one son of God. They are not children of Christ, they are children of God. They share everything with each other and therefore are each other. Souls are permanently perfect co-creators with God and create their own kingdoms of living beings together. You have a soul which is your real self/identity in christ, and you have your own kingdom of creations in heaven, which are your children.

18. Christ - Christ is also referred to as the one son, a part of the holy trinity, but christ is also EVERY son of God. Each soul is christ and you are christ just as Jesus is. Which means you are also part of Jesus and vice versa. We are all joined together in christ. Christ is the perfect holy state of being of all souls and the christ-mind is shared by all minds.

19. Trinity - Before the separation from God there was a duality, ie God and his Sonship. But in the separation God also added the Holy Spirit, producing a trinity. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken, God's Voice speaking to His Son, which guarantees his healing and his return to reality. All three aspects of the trinity are now permanent and only the trinity is real.

20. Holy Spirit - God's creation which was added in the separation to keep a link between God and his children so that they could never be lost. It is God's guarantee of their union with him and the permanent potential for their return home to share everything with him. He bridges the gap between parts of mind that seem united in christ and parts which seem separate. He is the appointed friend and help and corrector and therapist and comforter and healer God has designated to lead us out of hell.

21. Forgiveness - really the recognition that there is nothing to forgive. In this recognition is the clear sane recognition of what is true and what is false. And only God's truth is regarded as true. In that truth sin is utterly impossible and nothing real can be changed. Therefore it's the acknowledgement that everyone is as God created them and nothing has ever happened to change God's will. It disregards all notions of an opposite to immortality and shines a beacon of light in the darkness for all those who think they are unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflection of your immortal nature, and therefore entails invulnerability in which no-one can ever be accused of doing anything to you.

22. Angel - beings created by God as part of the Kingdom. They are created below the sons of God (or from?) and act in roles of protection and guidance and healing. You can communicate and work with them even while on earth.

23. The fall of man - the separation from God, which was an attempted belief that separation is possible, a tiny mad idea, took place in the minds of souls. But also some angels became involved and believed in the separation. This produced what is termed "the fall" in which we exiled/projected ourselves from heaven, into a fictional realm of exile outside of heaven, which is not really anywhere. Lucifer, an actual angel, was included in the fall. He symbolizes the devil perhaps but all separated souls are just as much the anti-christ. This was an actual rebellion in heaven against God and a desire to be God, producing the authority problem and the rejection of God's fatherhood/authorship. A desire for their own kingdom they could rule without him. This produced spacetime, the world, and earth, which was the idea of hell as heaven's opposite.

24. Blasphemy - technically real blasphemy is impossible because God cannot be opposed or offended. But you can believe things which are seemingly against God's nature. Any form of fear, suffering, sickness, death, an annoyance, even a slight lack of joy, unhappiness, lack of peace, are all blasphemous in that they claim something that is not true in God's reality. Therefore they are trying to work against God's truth and oppose his laws. This is of course all a fantasy and there is no sin.

25. The last judgement - God's evaluation of you is the same as it was when he created you perfect, which is that you remain exactly as you were intended to be and nothing can change you. Therefore you are worthy of God and are perfectly innocent forever. Nothing has ever been done to affect your entitlement to his love and you have never sinned or attacked anything real. You merely dreamed of it in a nightmare of your own making, where you deceived yourself. The last judgement upon the world we made (earth etc) is that it is nothing and does not exist.

26. Church - perhaps a term best used as a synonym for the sonship or the kingdom, which are the same thing. The body of God, if you will, is the outer expression of God - his creation. All members of the sonship are part of the church of christ, and this membership is permanent.

27. Communion - while "holy communion" may be a symbolic act, real communion takes place in heaven as the perfect symbiotic union of God and his children. It is the total immersion and openness to God, receiving from Him and expressing in return. To commune is to know, to be, to share. On Earth this devolves into "communication" which can have varying degrees. The separation from God was really a communication breakdown, ie an unwillingness to receive or to see eye-to-eye. Miracles raise the level of communication until communion becomes possible again.

28. Creation - a term only applicable to what takes place in heaven and not on earth. It requires the perfect total whole extension or giving of what the creator has, to what the creation is. The creation inherits everything of its creator and has nothing else. It shares everything with him, having not left him, and therefore can only exist to share it. All creations are co-creators therefore because they inherit the ability to create. Creations are living beings of light, and can only create living beings of light. They cannot create physical objects or forms of matter or energy or other elements of spacetime. Earth is not a creation because it cannot create more earths. Everything in spacetime is a "dead end".

29. Crucifixion - while Jesus's activity on the cross is mostly referred to as "the crucifixion", crucifixion itself really means the attempt to crucify christ, which is everyone, through allegiance to the ego and to death. It's the attempt to prove that God's immortal son can be killed. Every form of fear and suffering and unhappiness and death is a form of crucifixion. This includes the making of an entire seeming universe of spacetime which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son ie kingdom. It depicts all possible forms of death and is run by laws of death. Being hell, everything in it is crucified and crucifying. Ressurrection marks the ascension back to heaven.

30. Disciple - someone who freely wills to follow someone who may be more advanced, above, or wiser than themselves. Jesus does state in ACIM that if you were not to follow someone of greater wisdom you would be unwise. This indirectly suggests you should follow Jesus as his discipline and learn from him, but is not a mandate. We're also told that Jesus told the disciples to be physicians of the lord, that is to go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, and to heal themselves, with the power of the holy spirit. It is again implied that we are asked to do the same.

31. Garden of Eden - originally really the state of heaven, in which there was no need or lack of anything. Everyone had everything. It wasn't literally a garden with apple trees in it. Adam and Eve were just a couple of God's children. The tree of knowledge of life and death is symbolically the ego thought system, which if believed in (partaken of, eaten, consumed, believed) seems to "poison" the mind, make a person self-conscious of their shameful existence, and attempt to hide in the bushes of the darkness of the mind, to hide from God. They seem then to be expelled from heaven but really have believed in their own expulsion because they want to be exiled, having bought into temptation by believing the tiny mad idea of "the serpent" (ego).

32. God - of course, the prime first creator, the absolute reality, the only true law, the infinite immortal being who shares everything of himself in order to express and apply himself through creation. The father of all eternally living beings and the source of all existence. The all in all. The guarantee of eternal peace and perfection. God relates to every child fully and personally while relating to all children the same way, making him both personal and impersonal. Everyone knows God.

33. Holiness - related to wholeness and purity, innocence and the lack of belief in sin. A state of alignment with God's reality and with truth. Sanity, harmlessness, gentleness, light, healing, power, certainty and openness. Just one of many synonyms for the state of being in heaven.

34. Miracle - in the big picture everything real is permanently miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of reality in which one thing is all things and all thing are one. This breaks all rules relating to limitation and separate boxes and isolation and exclusion. All expressions of love (God) are miraculous. God creates miracles. You are a miracle of God. God extends through you, God works miracles. You are a miracle capable of creating miracles. Miracles are expressions of life. Even in the world of dreams, on earth, miracles mirror creation in heaven, and are thought-creations which give life, provide love, fill a lack, resurrect, and correct the mind from its mistaken beliefs, producing healing. Since their nature is extension, they are received from God and given to your brothers. There are without number or limit and there is nothing they cannot do. They are truly supernatural - above the nature of the world, based solely on the laws of another world (heaven).

35. Temptation - really just the way that illusions of nothingness seem to symbolically assert and represent things which are opposite to God, as if to try to persuade you to buy into and believe in them. Illusions present themselves as things happening which cannot happen in reality, sins occurring, attacks having effects, real suffering, to "tempt you" to believe further that such things are possible. If you give them your belief, you buy into it and are deceived. If you see through the illusion and frame it in the truth, you deny it and reject its lies and do not believe in it. You can be tempted but not coerced against your will. Being tempted to believe sons of God are bodies is a major hurdle to be overcome because it is not true, but difficulty to recognize as false. The ego/devil is said to tempt souls deeper into hell, which is our own mind/beliefs making faulty decisions.

36. Commandment - not talked about much in ACIM except to say that God's will cannot be opposed, his laws are unbreakable, his nature has permanently established reality, and you cannot do anything to interfere with it. What God has created, no man can put asunder. This does not include the rather social-religious commandments or "guidelines for behavior" on earth. God does not coerce. Thou shalt be free. Thou shalt love your brother as yourself. Thou shalt live forever. Thou shalt come to no harm. Thou shalt be always happy. Thou shalt give and receive as one. Thou shalt share everything with everyone.

37. Worship - Appreciation and awe of God is appropriate, as is loving God and thanking Him, but he does not have an ego with which to receive any kind of praise. You cannot tell him how great he is as if to give him something he does not have. He cannot receive offerings of sacrifice or exalting words. He has no need of anything. But you can celebrate what has been given and rejoice and be glad that only his truth is true. You can thank him for what you are and for what you have been given, and for what your brothers have as well. But you're not supposed to idolize him or your brothers or jesus or turn anyone into a figure "above" you. Only God is above you and that's why you have awe of him.

38. Healing - in ACIM this usually refers to the transformative process of change whereby something begins in a less healed state and moves towards a more healed state. Miracles can induce healing but a "miracle of healing" is a level confusion. Miracles are a remedy, like a drop of detergent upon dirt, which causes the dirt to be removed. Healing is the result, but the miracle itself is not the healing. This is also why miracles can cause shifts in perception but are not the shifts, because the shifts are part of the healing effect, not the miracle that caused them. To heal you give healing and learn to receive healing as you give it. All those who become healed become instruments of healing. Your function on earth is the healing of the sonship as a miracle-worker.

39. Christian - apparently someone who follows christ, but you should recognize that you are christ as well. You are supposed to return to the state of owning up to being christ, recognizing that everyone is christ. Acting as christ and being christ-like is to be christian.

40. Second coming - really has nothing to do with a singular person coming down from heaven for a second time for a second go-around. It's really what happens when all those on earth are choosing to return to heaven and, of themselves, become the christ. The first coming was Jesus showing the way to return to heaven, and the second coming is us actually implementing and following that and doing the same.

41. Eternal life - really granted by God the instant he created you and everyone. It means permanence and the impossibility of anything ever happening that could interrupt, damage or change that permanence. This means it is a state of total immortality and invulnerability. Everything real lives forever.

42. Eternity - a state of heaven and reality in which everything real always exists, is always the same, never changes, and exists here and now and forever. There is no "time" involved, only presence.

43. Golden rule - Not an optional rule, but really the unbreakable law of God that you are everyone. Therefore how you treat them you are immediately and directly and personally treating youreslf. The part of you that is in them is the receiver of what you give, because giving and receiving are one. This produces an incentive for only shared interests and for giving only love, otherwise you will hurt yourself by trying to hurt another. What you do unto others you do unto yourself. By treating them how you would want to be treated, you directly do treat yourself that way and directly receive that treatment, regardless of whether other opt to reciprocate or not.

Some ACIM quotes...

"I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one."

"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows it in his own Being and its experience of His Sons' experience. The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

""No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in any way separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up", I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own."

"I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."