Sometimes (ok, often), I think I know what is good or bad. For myself, for other people etc. But I have to question this. Do I really know anything?

What if my efforts to help are hurtful? What if I'm distracting someone from a spiritual lesson? What if I'm taking away someone's lesson, even if it's painful, that they need in order to wake up? What if my fixing is actually undoing an opportunity that someone has to find their own strength? What if my attempt to take over something is disempowering for them, even if it was with the intention of helping?

Ultimately then it comes down to just... allowing oneself to open up to the idea that I do not know ANYTHING as to whether something is right, or wrong, for myself or anyone.

The Course asks us to be open to 'not knowing', as a doorway to knowing. What I see it as now, is that when we're constantly in this tug of war of seeing something as right or wrong, we automatically then leap off that springboard into ego reactions and coping tools and ways of 'doing something about it', all of which is based on us thinking that we KNOW... believing that we KNOW what is going on or why it's happening, when we actually don't.

What the Course is warning us against is FALSE knowing, which is ego knowing - and the ego actually cannot know anything. False knowing is where you believe you know, you have some opinion, you judge it, you label it, you decide something is right and okay, or something is bad and not meant to be this way, and then you proceed to pile extra reactions on top of this. You even make decisions about what to 'do about it' based on this. But this basic perception of ... its wrong. .. or ... it shouldn't be like this. .... that's something WE are making up.

I don't know what's right or wrong for people. I don't know even what's right or wrong for myself. I don't know what's helpful or hurtful. I don't know whether my attempts to fix and save and heal and cure are actually interfering with someone's spiritual growth. I could be doing more harm than 'good' in spite of my belief that I'm helping. Or vice versa, I may be holding back on helping in certain ways that would be truly helpful because of a belief that I shouldn't, or don't want to, or can't love a person enough etc.

So it's like, here is this neutral situation, and then the ego will waver off to one side or another, taking sides, either for or against this thing, and basically go off on a tangent of believing that it knows that this diversion away from 'what is' is based in truth.

It takes a tremendous amount of humility, therefore, to admit truly, honestly, that if we really get down to it, I do NOT KNOW what anything means, I do NOT know what anything is for, I do NOT know whether something that's happening is good or bad, I do NOT know if it's meant to be happening and is helpful or whether it should not be happening and is harmful. And maybe helpful/harmful is entirely an ego-made up idea? How about that? What if there was absolutely no good or bad of any kind? What is everything that's happening, no matter whether I love it or hate it, has absolutely nothing to do with my ego's judgements about it? What if I have NO CLUE about it, other than that IT SIMPLY IS WHAT IT IS?

And what is it that I ultimately REACT to? It's my own perception that I've invented that something is wrong with the picture. I am the one deciding that, thinking I know, when I don't know. And then I react to my own conclusion. I don't really know anything, or at least, my ego doesn't really know anything.

But God knows everything. Holy Spirit knows everything. I guess I should trust Him and let Him decide for me?

Projection is the natural law of ALL mind at ALL levels, by which the mind lives and extends itself, creatively. It projects out or forward, that which is within it.

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"We once said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without projection there can be no love. Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

This happens in heaven just as it happens in this world. When it happens in the purity of mind in heaven, we call it "extension", because it is the pure unitnerrupted outpouring of that which is within. It is the sharing of love. The whole Kingdom depends on it.

In this world, with ego thought in the mind, the ego uses the same law of projection to project separation. This is an attempt to attack and not join, or to hold back. What is projected is not love, but fear and guilt. It is disowned and disassociated from rather than shared.

Now, in the course Jesus gives a passage where he clarifies a more appropriate wording for this. Essentially, proper use of the law of projection we can call pure projection or extension. But when the mind is going into ego, it is going into opposition. It therefore does the opposite of project.

The opposite of PRO is CON. Meaning that if you are not fully projecting (extending), then you are CONjecting. This means conjecture. TO conject is to guess, to make stuff up, to invent, to theorize, and to NOT KNOW. Conjecting is the opposite of knowing. To extend is to project knowledge. To oppose projection is to project conjecture. Ie to make up ideas opposite to knowledge and try to give them away.

This fits well because anything the ego "projects" is made-up lies and falsehoods, stuff it has invented and believes in but does not know to be true. It forms conjecture, sort of a kind of libel or slander, and then hurls it out trying to get rid of it.

This is the egos use of the mind's projective mechanism. To formulate its own ideas of what is true and real, and then project it out, to picture a made-up world which does not exist. A guess of a world. A pretend world. A world the ego asserts is real, but which is not.

"It should be noted that the opposite of pro is con. Strictly speaking, then, the opposite of projecting is conjecting, a term which referred to a state of uncertainty or guess work." He also goes on to give some other definitions of words that are along similar lines, such as dejection (which produces depression), injection (which is to do with inserting interruption), and rejection (which is another aspect of separation from God and the rejection of truth).

"Other errors arise in connection with ancillary defenses, to be considered later. For example, dejection, which is obviously associated with depression, injection, which can be misinterpreted readily enough, in terms of possession fallacies (particularly penetration), and rejection, which is clearly associated with denial. It should be noted also that rejection can be used as refusing, a term which necessarily involves a perception of what is refused as something unworthy."

Originally, God created us and flowed all of His love to us. We were completely open to receive it and we flowed it onward, completely naturally, extending the Kingdom.

When the 'separation' happened, we put various forms of distance between ourselves and God. We closed our heart to God. We shut God out of our lives and out of our minds.

We then found ourselves 'cut off', disconnected, lost, alone, abandoned, as if the 'cord' that connected us to God had been severed. Now of course, this was very upsetting (and still is).

Because of this, it then seemed that we were disconnected from the SOURCE of life. And because we saw ourselves as cut off, what we were left with was the perception that we did not originate IN God. Instead, we believed we must've just come into being spontaneously by some other means as orphans (symbolized by birth).

So now, without a connection to God, we are all alone, desperate, afraid, confused, we don't know what the hell is going on, and we have very limited resources. Our power is hugely diminished, we're hallucinating, we're insane, scrambling around in the darkness trying to make sense of it all.

So without acknowledging that a source (God) is extending/creating us, we come to believe it all seems to start with ourselves as the source - that WE are the source. Thus is born the ego - the starting point of separate existence. And by this token, we have separated the Father and the Son.

What I mean is, in Heaven, God the Father extends His Fatherhood to His Son and His Son also therefore possess a nature of Fatherhood as well, by which the Son also extends Creation. The Son is a Father to the Son's Children.

Get this... When the separation happened, Father and Son were separated, not just in terms of being separate beings but in terms of their shared nature where the Son is also a Father. This now means that the Son does not SEE Himself as the 'Son' of God, he only retains the idea that he is the Father. He sees Himself as retaining fatherhood but of not retaining sonship. He retains 'output', if you will, but shuts off 'input'. So now he thinks of Himself as 'the' Father, since he Himself does not seem to have a father, and this is how the ego believes IT is God. The ego is 'Fatherhood' without 'Sonship'. In a way, you could also think of this as 'giving without receiving', which produces 'making' (creating stuff that didn't come from God) and 'sacrifice' (losing everything and not receiving at all). It is by this method that the ego then MAKES its own Father, out of itself, because it is fatherless, and this newly appointed Father is the ego's OWN version of God - its fake God, a God of hate and death. The ego then idolizes this fake God, who calls for sacrifice, and the ego now both worships and fears this (and all other) substitute for God. It should be apparent how insane that is.

An interesting bit of metaphysics there!

Anyway... So now we see ourselves as the source, which means we think that we have to govern existence, run the universe, obtain power, control everything, force things to be according to our own separate will, and act like God. Classical ego.

So.... what we need to do now... the whole point of doing A Course in Miracles.... is to heal the separation - or at least, all of the belief that it has really happened. But we DO believe it and it does SEEM real. We really do SEEM to be experiencing the horror of being without God, of being Fatherless, of being disconnected from God deep in our hearts, of having been abandoned or rejected, or being absent of REAL LOVE, of not having a SOURCE, of being without unconditional love, of having to do everything ourselves and failing miserably.

We need to HEAL this sense of separation between the Father and the Son, between God and us. And this is a very heartfelt matter. It's not intellectual. It's not just on a mental/mind level. Love is FELT and EXPERIENCED! What we really want is to experience the love of God. Period.

So to do that we need to get back to the kind of relationship, the kind of 'structure' of the relationship that we originally have with God. That means, restoring our CONNECTION to God through communion and healing and openness, being open to RECEIVE guidance and healing and love from God again (which we have been sorely missing and doing terribly without!), becoming able to SHARE in what God is offering, and to then extend it once again through creative acts (miracles), to extend the Kingdom.

Father and Son need to be reunited and set back in their proper place and arrangement where God is the Source of Life, Life has extended itself AS the Son, and the Son extends it further. This is the only NATURAL condition. The physical world's 'nature' is NOT natural. Or perhaps some people refer to this divine holy relationship as SUPERNATURAL. This is what we need to restore, for ourselves, in direct relationship with God, for real.

God loves us. We've denied Him. We need to open to receive His presence.

FED-UP WITH SUFFERING? PUTTING UP WITH WHAT HAS HAPPENED? TOLERATING PAIN? WANT SOME RELIEF?!!

The ego’s thought system is specifically geared to make you suffer for as long as possible.

Every time something "happens" in this world, it is symbolic of sin. Sin seems like an irreversible event which, once it has happened, produces inevitable consequences. The consequences are believed to be irreversible, and so we resign ourselves to tolerating them, accepting them, allowing them putting up with them, and SUFFERING, for a long long time.

Sin, or events, as soon as they happen, move into the past. This was our ego device for using time to keep the "cause" of all problems locked in the past, beyond access to the present, so that it could not be changed. The past ITSELF is the idea of "something happened which cannot be changed." And pretty much everyone believes, you cannot undo the past.

Then, the consequences of sin proceed according to ego laws, extending indefinitely into the future, featuring lots and lots of suffering. We believe we cannot do ANYTHING to change what has happened, so we just put up with it. Our mind, believing this ego arrangement, starts to become CONDITIONED to think and perceive and be USED TO living this way. Stuff happens, we accept it as real, we do not undo it, we think we have to LIVE WITH IT.

This mental conditioning, kind of a habit of thought, which runs completely OPPOSITE to the thought system of the Holy Spirit, is a thought system of maintaining suffering. Ie, maintaining the consequences of sin indefinitely. We become used to it. We think it’s NORMAL! We then tolerate the suffering for as long as possible, until it adds up and destroys us. Living this way, is unforgiving. We have condemned ourselves to death.

Since this conditioning has been built up over a very long period of time, it seems almost impossible to even question it or do anything about it. Surely we cannot undo sin? Surely we cannot REVERSE the consequences of our wrong decisions, or events which seemed to "happen"? But we can.

Holy Spirit had news for me, because I believed and acted this way. I did not believe stuff could be undone. I didn’t even know there was ANY OTHER WAY to live. I was so USED TO accepting that whatever happens, it’s a done deal. As soon as I become sick, I accepted I must suffer it and use magic and try to get over it the "normal" way. This always means, a long drawn out period of suffering. Lots of time spent feeling like shit. I did not even IMAGINE that it might be possible NOT TO HAVE TO SUFFER this way.

Holy Sprit started teaching me that "you need not suffer". One day I burned my hand on hot water. It became sore fast. I started believing, I was going to have a sore hand for a week, would have to suffer with it, this was really really annoying, and I was mad about it. I saw no way to avoid that suffering, other than trying to use magic. It hurt, and I was pissed. But Holy Spirit had news for me! He said, "you need not suffer". My hand started to shake. A miracle was happening, but I did not want to LOOK at it. I was a bit frightened, because miracles blow the ego expectations out of the water.

Something was happening completely contrary to how things normally happen, against y ego, and against my resistance. After a few moments, I looked. All of the soreness was completely healed, all the redness gone. And at that moment, just for a moment, something happened in my mind... a sudden glimpse of some kind of miraculous state of being, a mind which knew that anything of the body can be flipped on or off like a light switch, to which it was completely immune. It was a moment of LIGHT. A state of mind I had never experienced, caused by my EGO ILLUSIONS being proven before my eyes, that they were NOT TRUE. Miracles are teaching devices!

At times I also have emotional releases of old pain. These used to require that I cry at great length. I have cried so many times over the past years doing the course it’s probably in the 1000’s. But lately, Holy Spirit has been teaching me, "you need not suffer". As I go to cry, showing a willingness to release, Holy Spirit immediately steps in. I can’t even get a tear out. He does his healing thing, producing various temporary effects and shaking and so on, and then the upset is GONE. Just disappeared. No need to cry at all. In fact, laughing at the end of it. I thought I had to suffer, feel upset, let it out the painful way. Not any more! Now, every single time I go to release emotions, Holy Spirit does it for me! You could say, I never need to cry ever again. Isn’t that something to be thankful for?! It’s a miracle every time.

Now, this applies to all of us, because this is what happens when a MIRACLE happens. Miracles REVERSE what seems to have happened (sin), proving it was NOT irreversible. They can reach BACKWARDS in time and beyond all "causes" that we think were in the past out of reach, and UNDO them, restoring us to how we were BEFORE stuff happened. Restoring our innocence and immortality! Miracles reverse time! This is completely the OPPOSITE of what we usually experience as "linear time". Linear time seems to only move forwards, shoving sin into the past and guilt and suffering into the future. Not so, say miracles! Miracles GO THE OTHER WAY! They rewind, they undo, they collapse, they correct, they reverse, they heal, they restore, and demonstrate that YOU DO NOT NEED TO SUFFER EVEN A LITTLE BIT FOR ANY TIME AT ALL!

This is mind-bending for us who are accustomed to thinking with the ego, assuming that linear time (shit happens and it gets worse) is "normal", and just taking the way this world SEEMS to function at face value. My mind is so used to moving "forwards" with the consequences of sin, that to get myself to even THINK about moving the opposite direction is a real challenge. My mind doesn’t seem to want to go that way! It’s like a whole different direction of perception. It takes baby steps. It takes practice. And each time I am a little bit willing to entertain this idea...."maybe I DON‘T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS", and the sooner the better, and imagine that it MIGHT be possible to NOT have to go through the whole train of suffering in the future, I open up to the Holy Spirit, who CAN OFFER HEALING NOW, and prevent having to suffer a long drawn-out PUNISHMENT.

Holy Spirit is capable of REVERSING absolutely anything the ego has made, of undoing absolutely ALL SIN, proving and demonstrating that NOTHING stands in the way of God’s healing power, and that SIN is absolutely NOT PERMANENT and HAS NO REAL CONSEQUENCES. "Holy Spirit will undo the ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him", literally means, MIRACLES WILL OVERRIDE ALL CAUSES AND EFFECTS and will UNDO every form of suffering you ever thought you "had to experience" based on "what happened" or "what you did". We do not "have to" go along with the whole "something bad just happened, let’s immediately accept it has happened and PUT UP WITH IT" bullshit. THAT IS THE EGO! We must STOP TOLERATING THE EGO, because the only place it leads to is suffering and death.

It can be hard to do, especially at first. I have experienced this myself, and I still feel like a baby at this. Each time something "goes wrong", or some sickness pops up, or whatever temptation there is that "there’s nothing I can do about this", the challenge is to catch myself and stop myself and be like.... wait..... I don’t have to accept this crap! This is not God’s will. I don’t have to SUFFER! MAYBE there is another option. "I can see peace instead of this", or rather, "I can choose a miracle and UNDO THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW! I don’t have to just go into a future-predicting VICTIM mode and the whole story of how this is going to ruin my life forever. THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY.

There is! Question that time must go forwards. Question that you are stuck with what happens to you. Question the temptation to believe there is NOTHING that can be done to undo this. And you will be going up against YOUR OWN BELIE that there is nothing anyone can do, and it’s a strong one! You’re going to have to really stretch your mind to consider and be open, that EVEN THIS.... even this "thing" thats happening, big or small, EVEN THIS you don’t have to accept, it doesn’t have to stay, MAYBE it can be undone, MAYBE there is a way to heal this with God. And gradually you will develop TRUST in the Holy Spirit and be willing to BELIEVE His Power to heal anything, and thus become OPEN TO RECEIVE THE HEALING. Holy Spirit has an unlimited supply of healing waiting for you!!!!!! There is nothing your holiness cannot do. There is nothing his holiness cannot do.

But it will take practice, because your mind has been TRAINED to "go along with the consequences of sin", at great length. So much that you think it’s totally NORMAL - everyone seems to suffer the asame way, bad stuff happens and there’s nothing we can do. That’s the battle-cry of SIN! The ego LOVES TO SUFFER! Our mind may even have DIFFICULTY even beginning to entertain this idea that events can MOVE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Like someone hitting REWIND on the VCR! We do not have to live in a world of "doing" (to us). We can live in a world of UNDOING. Simply because we do not see hardly anyone demonstrating this, we have ASSUMED that we must suffer and whatever caused stuff to happen, we’re stuck with it. It’s bullshit!

We have not seen someone coming BACK to life after being dead. We have not seen a car accident being reversed and no consequences coming from it. We have not seen someone with terminal cancer suddenly have cancer no more. We have not seen a dead baby being resurrected. We have not seen a leg which was broken 5 minutes ago be completely healed. We have not seen broken objects be repaired, or lack be filled out of nowhere, or people being CURED of what the world says "cannot be cured". Ego/sin says nothing can be cured! It is CERTAIN of your death. We must choose the OPPOSITE DIRECTION! That’s what miracles are. Every miracle demonstrates the mind is more powerful than the body and more powerful than SIN.

Miracles are reinforced by forgiveness which recognizes sin has no consequences, and it UNDOES THEM! We simply ASSUME that everything proceeds forwards, starting with sin, ending in DEATH. It does not have to!

Let’s practice being the ones to DEMONSTRATE that sometimes, and it should be ALL THE TIME, things can go backwards. Stuff can get healed. There can be total reversal of death. "Causes" can be nullified and cancelled out, and all effects which came from them UNDONE. We need to work with the Holy Spirit in our OWN EXPERIENCE, learning that we don’t have to put up with the things that "happen to us" in life. Let him show you that you need not suffer.

Let him show you that you DON’T have to tolerate that cold for 2 weeks, that you DON’T have to just accept that you will never get your paralyzed limb back, that you DON’T have to just lay down and die just because SIN claims that you do.

This is learning to trust the supernatural healing power of miracles, which UNDO everythig the ego tries to DO. It is nothing short of the complete reversal of all death and destruction and chaos, and the undoing of the separation, and the guaranteed RESURRECTION of God’s Sons. Miracles REVERSE what the ego has "done". That is how they UNDO. Miracles don’t really do anything at all, because all they do is undo? Is that a sorry excuse for a watered down non-miracle? MIRACLES UNDO EVERYTHING THE EGO HAS PUT IN PLACE!

Guess also why Jesus says the MIRACLE is the only tool available to you to control time? Because miracles MOVE TIME BACKWARDS in order to revert and undo the consequences of sin! They RETURN YOU to innocence, health, wholeness and happiness from which you came, which is symbolically in the distant past. With miracles, you need not AGE, you need not DIE, you need not SUFFER, and you need not be SICK ever again! Nothing needs to go wrong and stay wrong! There is NOTHING YOUR HOLINESS CANNOT DO. This takes learning, patience, practice and trust, in the HOLY SPIRIT, that HE has the power and ability to HEAL ANYTHING FOR YOU if you will allow it and just be open to this one simple idea ..... maybe there is a better way, than having to suffer the consequences of sin.

We can think of the body as a prison cell, and the ego as a prison guard and prisoner.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a ***wall*** of flesh ***AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner*** in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

This wall of flesh, is what we call the body, but it is really the idea of SEPARATION, as a "separation device", just like a prison cell, designed to keep you isolated and cut off from others. The body keeps you IN, and keeps them OUT. It fences in actually a PART of your mind, and fences OUT the rest of your mind.

Now the thing is, what is your RELATIONSHIP to the prison body? If you identify with being separate, special, selfish, alone, cut off, abandoned, lost, lonely, in darkness, hiding from God, small/little, weak/frail, having no relationship, sharing nothing, etc... then you IDENTIFY WITH the prison cell.

When you identify WITH the separation device, you believe you ARE DEFINED BY the separation device. That its truth becomes your truth. And now that means you BELIEVE IN what the prison cell implies about you. And this forms "the ego", or the sense of "who and what I am", as defined BY the separation device.

If you see the body as hemming you in, keeping you separate from others, separating you off, causing you etc, then this imprisoned part of mind sees itself as IN the prison, and this produces a sense of identification WITH the prison (a bodily identity), which is what we generally call THE EGO. A sense of... who and what am I, if it's true that I am defined by this separation device.

This buying-into the body identity PRODUCES the sense of ego self. If it is true that you are a separate body, then it's true that you are unwhole and unholy. If it's true that you are disconnected from the whole by the body, then you are alone. All of this "I am separate" identification produces a sense of a "separated self." A self that WAS whole, which has BECOME separated, only because it sees itself as IN a body.

"This thing you made (the body) to serve your guilt, stands between you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but you do not IDENTIFY with them. You SEE yourself as locked in a separate prison, remote and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You HATE the prison (body) that you made, and would destroy it. Yet you would NOT escape from it, leaving it unharmed, WITHOUT your guilt upon it. But only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; The place you set aside to house your hatred is NOT a prison, but an ILLUSION OF YOURSELF."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."

"Listen to what the ego says, and see what it DIRECTS you see, and it is sure that you will see YOURSELF as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You WILL experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body. "

"The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death."

"Our upside-down perception has been ruinous to our peace of mind. We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from our awareness by the body's limitations."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

Beliefs seem to be something we're supposed to be undoing and getting rid of - at least false ones. And the Course says that you do not necessarily need to have a belief about the truth because it's kind of a given. It doesn't require some kind of extra effort or separate attitude in order to maintain it and it's not something that you make or can put extra energy into to give it reality.

Beliefs usually are something the ego has taken ahold of and is attempting to make real things which are not true. It attempts to feed the belief and build it up and create a stronger illusion. It tries to bring to life that which cannot live, and create a sense of being convinced that this artificial belief is the truth. These kind of beliefs we need to undo.

But as we transition our sense of trust away from the ego and toward God, and as we let go of the sense of truth that we invested into the ego's beliefs, we instead start to place our trust and faith and "belief" if you will, in God's truth.

It also comes down to whether or not you believe that you are worthy of God's love and whether you therefore are worthy of receiving God's blessings. If you don't believe you are worthy of God's love, you will not be able to believe that other people are worthy of it either.

But this is not black and white, because you can begin to put your trust in God and learn to have faith in God's truth even if at the moment it seems distant or hidden behind walls of doubt and illusion. Just because you are not yet fully aware or still believe in sin or have your own problems and false beliefs, it doesn't mean God is disempowered at all.

In fact, God and Holy Spirit and Jesus are permanently miraculous and are absolutely ready right now to perform miracles. For them, miracles are happening all the time. And as you begin to reach out to them in faith, putting your trust and belief in their truth being true, this forms a kind of bridge which connects you to their minds, even if right now you are still vague about them or don't understand them and are not having a direct experience of their fullness.

Forgiveness begins to overlook the illusions and you start to build a relationship with them. This relationship, even if at first it seems minimal and fragile, can be enough for you to participate in performing miracles. They are capable of working with you and using you to extend God's love and healing, even if you yourself are still working on your own spiritual path.

To produce a healing, however, it does require at least some amount of belief that God's truth is true. The degree to which you believe in it is largely the degree to which you will allow and accept God's power to work through you. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, but there is kind of an order of difficulty in terms of you believing in your ego and using the ego to attempt to interfere with or block the miracle.

To put it another way, you could be attempting to perform a miracle and saying that you want it while, at the same time, in various ways, your ego beliefs are causing you to ask for something else. And you end up producing results but the results are not the miraculous-seeming results you hoped you were asking for, and instead you just expressed the ego. Then since the ego's will is not really a will at all, nothing seems to happen.

You do need therefore some amount of belief in God's truth being true, in order for you to accept for yourself and allow to extend through you, God's healing power. It is not enough to stand before someone or even remotely and begin to command their healing or to send them loving vibes. You might be assuming that you automatically "believe" simply because you believe intellectually that you can be miraculous, but the amount of your heart-felt believing may be significantly lower than where it needs to be. You will therefore have doubt and fear and be unsure if it's going to work, which will come against the miracle and discourage you from being convinced that it can happen.

So it can be helpful that when you go to perform a miracle, you actively remind yourself that you must BELIEVE that God is going to heal. This in a way seems like making an "effort", only because at the moment your belief is divided and you have to sort of pull yourself out of the ego *temporarily* in order to exhibit a clearer sense of certainty that God's truth is truth.

This will at first seem like a strain of sorts or that you really have to push the envelope of how much you FEEL that you believe it, and the ego in you will try to thwart your efforts. But as Jesus has said, he who asks BELIEVING that he receives it will be given whatever he asks for.

At some point, when you are very thoroughly purified of the ego, and are very certain and strongly convinced of God, your level of what you genuinely believe in will be much higher. You will trust God. You will believe God's word. You will be constantly overlooking ego illusions, including the illusions of sickness and death and real sin. Not just in theory but actually experientially, LIVING it. Walking around in that awareness and knowledge. Expressing it ALL the time.

And then you will not have to make effort to perform miracles because you will naturally, in your HEART, believe deeply that God's will is real and true. You will believe it with your whole heart and your whole being. It will therefore be NATURAL for you to be miraculous. It will be your natural state of being. You will be expressing miracles left right and center every single day, BECAUSE you have a very strong BELIEF, a very strong faith and knowing of the nature of God and believe and trust in HIS power and ability to heal anything.

We have to be honest with ourselves as we learn and experiment with miracles, as to just how much we really do believe God. Don't underestimate how much of a stretch it might be to go from where you're at to where God is at. The ego has long been our trusted company and it can take a LOT of purification and forgiving to truly rise up to the level of Christ.

You do not need christ-level belief in order to facilitate miracles, because Holy Spirit only truly needs a little willingness and your mind only need to be partly corrected. Once you have established SOME faith in God's truth being more true than the ego's truth, miracles will start to become possible, perhaps small ones at first, perhaps minor healings, and you will have a lot of failures and frustrations.

But keep trying and keep learning to BELIEVE firmly AS you do it. That is very important. You can't just get it in your head, your HEART has to feel it and trust it and choose to believe God over the ego.

If you will practice simply switching your belief to high-intensity and back to your regular level, you will see what I mean. Just close your eyes and imagine you're going to heal someone, and then go through the motions of what you think you would do without any particular effort to really believe in it. Like, just saying some words or pointing your hands or whatever.

Then reset and try it again, but this time, BEFORE you start, and sustaining it throughout your effort, make an extra special effort to really STRONGLY BELIEVE that God is going to heal. As soon as you ignite this stronger belief, you should feel it, you will notice it feels like you begin to radiate something. It's almost like you switch on your system and your whole energy field engages and you begin to connect with something beyond yourself.

Then while sustaining that strong heartfelt, whole deep feeling of believing that what you are going to say is TRUE, and that it is backed up by God's love, then proceed with your healing actions such as commanding healing or making statements of truth to speak truth into the situation.

I did this MYSELF today, FOR myself, directing my statements towards some significant sinus pressure and headache that resulted from eating an ice-cream sundae. And the POWER of what Holy Spirit did in me while holding a stronger belief was significantly more noticeable, and I did come away with almost no symptoms left.

I could feel how this was different to simply "showing up" and going through the motions. Too many times in the past I did some of the physical actions of a miracle process and said the words and tried to be commanding or powerful etc but I didn't deep down BELIEVE and I had forgotten entirely to activate belief and to be coming from God's love. I was trying to do miracles intellectually or to treat it like a way to change appearances using appearances.

It's not enough to just assume that you are already fully equipped for miracles, which is the ego's assumption that IT is already whole, and that therefore YOU are already fully in your belief and capability. No. There is more to you which the ego has suppressed, and you are probably not yet acting from a place of pure love and empowerment. You will need to question your belief that you are at your fullest connection to God right now, and learn to open yourself up more and more to His love and to the atonement and to being willing to accept it for yourself so that you can forgive and heal others.

There is a greater strength which you might yet have not even tapped into, and it might require you to really reach out to God and really stand your ground and be CONFIDENT in a way that you might not be comfortable with yet. The extent of your belief in the ego is what holds you back and limits you, and you are walking around with those beliefs ACTIVE in you all the time. So either you have to deliberately poke your head out of the ego's delusion and force yourself to believe more strongly, or continue the longer-term goal of refining your deep acceptance of God's truth.

Eventually, you will simply become so certain of God's ways, and so sure of His nature, and so convinced about the justification for LOVING people - including yourself - that you will automatically BE in a state of strong belief in God, and therefore you will very naturally and EFFORTLESSLY perform miracles. Your word will move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead, and more.

But for you to believe, truly believe, that God is love, and that you are loved, and that you are justified in loving others, and that you CAN love others STRONGLY and without reservation - i.e. unconditionally - you are going to have to undo all of your own false ego beliefs in sin and guilt and fear and death at some point. They do interfere with your faith and diminish your effectiveness at facilitating miracles.

The miracle itself is unconditional, but your genuine willingness to perform it fully and with wholeness and power depends on your trust and openness with God. If you yourself don't believe you deserve love or healing or forgiveness, because of your belief in your own sinfulness, then you will not be GENUINELY and AUTHENTICALLY willing to extend that blessing to others. But if you have at least forgiven yourself to SOME degree, you WILL be able to begin practicing miracles - literal miracles, and you WILL start to see results.

So go ahead and keep working on your purification and forgiveness, but practice also believing in God's power and believing that God DOES will healing an WILL heal. It all is unlocked when YOU decide to ACT like God would act and therefore align yourself with His will and step out with confidence. As you decide to act according to God's Law, enacting His truth and demonstrating His Flawless Reality, He and all of Heaven will rush in to SUPPORT you, help you perform the miracle, assist in healing, and will empower you.

These are steps of faith. You have to act as if you believe it will happen and that you will be backed up, and the backup will come. Because it is God's love that empowers all miracles and your willingness to love will bring them forth for others.

Gradually as you demonstrate God's power, not only for others but for yourself, you will learn by witnessing the effects of the truth, having shown them to yourself through the miracles you have performed. And this will inspire you and encourage you and teach you that what you believed in was really there, that God really does perform supernatural healing, that you truly CAN do this, and you ARE authorized to do it even if you're still working through your own illusions and beliefs in the ego. You gotta start somewhere.

If you truly believe in God's love, you will BELIEVE that He can heal, and you will allow the healing to move through and around you. If you don't believe in God's miraculous power, then you will not believe in miracles and you will not see miracles through your hands. It's as simple as that.

Learn to believe that God is supernatural, loving, generous and in divine health. Learn to believe He has not become sick or damaged and neither has anyone else. Learn to believe that you made sickness and death and can abolish them. And learn to believe that God's love will move even if you yourself don't yet FULLY believe in it.

You MUST believe in miracles if you are to believe in God!

*BELIEVE* AND IT WILL BE GIVEN YOU!

Those course students who believe they are only supposed to correct their own perceptions - perceptions of the physical world, as though the physical world is reality and you simply need to see it without judgement in order to keep living in it peacefully, are missing a major point.

If the world is real, you have all your faith in the ego and none in God. You are faithless.

Also if you believe the world is reality, you will completely cut yourself off from God's supernatural power. You will cut yourself off from MIRACLES!

Miracles must demonstrate that the ego's laws are broken and have no power over God. That cannot happen if the physical world is reality. What is REAL cannot be changed and nothing has power over it, so how can miracles happen if the world is real?

When believing this world is real, or that the things happening in it are real, you will constantly be bogged down in a state of tension, upset, reactions and suffering. It's like a heavy blanket laid across everything. Every day will be like yet another day of doing "important things" and avoiding "serious things" and worrying and fearing and reacting with upset. No matter what happens, it will seem real and you will react to it with your ego.

It is not just that your mind has "illusions about" the world. There are two separate things. There are illusions, and then there are DELUSIONS. Delusions is the belief that an ILLUSION is reality. If you weren't delusional, you would recognize and see through the illusion and not fall for its appearance. You would not believe it was real, you'd know that it was a trick, and you would stop falling for it.

So most people seem to be working on their delusions but are thinking they are working on their illusions, and that therefore when they remove their illusions "about" the world out there, they'll come to be at peace with its reality. This then justifies as whole SHITLOAD of CRAP, about how events are still going to happen, things are still going to go wrong, people are still going to get sick, and Course students are going to "die in peace", which is a complete failure to understand the truth.

Shit does not have to happen AT ALL! The world is not real, and we share and extend God's supernatural power over it. The world ITSELF is a massive illusion, and BELIEVING IN IT means you are falling for that illusion and are convinced it is REAL, when in fact it's really nothing at all.

If you believe the world is real, sickness is real, sin is real etc, you will go through every day with your mind trapped inside a heavy shell of horror. Every single thing you perceive will make you react, either strongly or subtly, but never not at all. You are SO USED to this mode of functioning that you may not even realize the freedom that you can experience by regarding and relating to "this world" as though it actually IS an illusion.

You will not take it so seriously, you will not be so upset by it, you will not react to it, you will not perceive it as attacking what you are, and you will recognize there is nothing stopping you from changing it with the Power of God. It holds no weight, it's not real, it's like just some big giant pretend 3D holographic projection pretending to look like a world. It's not even really there. And if it weren't for certain atomic forces you would pass right through it!

Only by recognizing that the world ITSELF is just an illusion of a world, not a real world, can there be ANY justification whatsoever for having faith in God, relying on supernatural provision, TRUSTING God's truth, or any foundation whatsoever for performing miracles. Miracles and truth and trust and faith and love and Heaven might as well not exist if you want to keep believing the world is real.

And the reason you won't want to give up that belief is because you have a LOT invested in it. All the objects in your life that you are attached to. All the relationships you think are special. All the history and past which you value greatly. All the places you think are special. All the ways that you've come to develop a "spiritualization" of certain things and believe they are holy. All of the delusion that people really get sick and suffer and die. That's a LOT of belief. It's a lot of faith in the ego, trust in the ego, reliance on the ego, and permission being granted to the ego. And you can't believe the ego and believe God at the same time.

Had a nice chat with Jesus last night.

One observation made is, that you can't just jump straight into fear or guilt. It's not like you can go from innocence straight to feeling afraid, although it seems this is what we do because it can happen quite fast. There are steps that MUST precede it.

e.g. if you are afraid, you have to:

1) separate from love, 2) believe its really happened (sin), 3) become guilty, 4) feel compelled to fear punishment.

So you don't just 'get afraid', you have to have first done these other things. Similarly if you find yourself mainly in guilt, you didn't just become guilty, there had be these other steps before it (ie separation and sin).

Once you see where you are on the spectrum between love and death, ie:

1) Love/atonement/Holy Spirit

2) Separation idea

3) Sin (something really has happened)

4) Guilt (guilty for making it happen)

5) Fear (afraid of the punishment that guilt suggests will come)

6) Punishment (actually experiencing punishment)

7) Death/ego

... then you can figure out how you need to 'undo' the preceding steps. If you find yourself mainly in fear on an issue, figure out what guilt it was based on. If you are afraid, you ALWAYS have guilt underneath it. If you mainly find yourself feeling guilty about something - at least you haven't moved into fear, but now you need to realize there was some sense of 'sin' underneath it.

As you move away from the 'death' end of the spectrum you are moving away from the ego. As you move away from the Love end of the spectrum you are moving towards the ego.

You need to move yourself toward the atonement end of the spectrum if you want to be at peace. AND... this is the important part, you need to go ALL the way. You don't want to go all the way because the closer you get to it the more it challenges the ego's deepest-held truths (e.g. that the world has happened - which is a 'sin' idea). It also means getting up-close and personal with God which your ego does not want to do.

Many people (me too) get stuck in the middle of the spectrum somewhere around the fear or guilt areas, and think we need to just undo the fear or guilt, but really we need to look at what the guilt is based on, which is some kind of sin, then look at what the sin is based on, which is some sense of separation from God and yourself, and then undo even the idea of being separate, so that you can REUNITE with God and yourself in the At-one-ment.

At any time, all you need to ask yourself is:

1) Where am I at on the spectrum between holy spirit and ego?

2) Where do I want to be? (ideally, with Holy Spirit)

Then work your way one step at a time uncovering the foundation of where you find yourself.

When you are in the ego, you will experience various symptoms. You will:

* Feel afraid, confused, indecisive, uncertain, doubtful.

* Be in a state of questioning, trying to find answers.

* Believing there are multiple possible truths, explanations, diagnoses and possibilities outside of you in the world.

* Trying to find "the correct" possibility from all the possibilities, as if to do so will bring salvation and an answer.

* Feel like something in the world might actually be true, and therefore you are afraid, and can't quite trust the truth.

I often find myself in this state. Once I'm in this state, hallmarked by fear and questioning, I will BELIEVE that I am trying really hard to find an answer. BUT, I will be looking in all the wrong places, looking with the ego, using my separate "abilities" such as the intellect or past experiences, and I will just be going around and around frantic to find "the answer".

I will think that if I look hard enough I will find out what the truth is. But it's going to be one of many possible truths, which is confusing in its own right. So then I think that if I can just "figure out" on my own, know on my own, which one of them is the "real answer", then I will find it and can then get salvation. It never works, because the ego's rule is "seek and do not find", which means to seek passionately, to question everything, to reject all real answers, and to just stay in a state of fear.

When I get like this, there IS no truth out there. There IS no answer that I will find, from an "objective world", which will be "the" truth. But I will be perceiving not only that there IS an objective world, which is real, but that it therefore MUST contain the truth. If the world is real, it automatically has truth in it, so I just need to figure out where it is. Trouble is that NEVER works, because the world is NOT really real, it does NOT really contain any truth, and nothing I figure out about it will undo the FEAR.

Fear is produced BECAUSE I've made the world real. "I am upset because I see something which is not there", i.e. I've made an illusion real, am deluded, and MUST now experience fear because it seems like something UNTRUE has taken on a life of its own. Who wouldn't be afraid if imaginary monsters suddenly seemed real?

In this state of egotism, victimhood, fear, confusion and questioning, I am NOT really making any headway towards salvation. I'm not really getting closer to the answer. I'm actually doing the opposite. It is because I have moved AWAY from the answer, that I am even feeling this experience of "questioning" at all. The experience of questioning is really a state of being answerless, lacking in all certainty, knowing nothing, failing to be at peace, a complete loss of clarity, total victimhood, and is terrifying.

When I get like this, Jesus often now prompts me with a single wise word: "decide".

At first, I do not know what what this means or why the heck it is even relevant in the situation. If I'm stuck in the middle of trying to understand HOW or WHY "something has happened", or how or why "something really is this way", it seems to make no sense as to why deciding something would help, or what the decision even is.

But what I gradually come around to is this. The state that I'm in, as a state of victimhood and ego, is only happening BECAUSE I'm believing that stuff can happen to me against my will, that I have no choice, that I have to put up with whatever this external truth is, and that I need to find out what that "external law" is so that I can do something about it. It's not a decisive state at all. It's a loss of decisiveness. A loss of confidence. A loss of clarity and certainty. In other words, it is FEAR.

To get out of fear, and to get out of the entire game of "what if its this" "what if its that"..... which is all entirely terrifying, you have to SHIFT your perspective to something entirely different. A whole different model for what things are and how stuff happens. You've got to get out of victimhood into EMPOWERMENT. That means:

1) Owning up to you being totally responsible for everything

2) Reclaiming your power, in that whatever you choose will happen, nothing will happen unless you choose it, and therefore whatever you choose WILL BE your experience

3) Realize then that you do not need to defend yourself against illusory threats, because NOTHING IS HAPPENING TO YOU against your will

4) You are decisive, confident, powerful, certain and creative. You can CHOOSE AGAIN. And that means

5) You can choose to align yourself with God's truth, and to make a statement of what the truth IS, instead of attempting to "find out" what the truth is. Thus

6) If you choose NOT to create enemies, fears, disasters, problems, sickness, death, monsters, etc... THEY WILL NOT EXIST and will not be able to do anything to you.

*YOU* HAVE THAT POWER! You get what you ask for! There is no such thing as stuff happening that you did not ask for and do not want!!!!

BE THE TRUTH!

If you think that you will become free of a belief if you can figure out why stuff "really happens", or why someone "really does something", or "why evil is evil" or "why people are sick" etc.... you will not only fail to find a peaceful answer, you will also CREATE THOSE THINGS. This is why in your MASTERY of yourself, you have to come to realize that nothing can happen to you against your will, and that the only thing you've really been doing wrong is believing that something can be true WITHOUT YOU CHOOSING IT.

So when Jesus says decide, he means, flip into a state of confidence and DECIDE whether you believe the ego's truth or God's truth. Which one of these realities will you ALIGN yourself with. Which one of these two truths is going to be TRUE for you and are you going to believe in?

See, you think you have a choice beyond the ego and God. You think there is a third choice. You think that somehow there is 1) God, 2) Ego, 3) Your selective ability to pick and choose what the truth is. You do not have that ability really. You ONLY have the ability to decide which thought system you will BE a part of. If you choose to be part of the ego's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about the ego is REAL for you. If you choose to be part of God's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about GOD is REAL for you. And believing one, you will disbelieve in the other. And that IS your protection!

So recognize this. Fear that the ego is true, MUST disappear, IF you choose to believe in God's truth, BECAUSE they are opposite and mutually exclusive. They cannot coexist. If you want to be safe from evil, CHOOSE GOD, SO THAT *YOU* do not create your own evil. YOU are the one who empowers it. YOU are the one who give reality to it. YOU are the one who makes yourself vulnerable by trying to become at peace or saved from a "real threat".

If the ego's world of threats and dangers is real for you, there is NO WAY that you will ever find peace. You simply cannot find salvation, truth, a peaceful answer, a resolution, a cure, a magical description, a satisfactory diagnosis, or any kind of convincing TRUTH if you are CHOOSING to believe the ego is real. Because even if you think that you are in a state of questioning and NOT having a choice, you actually ARE choosing the ego. You are never not choosing.

Choose the ego and you'll believe you have no choice and that you don't want to choose what the ego is offering.

Choose God and you will believe you are free to choose but you only want to choose God after all.

So get out of your ego's attempt to intellectually discover the truth in the world, or explain sickness, or figure out why evil happens, or why someone did something. There is NO TRUTH there. Choose instead to reclaim your POWER OF DECISION, get out of the victimy complete lack of confidence, become decisive, be determined you will MAKE A DECISION about what you believe, and MAKE IT!

I CHOOSE THAT GOD'S TRUTH IS TRUE AND NOTHING ELSE IS TRUE!

THAT is your immortal protection against all illusions, all evil, all suffering, and all death. Going back into fear to "check" if evil is gone simply will make more evil. Going back into fear to "prove" that something is true, will just invalidate the truth again. This is why you must TRUST in God's truth, SURRENDER your belief that the ego's world is real, and become fully committed to the REALITY that God has already decided FOR you.

Choosing for yourself, versus accepting God's decision. That's all.

There are a number of words Jesus uses in a very different way to how we use them. He literally redefines and teaches us a new meaning of these words. This is because we've taught ourselves incorrectly what something IS, and have mis-identified things. In ACIM His use of terms gives them a whole different meaning.

Some examples:

Life. You think it means bodies that "are alive". He means, that which has eternal life in Heaven and extends forever, which never perishes and cannot die.

Death. You think it means death of the body. He means, anything even slightly less than 100% perfect life. Even a slight grievance. Even a slight sickness. The entire dream world and everything in it.

Murder. You think it means some person in the extreme attacking another. It really means the dynamic of a separation between cause and effect in which you perceive something applies to you that doesn't apply to someone else, allowing you to escape the consequences of what you cause. The entire ego thought system is murderous. "What is not love (100% love) is murder."

Insanity. Any state of mind which is not total wholeness and holiness. A split mind. A mind which believes illusions are real. A mind which sees itself as separated from its creator. All states of dreaming. Happy dreams, unhappy dreams. All states of perception. Seeing yourself as a body. Believing in death.

Sickness. You think it means just body sickness like having a disease. Jesus means a sick mind which produces a sick body, all states of mental unhealth, death, forms of physical sickness, illness, fear, unforgiveness, guilt, body-identification, belief in sin, level confusion, magic, etc.

Fear. You think it's some feeling you have when you are scared and that the rest of the time you are not afraid. Jesus says the entire world is made of fear which is the opposite of love, all states of sickness including death are fear of awakening, and fear includes every state of the ego thought system.

Sin. You think it means something you did. Jesus redefines it as something you think you did which you didn't do in reality. Sin is the authority problem. It's reversal of cause and effect, opposing God's will, which has produced an entire world of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." In sin, the death wish is formed, making death inevitable, unless you undo sin.

Love. You think of special love, an emotion of love, private love, exclusive love. Parental love. Small amounts of love. Jesus says all expression of real love are maximal - maximum total unconditional whole-minded full-hearted unlimited universe-sized love.

Forgiveness. You think it means pardon. Or you think it is a process. Jesus states it is a constant state of mind in which you recognize there is nothing left to forgive because you have not condemned yourself. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, yet you are one with others. Forgiveness is the atonement.

Ego. You think ego is just some little bit of egotism or selfishness. Jesus redefines ego as the separation idea and an entire thought system which has manifested as a physical universe, complete with dream bodies and war and death.

Perception. You think perception is you being inside your body peering out through your eyes seeing stuff in a certain way. Yet Jesus says the world is perception, physical objects are mental images, the whole world is your perception within your universe-sized mind, and it's not so much to do with how you see something that's out there. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes what you see.

There's many more things which we do not recognize as being what they are. And so it may be easy to mis-read what Jesus means by certain words. We have to unlearn all of our previous definitions for things and broaden the scope of them. Jesus is accurate and truthful in HIS understanding of what things ARE, he knows what is fear and what is death and what is life, in the most accurate of ways. Our definitions are limited and basic and incorrect. Dictionary definitions are also flawed. This is part of what makes learning ACIM challenging, he's using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.