Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

The ego is NOT the idea of being an individual self. It is in fact the idea of DENYING your self, attacking your self, destroying yourself, and trying to kill your self.

The ego is the very idea of imprisoning your free will, trying to make you unwilling to be free, and stripping away your freedoms as an individual.

The ego is also the ILLUSION of having independence, which is made from pictures of isolation, imprisonment, limitation and restriction, all limits placed on your actual self.

When you wake up, you do NOT wake up to the end of individuality. You wake up TO your individuality. If being in the ego means you are NOT BEING YOURSELF, then waking up means you return to being yourself.

You have free will in God and you are an individual BEING. Here is what ACIM actually explicitly says:

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

That's what it ACTUALLY says. So that means that we actually ARE individual beings who have everything, which automatically implies that we must have free will.

Therefore, waking up means that you RETURN TO the freedom of your will, you lift away the imprisonment you've placed on yourself, you REGAIN your freedom to be individually free, you accept atonement for YOURSELF (not for others), you become part of the atonement plan and then you help others to heal and wake up.

This entire doctrine of thinking of the ego as "an individual" is actually FAILING to overlook THE ILLUSION that the ego is presenting. The ego has been quite clever to make it look as though its "separateness" IS independence. It is not. It is imprisonment. It's the exact opposite of what it looks like.

And since people think that the ego is "a self", they then conclude that undoing that self means kind of the disappearing of that self, or like the very core of your being is ripped out and doesn't exist any more. This is absolutely the OPPOSITE of what happens.

As you wake up, you become MORE OF YOURSELF, you INCREASE your freedom, you gain access to YOUR INDEPENDENCE, you return to being a CO-CREATOR (many many quotes that prove this), and you become a SELF again. An individual in heaven. You are a co-creator with God, with your own free will and individuality.

The entire FALSE INTERPRETATION of the course has led many people to think that you do not exist and have no soul and are not individual and have no free will. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE COURSE SAYS AT ALL. If you go and read it yourself and especially in the earlier versions, you will find out that this interpretation IS A LIE, and has been spread around like wildfire by well-meaning but MISTAKEN teachers.

Being individual does not make you an ego. Having free will does not make you an ego. Being a co-creator does not cause separation or isolation. You are not "just" the one son, you are one of many sons. This IS the teaching of A Course in Miracles, not the fabricated FICTION that has been spread over the top of it to cover up your individuality.

You have a permanent self which God created, it is free, it has its own mind, it can choose, and it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

"Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)"

The golden rule is based on God's law that everything is equally shared by everyone - because we're all one. What applies to me applies to everyone and everything. Either we are all innocent or all guilty. Whatever you do to another you do to yourself, because they are part of you.

But then Jesus goes on to suggest that separation produces a state which is opposite to the golden rule. In this state, it is believed that what applies one does NOT apply to anyone else. That everything is exclusive. What you do to another you do NOT do to yourself.

So if you enter into this belief that you can get away with murder, that you can project blame without being blamed, that you can find someone guilty while you are innocent, or that there can be this imbalance of equality, then you've attempted to reverse the golden rule. You are denying the law of God.

The ego does this because it denies God's laws, so it believes that there is no equality, no sharing, no oneness, and you are not joined with others. It believes that anything that applies to you does not apply to them, and vice versa, due to a separation between you. And therefore, it becomes viable to suggest you can pile all the blame onto someone else in order to escape from it.

This then enters into what Jesus calls projection, which is also dissociation. Here the mind is trying to "project separation" or increase separation, to keep the separation going.

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

By separating yourself off, disassociating from your brothers, identifying yourself as "not them", and the reinforcing the intensity of the separation between you, you are "projecting". You then leverage this separateness by trying to make sure everyone else holds the sin and not you. This is golden-rule reversal because what applies to them should also apply to you.

So as the golden rule becomes inverted, we get separation, dissociation, denial, projection, a gap between people, a sense of exclusive identity, blame and scapegoating. Jesus also describes this as having grievances, as being the opposite of miracles. ie if you enter into this golden-rule denying state, you are trying to be unmiraculous and attack instead.

"This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically."

"And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond."

Miracles and grievances are opposites. Miracles are founded on the golden rule, and all sense of attack or separation or sin is founded on golden-rule denial. Trying to break the law of God, although really simply denying that it still applies, puts you into a split mind where you think you can attack without being attacked. And yet you are still attacked, because you do it to yourself, and are suffering as a result of being separate.

The law of God can never be broken, but the ego is the denial of the law of God, and being in denial it hasn't changed the law - it has simply pretended it does not apply. And each time you pretend it does not apply, attempting to attack without being attacked, which is a breakdown in cause and effect, you hurt yourself. Your brother is part of you, and to attack him is to attack yourself, even if you believe by mistake that he is not you. You would not attack him if you knew he was part of you because you would have a shared interest.

The way I see the world, I recognize at least in theory that it was made by mistake. It was made to oppose God's nature, even as an attack on God. It is unnatural and strange and filled with contradictions and conflict. It is inherently limited, problematic, confused and made from ideas of death and sin. Ok, so that's just what it is. A botched mis-creation.

But at the same time, while keeping that squarely in mind, and without using it to judge or condemn the world, I can also recognize that some of the "hell-like bullshit" that we made is not "all that bad". I mean, I just ate some pretty tasty French toast for breakfast. ie, "it's not all bad". The toast isn't heaven and must not substitute for it, but it can be enjoyed for what it is.

I'm finding out, the long hard way, that it's okay to enjoy some of the shit we made. To live a little. Because otherwise if all we do is label the world as a picture of crucifixion and death, our outlook can become a bit bleak.

I see that yes, on the one hand we did make a quite faulty, terrorizing, awkward and very bizarre world, but at the same time, it's possible to find a way to forgive it. To look at it without holding it against itself. It's flawed yes, but if I start labelling it as flawed I'm really accusing it of sin. And then I'll start experiencing it from a vantage point of suffering "from it".

The course seems to point to an attempt to "save" the world, and when we look at what it's being saved from, it's being saved from our accusation of sin. Saved from our projections of faulty meaning that we've given to it. Allowed to just be neutral and "what it is" without attacking or condemning it for being what it is. Without judging it wrongly and only sharing the Holy Spirit's judgement of it.

Yes it's a picture of hell and murder, but if I start holding that against it and using it as a way to condemn it, then I'm going to be dragged down into it. Even the ego knows that it slightly depends on God and accepts SOME good. It doesn't reject goodness entirely, but rather mixes it with evil ideas and confuses them.

Even if we made galaxies and planets and black holes in error, we could look at them from a more loving perspective and appreciate them for what they are, not making them into something they're not. We could be careful not to turn them into idols or something to depend on or artificially value, remembering always to recognize that the world is FALSE. But even a false world can become a forgiven world. And a forgiven world can be appreciated through beautiful vision.

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

"Each spot HIS (Holy Spirit's) reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes."

"Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."

ACIM says that "I do do not know what anything including this means". It also says that if you let go of everything you ever learned, then you become open to actually learning. In effect, it boils down to that we need to let go of the accumulation of "answers" that we've taught ourselves, becoming ready and willing to be open to something that we "may not know".

Only by being willing to, in effect, be a "beginner", or a "student", are we really receptive. You'll notice that people who are beginners to ACIM are in fact quite open minded, and that in fact many who have been trying to do the course for decades can become very closed-minded and rigid.

This is because we think that we've found all the answers or learned everything there is to learn. But Jesus is really saying that your mind needs to approach an innocent and "new" kind of state, where you are trusting and open to guidance, where you can be told what to do, where you are willing to serve God's will, and where you are not filled with "plans" and "wishes" and "control" and "being right" and the whole accumulation of ego nonsense. To be as if you are only just starting out, all the time.

This takes for you to let go and purge out of yourself all of the past and all of your false beliefs and all of the trying to do everything on your own. To let go of all the sense of gaining and getting and taking and accumulating. To get past the whole intellectual pursuit of amassing more and more concepts and theories. And just get down to being primitive, in a sense, original and innocent and pure.

That's why it's all about purification. Throw that shit out. We're actually in a process of retracing our steps and going BACK to where we came from. That's why atonement is about UNDOING. It's radical, the teaching, that to gain heaven, you need to let go of everything you think you know and give up everything you ever learned. Only be returning to a fresh clean slate can you be ready to accept what is already true. "In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own."

"You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS. You are afraid of this, because you believe that, WITHOUT THE EGO, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that, without the ego, ALL WOULD BE LOVE."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."

"Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so COMPLETELY different from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything YOU learned you DO NOT WANT. Ask to BE taught, and do NOT use your experiences to confirm what YOU have learned. When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in ANY way, say to yourself, "I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now." By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you, will speak to you. HE will take His rightful place in your awareness, the instant YOU abandon it, and offer it to Him."

In our special relationships, we think of a particular person as our savior, idol, bestie, or appointed partner. We adore them with very exclusive terms and special attention. Things that we reserve only for them and for no-one else.

This is the main mode of functioning of love in most people. Special love, for special people, in special ways. Or in other words, limited love, in exclusive situations, with a very small handful of individuals.

The ego in us loves this. It loves to love only a tiny subset of the Sonship. It loves to isolate and limit and constrain all love to one special chosen target recipient. It loves to really strongly play up how important and special and relied-upon that person is, because what this indirectly implies, is that everyone else sucks bigtime.

Special relationships therefore feed the ego 'persona' - the parts of life that it wants to keep and approve of - which is a very limited slice of reality - which it will eventually still attack and destroy. And while it feeds this persona, it relegates everything else to prison, which goes into your own mind as your 'shadow' self, filled with rejection and hate and attack. And that shadow self will attack your persona self and attack your special relationship and eventually try to destroy it. And as such romance turns to resentment. That's what the ego has in store for you when you play along with the special-love game. It ends in tears.

Ok so, being a bit dramatic ;-)

The point is, most people are stuck in this game, and there is a whole other way to experience life. And that means, bringing specialness into question, which is especially difficult when you have special relationships. It means that you will have to confront a sense of not depending on special people, but instead depending on God. It means you will have to examine why you can only love this one person and not everyone else, and also find out what it is within yourself that refuses to love everyone equally. Typically it's because you do not want to love yourself at all times, but only when you yourself are 'special' to yourself, which is probably not often.

Sometimes therefore special relationships have to go through a transition in order for the relationship to become 'holy', which means, the specialness (which is really a form of conditionality and limitation) has to be brought into question. And indeed, it may have to be released, which can be very painful, in order to make way for a greater expansion of love that overflows beyond the borders of the special relationship. How can you be unconditionally loving and uncondtionally yourself without letting go of the specialness that limits and imprisons you?

This doesn't have to mean the end of a relationship or necessarily its destruction, but at times it can seem that the special aspects of the relationship undergo a breakdown, to reveal a deeper unconditionality, a deeper more genuine more honest love, that doesn't put on a mask of pretense and perhaps doesn't play into the appearance of a typical special relationship. This means the relationship is becoming holy, in which the 'real selves' are starting to relate on terms of deeper honesty and greater willingness to love. Love actually increases, but it becomes in a sense less personally confining. It become more freeing, more allowing, more accepting, and that's different than how a special relationship typically starts out.

What remains then is a TRUE relationship, not only with another person but also with yourself, where you yourself are more genuine, where you are not dependent on the other person for the source of your love, where you are able to be of service, where you love them unconditionally, love yourself unconditionally, and also love beyond the walls of the 'relationship' unconditionally. What applies to you must apply to all. And as such, as you mature into unconditional love, you are maturing into a relationship with the entire Sonship, based on love instead of rejection and special attention.

This ultimately is the only way to love yourself.

I find that a lot of ACIM students read the book too fast and sloppily and then approximate what they think they read and think it's saying something it's not.

For example I hear quite often cropping up people saying that the idea of "miracles are spectacles" is a bad thing and therefore, miracles cannot be things like walking on water or raising the dead because that would be a spectacle.

That's a GROSS misunderstanding of what it ACTUALLY says in the book, and it's even grosser when people USE it as a way to AVOID any reason to perform a spectacular miracle:

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver. (A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)"

Here it is clearly stating that if you think that a miracle is MERELY a spectacle, BECAUSE it is spectacular, then you have MISUNDERSTOOD IT. Largely because you're probably focusing on the changes in FORM and physicality and are taking it to be spectacular and impressive and such.

It literally actually says that if you think miracles are spectacles, or that a spectacular miracle has to be AVOIDED, you have MISUNDERSTOOD. This does NOT mean that miracles cannot BE spectacular.

Secondly...

"The use of miracles as a spectacle to INDUCE belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

Here it clearly specifically says that if you USE a miracle to try to INDUCE BELIEF. .... then you are making a mistake. It goes on to clarify that miracles are supposed to be used BY believers, FOR believers. In other words, the issue here isn't that miracles are wrong for being spectacular, it's that if you USE them as party tricks without the proper purpose of healing/teaching and they are just some empty "spectacle" for show, you're probably trying to INDUCE BELIEF in someone ie persuade and impress them to COERCE them into believing something, which is really against their will.

So all it's doing in both counts is warning you about a couple of MISINTERPRETATIONS of miracles and their use. It NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER SAYS that miracles must not be spectacular, or that all miracles that seem spectacular are wrong, or that you should never perform a spectacular miracle.

All it says is 1) if you are dwelling on how spectacular IT IS, you are missing the point. And 2) You shouldn't ABUSE miracles by trying to use them to manipulate people. Jesus is giving these warnings because he knows that miracles CAN DO SPECTACULAR THINGS, which COULD be a) misinterpreted by some people and b) abused by others. He knows that precisely because miracles CAN BE SPECTACULAR, he needs to make sure you are performing spectacular miracles for the RIGHT REASONS.

Never does it say in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER that you should not perform spectacular miracles.

This is another example of how people do not read carefully, skim over the words, get an impression and then ignore what it actually said and meant. So now you hear people pulling up this quote as a defense against miracles because they THINK that it said something like "spectacular miracles are wrong" and "miracles should not be spectacles so they shouldn't be spectacular."

It's a gross distortion of what it says, the purpose of Jesus saying it, the meaning of what he said, and what point he is making. We need to pay much more careful close attention to what ACIM ACTUALLY SAYS instead of listening to loosely interpreted second-hand impressions. Especially from people who are anti-miraculous and who want to keep pushing an agenda of never performing a miracle for anyone for any reason.

In this world, the ego has reversed everything. What was visible has become invisible, and what was nothing at all seems to be something.

Similarly, in the world of form, "space" seems to be where nothing exists. And it seems like objects in the world exist within that space, as though they are real things and the space is nothing.

Space is not nothing, as such, it is "no thing". It is the container of things.

In reality, the container of everything is God, and is presence, and is all that is. It is the opposite of nothing. But in the ego's world, with everything back to front, space has come to symbolize nothingness.

So now in the ego world, you look to see where something is, and you look to objects instead of to the space that contains them. You think where objects exists, there something is, and where there are no objects, there is nothing. This is the ego's distraction. It is a device for making it appear that what is, is not, and what is not, is.

The ego has set up the physical universe in this way to always seem to point you in the wrong direction, to make it seem like the very thing that won't help you is what you want, and the very thing that would help you you do not want.

When you are thinking about questioning the ego, it would tell you not to look at your mind because, if you do, you'll discover that there is guilt there. It tells you not to look at the guilt, that you want to get away from it. And it tells you that getting away from it through denial and projection will make things better for you - that you'll become innocent. But this is a lie as well.

If you were to look within and question the guilt and question the idea of sin it's based on, you'd find out there is no sin. The ego doesn't want you to do that. Again it puts guilt in place as a signpost pointing away from itself, so that you'll head in the opposite direction. Similarly fear distracts you away from itself so that you think the problem is someone else.

Also in the ego's world, "change is life" and stagnation is death. Yet, stillness is actually life, and change is death. What we call life - stuff that changes and transformed and is born and dies, is not life at all. It's an illusion of life. Artificial. Backwards. It's a movement into not living. If stillness is life and in the ego's world stillness will kill you (e.g. your breathing stops), you will avoid stillness. See how cleverly it's set up?

Similarly every ego deception takes you away from yourself, takes you away from truth and leads you towards destruction. When you are trying to wake up from this illusion, that's why it seems so difficult. You are going against the grain of the entire world. It tells you to go one way, you need to go another. The ego tempts you to believe something, you need you unbelief it. You fear that someone is causing problems, you need to realize that you are the cause. We literally need to deprogram ourselves from being physically-oriented and deceived by this worlds' rules and all the ways in which things seem to mean something based on appearances of how they work here. This entire world is a grand deception and none of it is truth.

There are no laws but God's.

This world is an illusory opposition to God, and God did not create it.

"T-22.III.5. 3 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? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

**** This is a very important part of the Course. ****

Jesus is telling is clearly here that the physical world of FORM, all objects, all matter, the physical universe, the world, are NOTHING, it is the way that we experience a 'wall of sin' which stands between us and God, and we are quite literally incapable of seeing God while we use the body's eyes to see.

It is also telling us that the physical universe is not reality. Perception of 'form', which means, physical materials, objects, people's bodies, the planet, etc... if you are seeing that, you are seeing an illusion.

This is very hard for many people to accept even intellectually yet alone to experience this truth. "There is no world" fits right in here.

So it's one thing to wake up to the point of still seeing the physical world and yet somehow 'seeing God in it' because God is in your mind. Okay, that's a step closer. BUT... that's not going all the way.

Jesus is telling us from a CHRIST perspective, that we have to become able to recognize that ALL FORMS ARE ILLUSIONS and that there is a REALITY that is beyond form, formless, in which you not only live your real life with God but you also are completely infinite and unlimited.

It's not enough just to find a different way of perceiving form. It's not enough to learn to not judge form. It's not enough to overlook your personal judgements or mental distortions or guilty attitudes about the world or yourself. That is not the end of the story.

We are asked to really go ALL THE WAY.... to go beyond form entirely. To go all the way to IMMORTAL SPIRIT. To transcend all forms and all physical matter and all of space and time. To go all the way to the complete and total and permanent awareness of the ONE REALITY. That reality is completely abstract and has NO FORMS IN IT. None. No objects. No bodies. No physical universe. No planets.

So that means, it's important to learn at some stage how even the body's senses are misleading you, how you are deceived by the appearance of differences and objects, how the physical world is actually set up to BLOCK you from God, and how the world PHYSICALLY STOPS YOU from being with God by completely deceiving your awareness.

You need a vision which transcends form. A vision which sees Christ. And that doesn't just mean seeing Christ in your brother or seeing Christ in the body-self of your brother. It means seeing past ALL FORM to the Christ and ONLY SEEING THAT.

Not just to see and be aware of God, but to see and be aware of NOTHING ELSE as well.

As Jesus says, "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you." - ACIM

Pure heaven.

When you're upset, you're having an experience. It seems very real to you. It's frightening. It seems that something has happened or something is true, and because it seems true it's scaring you.

But what you need to realize is that "you are not upset for the reason you think."

You think you're upset because of what a person did, or didn't do, or what happened, or what you saw. You think something other than yourself caused it, or that something's happening beyond your control. But this isn't really why you are upset.

You're having an experience right now of upset and fear and guilt and anger and shame, and that is inside of you. Its yours. But the main problem is you've placed the cause of this experience into something separate from you. You think it's that person who put these feelings there. You think it was that thing happening that caused this upset. And you see yourself as having been unfairly victimized by them. And now you're suffering and you can't get out of it.

Well all of this experiencing is inside you because it's yours, and it was already inside you BEFORE this person or event came along. You had it stored away in the back of your mind, unhealed. You are already full of all the upset and fear that you could possibly need to account for all of your upsetting experiences in every lifetime. You don't even need to find extra causes for adding "new stuff".

This upset that's in you wasn't put there by anyone else. It wasn't just created in you by some event that just happened. Nobody made you feel this way. Nobody is doing anything to you.

This is old stuff. It's always old stuff. Its the sense of sin and guilt from separating from God that you buried in your mind long ago, coming up inside of you to remind you of how you feel. And yes, it was maybe "triggered by" someone or something happening, or what they did, and because it was triggered by them you mistook this to mean it was caused by them. But all they did was mirror to you how you already felt, deep down, and so it popped into your awareness. And you asked them to do this for you.

Its not their fault.

This is about you. Its your stuff. Your feelings. Your experience. Your attitude. Your beliefs. Your way of looking at yourself. This is about your sense of separation from yourself and God and how you haven't forgiven yourself for what you think you did. That's what needs to be forgiven. You CAN'T forgive anyone else because nobody else is capable of doing anything to you!

You need self forgiveness. And that entails admitting that all of this stuff is self-inflicted and self-chosen and it's all your own stuff. It's not anyone else's fault. Nobody has made you feel this way. You agree that you should feel this way.

And so then, why do you feel this way? What is it you believe about yourself, in relationship to God, that has brought about this nightmarish experience? This fear, and guilt, and sin? Is it really true of you? Is God really against you or upset with you? Is he really abandoning you? Do you really need to be afraid of his revenge? Are you really a sinner?

Will you forgive yourself and recognize that you have NOT done what you thought you did, that it has had no effect on God whatsoever, that you are still innocent and loved? How about some relief, in knowing that nothing's gone wrong and you're still worthwhile? Or that God still unconditionally loves you right now and always will? That you haven't made Him go away and He isn't bearing any grudge or anger toward you? All you really want is to love and go Home.

Sickness in all its forms includes not just physical sickness but mental, emotional, financial, perceptual, sickness in relationships, vocational, etc.

Sickness in all its forms is an attempt to PROVE that God does not love you.

You're holding the sickness out there as evidence and saying, see, THIS proves that I am unworthy and unloved. Hah. Let's see what you've got to say about THAT!

The thing is.... You cannot prove that God doesn't love you, because it isn't true. You can only truly PROVE something that is true. If it's not true, you're not going to be able to prove it at all no matter how hard you attempt to do so.

So really your sickness is an ATTEMPT to TRY to prove it, even though it is not provable. And the ego in you is insane for even trying to prove it, because this is in DENIAL of the fact that it can't be proven. You WILL NOT and CANNOT change God. Your sickness is an attempt to change God, by attempting to change what God created - which is you.

It won't work. And you'll spend a lifetime trying to make it work AND FAIL. Thank God. Because you will never ever prove you are unworthy of love.

So it's really fruitless and pointless to spend all the effort attempting to prove the unprovable, or to make possible the impossible. You CAN'T be unloved by God.

So then you'll have to eventually ADMIT to this fact. And when you do you'll set yourself free of the game that you're playing with yourself. You have to admit that you chose this sickness and have put it in place and are attempting to make it the truth, when it isn't. And it requires an awful lot of upkeep to try to make it convincing.

A sickness therefore is a DEMAND that you insist God does not love you because of 'this' - whatever this is - whatever the sickness is, and you show it in order to block love.

You're like, well, God doesn't love me, see? I've got this to prove it? What about this (as you hold up your disease or your sense of poverty or your broken life). Basically you're holding this thing up to God and saying, see, there's no way you can love me because of THIS. How could anyone love THIS? Or, how could anyone love me when I've done THIS to God's son?

So your question is, how can I be loved? How can love be possible? Because by believing that UNLOVE is possible, or that you can prove your unworthiness, you also believe that worthiness is impossible. But your worthiness is not only possible but permanent.

And God responds. .... Through Holy Spirit ...... Even 'this' sickness you made does not show me that you aren't good enough. It doesn't make you less than you are and fails to convince me that I shouldn't love you anyway. Sorry but I will always love you and there's nothing you can do to change my attitude. Even this is not enough and never will be to make me hate you for sin you think you perceive. You've done nothing of any consequence and this can be undone. It isn't worthy of my condemnation or judgement and I will never find you guilty. There isn't anything you can do to upset me or make me not love you because you are my child, and my love for you is unconditional and everlasting. Let go of this supposed cardboard sickness you think proves you're not innocent, and allow me to love you for you so that you can return to peace and happiness. Put down your arms and surrender your weapons used against yourself. Put aside your grievance against yourself and let yourself recognize you ARE love. I love you just the same.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
▲
MiraculousLiving.com ©2024 Paul West / OmniLogic Arts