There is a clear teaching in ACIM that there are TWO worlds, and you can ONLY see one of the two in its entirety at any given time. Seeing one, REQUIRES you NOT TO SEE the other. You CANNOT see both of them in full simultaneously. And each of them uses a different KIND of vision, designed ONLY to see one kind of world.

One of these two worlds is Earth and its environment - all galaxies etc. The other is the real world/heaven - God's creation. You can ONLY see ONE of the two in full. If you shift your vision to true perception you can see God's world. If you shift your vision to false perception you can see the physical world. But you CANNOT DO BOTH AT ONCE.

So there is a dynamic, whereby the MORE that you see the real world, the LESS you see the physical world. As the real world "phases in", the physical world "fades out". You cannot see both at once, and in order to see one or the other you have to sacrifice the ability to see its opposite.

To the DEGREE that you value one of the worlds, that is how much you will see it, and inversely, this valuing of it causes you NOT TO VALUE the opposite world, which causes you to SEE IT LESS. This is a basic function of perception, that you see what you value, because you believe in it, and thus want to see it. You do NOT SEE what you DO NOT VALUE. And any world you consider "false" due to its opposite being "true", becomes invisible to you.

This is a very core teaching. You are choosing between heaven or hell.

"The world is false perception" and relies on physical sight of photons using the biological apparatus of the eyeballs an nerves etc.

The real world is true perception/christ vision and relies on the spiritual eye, which in turn DOES NOT rely on the body, and is direct mind-seeing.

Two types of perception. Two ways of seeing. Two worlds resulting. "The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear"

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

""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."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten"

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear."

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear."

When Jesus says that nothing can happen without our consent, and that nobody can die without their own consent, what he's saying seems pretty extreme.

We are so used to living in such a way that we constantly believe things happen by accident, or that something can "go wrong", or that there is unfairness and injustice, or that victims have nothing to do with asking to be victimized, or that war is a haphazard chaos.

Yes these are very common perceptions and this is what we're up against, these beliefs and ways of perceiving which fall for all kinds of illusions and trickery. On the surface it definitely appears that all of these things are true, that nobody wants to be victimized, that bad stuff just happens, that things go wrong, and that we don't want to die.

But that's the challenge, you see. That's the spiritual challenge, because what many do not know is that this entire world is a big trick, a set up, orchestrated by those to whom nothing happens by mistake, and who have such power of creation that if they so choose it, it will happen, and nothing else will happen. I know this sounds like some kind of 'God' pulling the strings. But in truth you are God-like.

So all these beliefs about having not chosen, about not having freedom, about being affected, about stuff happening that we don't want, and about the horrible idea that death is just going to happen to you against your will, ALL of these have to be questioned and undone completely. Because they are all false. They are all lies, that everyone is falling for 24/7. Yet as Jesus says in ACIM, you made sickness and death and you can abolish both.

This is why A Course in Miracles is so radical. The Truth flies in the face of how everything appears in this world. It goes against how everything is set up and how everything was deliberately designed to look like it proved we did not choose this. This entire world is a cover-up in which the Son of God is pretending to hide from a made-up enemy, and He very much is responsible for animating every single character and event in this dream regardless of whether He appears to suffer at His own hand.

Attempting to 'wake up' from the illusion of this world does not seem to be easy. It's a huge mind-fuck. As the Course says, we do not escape this illusion through death, but by TRUTH. Only the real Truth can set you free. And as a certain movie says, "you can't handle the truth".

Well, you can handle it... when you're ready to accept it. Because it's a pretty huge Truth that is not at all like what this world seems to suggest is true. And to go there, to be open to it, seems like a huge journey somewhat 'against' the world. But everyone is making this journey, and sooner or later everyone will come to realize what the Truth really is, and this entire universe will disappear.

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.

At each stage from separation through sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death, there is always some amount of projection of the cause of the problem.

When we believe in separation, i.e. sin, sin actually makes the separation unconscious, and then we are unaware of what caused sin. That which has no cause is considered to be a cause in its own right and not an effect. We will then go searching for the cause somewhere external, other than accepting that we caused it.

So we'll claim, I am sinful because God says I'm sinful, instead of that its because we chose to believe in separation.

Then at the next stage, feeling guilty, we won't just say I'm guilty because I sinned, we'll project the cause of the guilt outward and find an external cause for it. I'm guilty because someone else says so, or because society finds me guilty. Always someone else deciding that the guilt is true. And once again the guilt renders awareness of sin unconscious, so you go looking for reasons that caused the guilt.

This carries on down to fear, whereby even though guilt causes fear, fear makes guilt unconscious, and then you go looking for a projected cause for the fear. You start to claim that you are afraid "because of" all the external things or future things which are making you afraid. But none of these things are the cause of fear, your guilt is.

Then when punishment is happening, instead of admitting that you are punishing yourself, you'll be claiming that you are punished because someone or something else is punishing you. You'll look to all these reasons and causes why you are punished, other than that fear causes punishment.

And on it goes to death. Death is someone else's fault, happens by someone else's hand, is entirely out of your control, is not chosen by you at all etc. Punishment causes death but here you're claiming that death is caused by everything other than yourself.

Projection happens at all levels, because every level is an attempt to disown the level before it, and thus disown responsibility for choosing it. As soon as there is separation there is a cascade of irresponsibility and projection. It doesn't just happen once you get to guilt. It happens at every stage of separation all the way through to death.

These projections, these stories about who or what caused or justified the guilt or sin or fear etc, are defenses protecting the defenses. Guilt defends against sin, and the story that someone else found you guilty or you're guilty because of what you did to someone, is a defense that protects guilt from being undone. These fictions and stories have to be dismantled in order to look squarely at the problem, and then you can dismantle the problem itself.

The story about what caused the fear or the guilt or the sin is a cover-up story. Underneath it is your own belief that you are sinful guilty and afraid. Then these believes also are a cover-up story. Fear defends guilt, guilt defends sin, sin defends separation. Collapse these one at a time and you'll end up at the Atonement.

Here's a ... strange and unexpected post that kind of just channeled out of me..... hmmmm...

Causing without receptivity to love has been associated with "male".

Receptivity without the power to cause has been associated with "female".

The male "egocentric" causality and forcefulness and so on, has played out as attempts to suppress, control, belittle and abuse women, making them an "effect" or victim.

In the bigger mind, this is really the dynamic between minds which have become tyrannical and arrogant and have an authority problem, vs mind which is open to receive love and to be an effect of God.

This is because this world represents a split mind, in which the two aspects of mind have seemingly been separated into "genders".

Mind is supposed to contain BOTH aspects - the ability to cause, and the ability to receive as an effect of God. When both of these aspects are fully balanced/equalized, where giving and receiving are one, causality becomes a loving act and not an act of aggression or domination.

This also means that in truth, no-one is male or female, gender is an illusion of separation, and we are all IDENTICAL.

Male domination, or a bias toward "output without input", also produces the sacrificial belief in "working hard" or being the "breadwinner" or having to be the one who goes out and hunts and gathers.

Female submission, or a bias toward "input without output", has produced "women being housewives" or "women should stay at home" or "women shouldn't get equal pay" or "women are more nurturing" etc.

This is all because our minds have become skewed in our belief in separation from God, producing an authority problem which has played out on the world stage as a huge dream of dominance vs submission in various ways.

The balance of this is swinging back the other way at the moment with women's rights and so on, which has been an extremely long time coming due to the general "dominance" of the male expression, but I think it highly likely that this will at some point mean that the women of the world will "take over" the role that men were taking and it will become skewed in the other direction, with men becoming more identified with submission.

This has been going on back and forth and back and forth for millenia. It's nothing new. The ego is not very original. But over time, perhaps, the difference between the two will smooth out, and gradually men and women will become truly equal, and in so doing, become either androgenous on a physical level, or will simply disappear from this universe of duality and return to perfect oneness in God. In God's eyes, we are all exactly the same.

The end of the human race then ends in laugher and equal holiness and WHOLENESS of all individuals, not imbalance or dominance or submission. This represents minds who have elected to place themselves under perfect authority of Christ, while also extending that authority, so that all acts of causality are equally as receptive to Authority of Spirit.

Affirming what is NOT true, and what IS true, can induce miracles.

With regards to sickness for example, you must "cancel" every single perception or belief that suggests the sickness even EXISTS, or any other surrounding beliefs based on that.

e.g. "there is no sickness" "this sickness is an illusion" "I am not sick" "I am not being affected by my body" "my body is not the cause of me" "these symptoms are not real" "this sickness isn’t happening" "I am not caused by pain" "this sickness has no power over me" "Nothing unreal exists" etc

Then, you can switch it around to the affirmative, to emphasize the truth, which should focus squarely on who you are IN TRUTH - your immortal, holy, divine, eternally alive, incapable-of-suffering self, made of love.

e.g. "This sickness has alread gone" "I am free of this" "I cannot be sick because I am immortal" "sickness cannot happen to a son of God" "I must have chosen this myself" "I am responsible for making this sickness" "I choose to be alive" "I am the life of God" "I cannot be attacked" "Nothing real can be threatened" "I am free from this" "I need not suffer" "I am already perfect" "I am as God created me" etc

The important thing here is to always equate anything even slightly short of total immortality with "ego" which is FALSE and NOT true. And to always equate the HIGHEST TRUTH about you with the truth.

Either you are absolutely permanently innocent, safe, healthy, happy and loved, OR anything short of that IS A TOTAL LIE. All you are doing is becoming CLEAR about which is which. Put the true stuff in the TRUTH box, put the bullshit in the FALSE box.

This WILL challenge your beliefs, in order to be EXTREMELY black and white about it. Symptoms, feelings, upsets, suffering of any kind, bad thoughts, mental experiences, whatever... must be categorized strictly. It’s either true, or its false. Nothing in between.

This will challenge you because it means anything short of IMMORTALITY is a lie. Sickness is a lie. Suffering is a lie. Guilt is a lie. Fear is a lie. Sin is a lie. Death is a lie. Symptoms are not real. Suffering is fake. There is NO TRUTH IN IT.

If you want healing and happiness and wholeness, you MUST stretch your mind to CHANGE its beliefs, if it keeps trying to believe that ANY form of suffering is real or true. That means questioning deeply held beliefs about the body, about life and death, about sickness, and about what is real. If you want to go ALL the way to Atonement and Resurrection, every illusion must be RECOGNIZED as false, and the truth must be RECOGNIZED as true.

"Only the truth is true." The truth about you is extremely lofty. You have to be willing to let that be true of you. YOU ARE PURE LOVE. YOU ARE IMMORTAL SPIRIT. YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU CANNOT DIE. Embrace it and live forever in happiness and peace.

Healing requires that we see the other person as already perfect, completely equal to our perfect self. We must START there and STRENGTHEN their perfection in THEIR mind by seeing it FOR them.

If we start with “you are sick, something’s wrong with you”, that is in fact - in contrast to their immortal perfection - a way of WEAKENING them. It is how the ego sees them and is an attack, even if it occurs while trying to “heal them.”

If healing or the need for healing is seen to be on the basis of “making up for what’s wrong with them”, this is not healing. It’s what the course calls magic. It’s the unhealed healer who still believes the person is something they’re not, and so contributes to the suffering instead of healing it.

How can you heal someone if you are starting out by perceiving them as guilty, suffering, sick, flawed, lacking, malfunctioning, a body, limited, weak or frail? This is NOT a correct way to see anyone and it means you are agreeing with the ego that your brother is defective and diseased and guilty and destroyed. To react to such nightmarish perceptions in an attempt to heal them without undoing the belief in them, is sure to fail, or only mildly work at best. Been there done that.

The course asks us to BEGIN by seeing the truth of a person, that they are immortal and holy, and that therefore they do not really NEED healing. It’s similar to forgiveness which looks without sin and sees “there is no sin”, ie there is in effect “no need for forgiveness” because it is seen AS forgiven already. Healing has this quality too - see them AS healed (their immortal God-given self) in order to confirm that the sickness is NOT THERE, in order to INDIRECTLY “make it go away” by shining that light of awareness into their mind FOR them so that they too become aware of it.

“The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.”

“Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else does not share WITH him. Magic ALWAYS sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does NOT have it.” You could call this, “healing to destroy.”

"He may believe that this gift comes from God TO him, but it is quite evident that he does NOT understand God if he thinks HE has something that others DO NOT.”

If we think there is something true of us that is not true of others, we have entered into ego attack and specialness. God gives everyone the same perfection and this must be recognized. A healer does not have anything that anyone else doesn’t have, and the gift to heal is NOT exclusive. To be SHARED, health and life must be seen AS shared and inclusive of all.

In summary, you heal another by seeing their already-healed self - their Christ self, still as God created them - and this causes you to shine your light brightly, and this light shines INTO their mind and HEALS IT, awakening their mind to an awareness of the truth about themselves, and thus undoing all sickness. Because they are NOT sick.

"The "fearful healer" is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that ONLY a conflicted mind could POSSIBLY perceive as meaningful."

"Healing ALWAYS induces harmony because it proceeds from integration.”

"The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but he is NOT grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something TO them, and is NOT receiving something equally desirable in return.”

"Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours.”

"The mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM.

Should you change the world?

There are many parts of ACIM which SEEM to suggest you should not. Such as:

"Seek not to change the world, but seek to change your mind about the world."

Also Jesus tells us we need to correct the real cause of suffering in our mind, in our perception, in order to truly heal it.

Some say that this might possibly lead to a "side effect" of the body being healed, or it might not. Which is wishy-washy bullshit.

Let's break it down.

If you believe this world is reality, and as a world it sucks big time, and you hate it, and its insane, and you think it's "really insane" as in, it actually IS, then YOU have a problem in your mind because you're not seeing correctly. The world is an ILLUSION!

If the world is real to you, then you've mistaken illusions for the truth. You've given reality to illusions. And now when you see an illusion of a "bad world", you're going to react to it with despair, depression and hopelessness, only because you think it is REAL and not because of its form.

If you then seek to change the world to "look better" AS a real world, which is what happens when most people try to change the world, you're actually going to KEEP the belief you have that this world is reality. You will move the furniture around, maybe to some configuration you prefer temporarily, with tradeoffs, but it's not necessarily going to give you real lasting happiness. It will give you a temporary illusion of happiness which is dependent on the world, and it will change on you.

There is a different way to change the world. Perhaps we should say, to TRANSLATE or TRANSFORM the world.

When you withdraw your belief that this illusory world is reality, and you stop taking it seriously, and stop reacting to errors, sins and sickness as though they're real, you will be much happier. You will know there is not REALLY any reason to be upset, that the world is not REALLY bad, and it's not REALLY anything. This will alleviate all possible reasons for upset.

From that vantage point you will see the "forgiven world", which you will be OVERLOOKING, to Christ's face which is beyond form.

You will also be miraculous, and with the power of God, you WILL have access to be able to "change the world" in any way that is appropriate. Albeit that perhaps it would need to be a) inspired by love, b) in alignment with Jesus's plan of atonement/awakening, and c) for the good of all.

Just as Jesus performs intercessions/interventions by way of MIRACLES, so can you, and you may well bring about "changes" in the world as a result. You may well seem to make the world a happier place, not because its FORM is better, but because there is healing taking place. People are waking up to the truth, miracles are educating about God's reality, and belief is shifting away from illusions. That's a helpful way to change the world.

Thus it's not then so much about to staying IN the world and fixing it up and making it all pretty and real, but more to do with you converting it to an illusory yet more tolerable "happy dream", which smooths the way to awakening and eases suffering and gently helps you and others to return to God. This "use of the world" for awakening is a better purpose than to try to "use the world" to produce a "real world" that is considered better than the old one.

There's nothing wrong with you changing the illusion. Jesus did it many times. Every miracle does it. Miracles rearrange space and time. Jesus tells us its a device for the manipulation of time (and space)! Why not ease the nightmare and lift some burdens lovingly so that people can see EXAMPLES and DEMONSTRATIONS of right-minded thinking, the truth of God's kingdom, the POTENTIAL of awakening, and the FREEDOM that is everyone's right!

The purpose then isn't to change the world for the world's sake, but to change the world to help people wake up from the world and return to reality.

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne."

"Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?"

...AND ITS REVERSAL...

"God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more."

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

ACIM

My note: Note that Jesus specifically refers here to healing the physical BODY, and to his intention that we PRACTICE this in order to then evaluate how well we did based on how meaningless the body is afterwards, as well as making the body invulnerable to and not dependent upon the world.

As you attempt to get rid of parts of yourself that you do not like, such as parts that you have condemned as sinful and guilty, you will gradually be running out of Self to get rid of.

Yet, trying to keep only the good parts and get rid of the bad parts appears to make you seem like an increasingly good person. And that's because you're progressively denying more and more that there is any bad stuff in you.

If your strategy is to become more innocent by denying your own belief that there's unlovability in you, and if the only way to get rid of those unlovable parts is to unlove them even more, pretty soon you're going to be perfecting your innocence. And that really means, you will find that there is none of you left to BE innocent.

This attempt at denial and suppression of your belief in your sinfulness, will eventually put so much self-hate into your unconscious that it will erupt into consciousness and be perceived as an attack. You won't be able to keep it concealed forever, and the more you censor yourself the more you'll feel threatened by anything that lets the hate leak out.

This is the ego's strategy for finding a way to prove that you're innocent. It logically concludes that if it can isolate outside conscious awareness all of the stuff about you which is less than innocent and good, and if nobody (including you) ever sees the bad parts, then you'll finally be recognized as innocent.

And conveniently you'll find lots of opportunities to project and blame the relegated self-hatred in yourself onto others, giving you yet another way to displace your sinfulness and get rid of it. Or at least you believe you're getting rid of it, when in fact you are just lost in a private world where your unloved parts are at war with your acceptable parts.

Eventually the end of the war will only happen when you run out of goodness, because the ego suspiciousness will always undermine the potential for you to be truly good. Good is never good enough, and your efforts to people-please will always make you suffer. Your attempt to wear a mask of innocence is actually an attempt to destroy you, because it creates in your mind the very toxic enemy - your own hated self - which will haunt you incessantly.

There is no real escape in this arrangement. There is no real way to be free of guilt without self-sacrifice. There is no way you can truly be free of it without dying. And this is why you see death as a logical and worthwhile conclusion to your efforts at being "good" all the time. Being good, in denial of being bad, leads to death and is a choice to die.

It is a choice to die because feeding your persona and trying to *pretend* that you don't believe in your own guilt is diminishing what's left of you. Pretty soon you'll run out of anything that's good enough about you, and meanwhile your hated self will be making plans for your funeral.

While sin and guilt are real, or true of you, there is no escape. While you believe in them, you will try to cut off parts of yourself that you deem the locations of that sinfulness, and attack it to try to get rid of it. You will attack it with denial and disassociation as well as hate.

The only true escape for you is to learn that you have not really sinned and that guilt is therefore never justified. When you can see that you must be innocent because you did not sin "in reality", you no longer need to try to make yourself be innocent in the face of sin being real. Instead, you are simply innocent because there is no real sin. And this is forgiveness, and it is also the atonement.

So either you will use the ego's strategy to make you innocent, which will kill you, or you will use the Holy Spirit's strategy to make you innocent, which will save your life.