The body is a separation device. It was made to section off and fence in a SMALL PORTION of mind, which seems then to find itself housed "inside" the body, while the larger portion of mind appears to be "separated off" or unconscious, outside the body. The sense of being isolated, separated, limited, partial, not whole, thus belongs to the "inside the body" experience, which is an experience of being only PART of yourself. To return to wholeness you have to thus transcend the body, erase the body, have no separation devices in the mind, and therefore collapse the gap between the outer and inner. The body symbolizes the split in the mind and once the split is erased the body is erased.

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

Since the body itself is a separation device BETWEEN parts of mind, designed to keep one part of mind sectioned off from the other part, it can only seem to EXIST at all while there is a sense of separation. If the mind is split, the split shows up as a body coming between "you" (within the body) and the rest of you (outside the body, in others). The body is thus a symbol of separation in the mind, and when the mind does not have separation in it there cannot be a body at all.

This is why God cannot enter a body, because that's like saying you can keep a separation device, something which sections off inner and outer, and keeps them apart. It's like saying the whole of God which is everywhere (within and without) can be stuffed inside a container which is less than everywhere, and all of God can thus be housed inside a box and be ABSENT from the outside. This is utterly impossible because God is unlimited and infinite and all encompassing.

Thus God, all of God, cannot enter a body or dwell in a body entirely. Nor can you, who find yourself to "be in a body" or rather, who have a split mind which shows up AS a body coming between you and the rest of you, join with God fully while maintaining a body. The body can only be there IF there is separation in the mind. If the mind has NO belief in separation it utterly not only transcends the body but ERASES the body. There can be no body at all without a belief in separation. Total wholeness wipes the body away completely. Meaning that to truly be whole you cannot be inside a body. And you therefore cannot fully MEET, join, be one with all of God, while there is a body present. You have to leave the realm of bodies entirely to be infinite and unlimited.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although ***what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.***"

This is similarly why you cannot be Christ in a body, IMO. Christ is similarly unlimited and whole and infinite. Just as is your soul. Your soul cannot enter a body either. "The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you who are life." Christ cannot directly in a first-person way be CONFINED in a body or sectioned off and found to be isolated to one place and not another. However, I believe ACIM is saying that you can "channel" Christ in a body, to some extent. You can be close to Christ and you can extend His love and miracles, but it's like he is working "through you" once removed, not directly.

I don't think Jesus was thus "Christ in a body" because if Christ could be in a body, fully, with no limitation at all, bodies could coexist with Christ and be his equal, and bodies would then have to exist in heaven as creations. Christ is unlimited, infinite, everywhere, and bigger than the universe. In ACIM Jesus lets us know that he "was a man who remembered his soul" and he remembered it in the atonement and ascension to heaven. And prior to that, he still had some trials and lessons, not least of which was the crucifixion. He BECAME identified fully with Christ, but not until getting out of here.

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body’s nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was."

I found myself in a conversation with Jesus last night about whether or not it's okay to pray for someone if they have not 'given permission'. I wanted to pray for someone to attempt to help them and heal them, but I wondered, what if they did not want this?

I thought about how we're not meant to violate someone's free will and how maybe it would incur some kind of 'karma' if we try to do this. I also thought about ethics and about how everyone has 'rights' and that we're supposed to be respectful and all that.

I seemed to be getting hints from Jesus that it was still okay to pray, and in fact it had been Jesus who initially had suggested to me "pray". Jesus has been trying to get me to experiment more with 'true prayer', since prayer is the medium of miracles, and to learn more how to extend God's miracles to people. But I felt a bit awkward about 'doing a prayer to someone'.

I wondered if it was some kind of manipulation. But somehow it seemed plausible that maybe it was helpful, that maybe anything that truly comes from God is perhaps useful and uplifting and a blessing of some kind.

So then I started wondering about whether in the higher realms there might be some kind of special 'rules' or 'laws' in place which govern this kind of thing, whether I should ask Jesus or God or someone not only IF it's okay to pray for someone, but also what to pray for. It seems at least to make sense to ask for guidance as to what will be helpful, rather than just launch into an ego 'I think this should happen' sort of thing.

Then it started to occur to me that perhaps there is a difference between horizontal and vertical thinking, ie that most of our worries about violating someone's free will are to do with things we would 'do to someone' in a horizontal, ego-logical way, on the level of form and separation... and that perhaps when you go into 'vertical' mode (which is conducive to miracles), you are perhaps transcending that entire scenario... it occurred me to also that everything in this world is basically illusion and part of ego-world laws, and yet in truth, "I am under no laws but God's".

Having spun my wheels around all of this I then turned to Jesus and just asked, why or how is it okay to pray for someone when they haven't asked for it and maybe don't even want it?

In his becoming-increasingly-common fashion, he replied with a single short sentence which cut through absolutely all of the bullshit and confusion like a knife.

"Since when was it a crime to love someone?"

:-)

Praying with God and receiving God's love and extending God's love, which is the 'mechanics' of miracle working, is entirely within the realm of loving people. It's not really 'about' the miracle as such, or the outcome, but really just about loving people. The love that inspires the miracle is important, more than the miracle itself. The miracle is almost a side-effect of love. So with a focus on simply praying as a form of a) thanking God for love, b) receiving love, c) extending love to others, where's the possible harm in that? And if a miracle comes of it, that's fine too... because "miracles are natural expressions of love, when they aren't happening something has gone wrong".

So I focused on love. And I prayed for the person. And I even prayed for the person to receive healing, which may even entail changes in their body. But rather than it seem like an act of control, manipulation, non-acceptance or overstepping boundaries, it simply became an affirmation of truth, an exclamation of the lovability of the person, and a restoration of how God would have things be. In this sense it can only be a blessing. And this made me think of...

"Miracles are the maximal service you can render to another". So if a miracle is the absolute BEST that I can possibly offer to someone, as a natural component of love through prayer, than where is there room in there for doubt or ideas of 'not supposed to' or 'respecting separate will' or whatever. And I guess it boils down to this..... miracles from God's love are ALWAYS a blessing, are ALWAYS welcome, are ALWAYS justified, are ALWAYS allowed (per God's will), and are a kind of 'right' that we each have to bestow upon each other.

We are, in our miracle working, extending God's authority and using that authority to have authority over ILLUSIONS, not so much over the person. The person is NOT the illusion of sickness, the person is NOT the life challenge, the person is NOT what their ego is up to or the lessons they have. So we cannot really do anything TO the person anyway, because they already ARE perfect love in truth. And we are not really in fact healing the real person because the real person needs no healing. All we are doing is calling for love to come in and set a person free from illusions, which is a divine blessing.

Okay so I realize this may sound like potentially a lot of rationalization or justification... but really just clarity. Coming into awareness that we ARE extensions of God's authority, we DO have the ability to give love, Jesus DOES perform miracles as "intercessions for your holiness", and doing this IS allowed and normal and loving, regardless of whether someone asks to be helped or not. Divine help is TRULY HELPFUL. Ego help is the kind of help that has side-effects and boundary-violating properties. There is a difference. Provided we are putting God/Love first, all is well.

It's okay to work miracles for those who are not able to help themselves, and for those who are temporarily weaker, and for those who are temporarily more resistant to love. But you should probably still seek Spiritual guidance as to whether this is in accord with the Plan of Atonement. As Jesus says, indiscriminate miracles are not always helpful, and that you should consult with Him first. I guess that's as good a basis for 'what to do' as any.

It all comes back to that funny old adage ... "what would Jesus do?"

You think death is real, but you quickly forget that everything that ever 'died' is just part of a big DREAM you're having while you're asleep. This world is part of this dream and everything that happens in it is part of a dream.

All wars, all bodies, all old age, all sickness and disease, it's all just part of a giant dream. It's all happening inside a big bubble of unreality where nothing real happens at all.

There is a dream of death, there is imagined death, but there isn't any real death beyond it. Nothing permanent happens here. Nothing has any real effect on anything real. How can a dream affect reality? When bodies in this world 'die', that's still just a fictional event happening inside a giant dream. An imagined death is no death at all. That is why 'death' is reversible within the dream, because it's totally made-up and unreal, and resurrecting inside the dream is also unreal.

Outside of the dream, none of this happens. Outside the dream, you're still completely safe with God, just dreaming of exile and pretending that death is real. The you that is having the dream is completely unaffected by anything that happens inside the dream. You think you are affected as a 'figure' in the dream, while you're dreaming it, but this is just a nightmare that isn't real. The you that is outside the dream is immortal and is not inside the dream at all.

You are just asleep. As the course has said "...sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die." You as immortal spirit can have some sleep and dream about being in a world where people die and bodies suffer, but the entire thing is just a fantasy dream. It isn't real at all. It isn't really happening. And it has absolutely NO EFFECT on God or who you really are, outside the dream. All of the fallout and 'effects' of conflict in the dream, STAY in the dream. None of it touches or affects God or your Real Self whatsoever. God is absolutely unchanged by you being asleep and having a dream of something that isn't happening.

This is why you are immortal. What does it matter how many times fictional bodies die or live or suffer or have health or whatever. None of it is who you are really, none of it has any effect on your REALITY whatsoever, and none of it carries over when you fully awaken from sleeping. Where do dreams go when you awaken? They are recognized as having been just an unreal dream, they no longer exist, and nothing has happened. They didn't 'leak out' into reality and they don't have any side effects. They simply disappear.

You can play around with stuff inside the dream and you can become confused about what is appearing to happen, and you can think it is reality since you're out of touch with reality. You can think that serious stuff happens and that real people really die in horrible ways. You can think that making the body not die is important, and you can think that performing miracles is important. You can value healing over suffering. And you can value death over life. None of it is important at all, it's all an illusion. Everything inside the dream is not reality and anything happening in a DREAM has absolutely no real effects!

This is because the dream itself is just an effect. The dream is not a cause. You are the dreamer, dreaming it, and you are the only cause of it. The dream wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for you dreaming. It ALL comes from you. Every last bit of it. And that means there is NO part of it that comes from anywhere else, and there is NO part of it that has any power to 'cause' other dream-stuff to happen. If you didn't write it into the 'script' of the dream, it cannot happen in the dream! EVERY part of it is your dream and is the EFFECT of you dreaming. As an effect, everything that goes on in the dream is NOT a cause, and HAS NO EFFECT, and therefore CANNOT AFFECT YOUR REAL SELF.

One day you're going to stop dreaming and wake up to reality. And you're simply going to become aware of what REALLY exists, which is you as immortal spirit, being with an immortal God of love, forever. And you will know immediately, that there never has been any death, no wars, no sickness, no struggles or suffering, no problems, nothing. It was all just a really horrendous nightmare dream. And THANK GOD it was just a dream! All that's left is you hanging out with God in eternity, with eternal life, completely unchanged from the condition He created you in, absolutely safe from dreams of death, absolutely unaffected and unchanged. You will know - nothing that seemed to happen in the dream has happened at all. There are no real ghosts, there is no real war, there is no real suffering or sickness, there is no death, and there is no world! The whole world, wasn't real.

All that is left is God's Creation, which is all that really exists. What God Created lives and exists, and what He did not create does not exist.

Nothing real can be threatened. (Reality is unaffected by your dream)

Nothing unreal exists. (Dreams are DREAMS, they don't EXIST!)

Herein lies the peace of God. (God KNOWS there is only immortal reality, and that you are a part of it forever)

You're dreaming. You're dreaming of being inside a dream as a little body-identified self that is also a dream. This isn't reality. Nothing that happens here has any real consequences. It is all perfectly contained and not even really happening. The Kingdom of Heaven is perfectly protected from all illusions, and nothing can prevail against it.

You are safe with God and you always will be. This is why there is no need to be afraid - because there literally is nothing REAL to be afraid of. Everything you are afraid of DOES NOT EXIST and is just a dream/illusion. You need not be afraid because there is ONLY LOVE, and God has ensured your absolute safety in reality forever.

Attempting to take your self closer to the truth in any way, will be met with ego resistance.

The ego itself is nothing, just a "way of looking" which is the opposite to seeing the truth. It distorts everything and makes everything seem the opposite to what it is. It inverts reality. It changes God into death/evil/murderous. It sees Holy Spirit as an enemy. It sees the truth as a threat. And it does not want anything to do with this idea of "waking up and not having an ego."

The ego by itself doesn’t do anything. The problem is that YOU have taken it on AS IF it is your own Self. You regard IT as the same thing as your identity.

What that does is it causes you to perceive WITH it, through it’s eyes. You then will see things the way the ego sees them.

So if you are "tied to" an ego identity which wants absolutely nothing to do with truth, cannot exist in the truth, and sees the truth as proof that it does not exist, then "YOU" will become very threatened by approaching the truth.

If for example the truth says, there is no sin, and the ego believe that sin is real and true, and therefore sin is your *identity*, to your sense of self this will SEEM to say "I do not exist."

Regardless of the fact that you may have sided with an insane ego, you do not RECOGNIZE it is insane. You think it makes perfect sense. It seems logical, sensible, rational. You will also want to defend it as though to do so is defending "your" life, because you think it is you. Therefore it makes sense to you to AVOID the truth at all costs.

The ego sees the truth as attack, vengeance, evil, warring, deadly, hateful, loss, non-existence, etc. If you identify with the ego, you will also see the truth as meaning this.

So then, you will attempt to reach out to the truth, to become closer to God, to go into the light, but because part of you is STILL holding onto the ego and is using it to perceive, that part of you seeing with the ego will think you’re trying to kill yourself.

No-one in their "right mind" would go against what seems sensible and true, and expose themselves to what must be the END of themselves. The truth is the end of the ego, and if you believe it, it means it’s the end of your self. Approaching the truth WITH the ego, pulling it along with you, is nothing short of you SCARING THE CRAP out of yourself by exposing yourself to your worst enemy, complete with no defenses.

This is the sole cause of all ego rebounds and resistance - the mis-perception that welcoming the truth is welcoming your own death. No-one wants to do this. IT seems sensible to protect yourself and defend yourself against this. In spite of your best efforts to "become more spiritual" by opening up to the light of truth, or to love, the rest of you - still perceiving the opposite to the truth, will fear out when you try to do it.

What can even happen is your ego self will create DEFENSES AGAINST THE TRUTH, which it thinks are *needed* in order to protect your "self". Or to put it another way, you who are identified with the ego, interpret the truth as your mortal enemy, and do not want it, are threatened by it and want to "naturally" defend yourself. In the name of preserving your own life, you will erect DEFENSES psychologically.

The only ego defense is *separation*, attempting to create a gap or sense of "distance" between yourself and the threat. Implementing this is an attempt to shut out the truth, by implementing a BLOCK. The purpose of this block is to block your awareness of the threat, because if you are not aware of it, to you this is practically the same experience as though it does not exist. You use DENIAL to hide the perceived danger from yourself, so you can enter an *illusion of safety*. This illusion of safety, this block, made of guilt, shows up as SICKNESS. Sickness is a defense against the truth.

The purpose of sickness then is to defend you against what you think is going to hurt you. But to implement it, you actually HURT YOURSELF. It should be obvious why this is insane. Perceiving your best interests through the filter of the ego is insane, because it shows you the *opposite* of what will actually help you. What would really help you, and what is the UNDOING of sickness, is to correctly perceive WITHOUT the ego, that the truth is NOT a threat or hurtful, is FOR you not against you, is welcome, you want it, and it does NOT mean you will not exist.

When you can perceive correctly that you are not being threatened by the truth, you will UNDO the NEED for the defense, and this will make the sickness *disappear*. Literally. All symptoms will be dropped, because you have no further need for them. Sickness is always serving the PURPOSE of being a defense to keep you safe, even though it does the opposite. Without its purpose, it will not exist because you will withdraw your belief from it.

Essentially, approaching the truth is going to make your ego-identified self threatened. It will want to defend itself and it will be horrified, offended, upset and scared of the truth. This can lead people to BECOME SICK by doing the course. It can also cause peoples lives to turn upside down, as reactions to the misinterpretation of the truth.

Gradually the way to undo this is the development of trust and coming to perceive correctly WITHOUT the ego’s interpretation. This will naturally lead to a WILLINGNESS to accept the atonement, and accept God’s truth as true. And then you will have no resistance whatsoever. It is only your beliefs to the contrary that try to defend you against the truth.

So each time you have an ego rebound, don’t belittle yourself or judge yourself as failing to do the course right. I used to think I was making big mistakes when I had rebounds, like I was guilty for having them. But I had to learn to be gentle and acknowledge what they were saying, recognizing it was a part of my SELF that was afraid and offended by the truth I was opening up to. It’s perfectly okay to take a BREAK from pushing yourself towards the truth, to let your ego settle down a bit, and integrate what you’ve learned so that you can move forward with more willingness and less fear.

There are aspects of the Truth that are just so mind-blowing in how they completely fly in the face of conventional truth. It's like, what they claim is so opposite to what we've been raised to believe, that it just seems so radical and almost difficult to grasp ahold of. A massive weight of contrary opinion seems to scream from all the mouths of the world that it can't be true. Yet it is, and it peeks out from behind the clouds of confusion with a boldness and rightness that just begs for someone to grab ahold of it, side with it and represent it.

The truth is...

The ego does not exist at all.

The physical world does not exist at all.

Nothing has really happened here, it's an illusion of things happening.

There is no such thing as real sin.

There is no such thing as real sickness or death.

Nobody has ever really died because bodies are not real.

You are permanently innocent in God's eyes.

God does not even believe in sin whatsoever.

The entirety of the history of the universe is a made-up story with absolutely no truth to it.

There is no truth in the world whatsoever because it is not real.

You are not a body because the body does not exist at all.

You are immortal and permanently real.

So many voices chime in to claim things which are contrary to this, to sing a song of dire endings and false beginnings. So many are joined in the chorus of death's dirge, exalting the body and worshipping the death of God and His Son. Believing in sickness, perpetuating suffering, making sin real and judging it. And mental illness in everyone who believes in the ego. What a crazy world, if it were real!

Lift yourself up to the light of truth and claim it no matter what the world says and no matter what anyone else believes. Your allegiance must be wholly unto God with no other authority can take His place.

The Son of God invented death.

And the Son of God cannot die.

So whenever there seems to be death, the Son of God must be pretending to die, all the while underneath that He is laughing at how everyone (really other parts of Himself) is falling for believing that it's really happening.

The Son of God loves to play with death like a toy, pretending that it's real, make-believing that it can happen. Yet it is just a performance, just for show, inside His own mind, between Him and Himself, acting as though he is both the performer on the stage and the audience watching.

Nobody can really die. So why do we take it so seriously? It's because we keep falling for our own illusion, our belief that how things appear is how they are. We don't see the Son of God playing at pretending to be dead.

How can an immortal being suffer or die? It's impossible. It has to be fake. There can't be such a thing as real death.

Those who seem to go through with it and leave their bodies seemingly never to return.... well, fooled us... they'll be back in some other disguise you may not recognize. Maybe a Japanese farmer, maybe a tribeswoman in Africa, maybe an American psychopath, or a French truffle collector, who knows.

All this play and pretense that death is possible, deceived by illusions and exploring the many ways to pretend that you can die when you can't. It's a tragic-seeming performance, only when you don't recognize who is doing the acting. It's a starring role, Christ Himself giving the best performance of His life.

And at some point this will all be confessed and admitted to and acknowledged, and then nobody will ever believe again that death was ever really possible, or that anyone has ever really died. And then we (the Son of God in His collective wholeness) will remember to laugh.

1) You already have eternal life because God creates only that which is permanent and lives forever.

2) It is not possible to change eternal life or to bring an end to it.

3) You do have the freedom however to DENY whether you have eternal life by PRETENDING that you don't.

4) Denial of eternal life does not stop it. All it does is it puts you into a mindset of blocking out awareness of the fact that eternal life is still there, causing you to HIDE it from your awareness as if to pretend it is not there.

5) Denial of eternal life shows up as death. It's a fictional attempt to make it SEEM as if eternal life is not true, doesn't exist, or has ended.

6) Death as "denial of life" is not END OF LIFE, it is an illusion PRETENDING that real eternal life can be affected in any way whatsoever.

7) You can become quite accomplished in making it look like you are mortal and can die. But it is fake. And it can therefore be easily reversed, because it has no truth in it. Death is a lie.

8) Given that you already have eternal life and are just pretending otherwise, at some point you might as well stop being in denial and just return to being eternal. Immortality is your natural inheritance.

9) When you stop being in DENIAL of eternal life, you will simply accept it and "live with it" and experience it, allowing it to be your truth without resistance or denial.

10) When you accept the atonement you are accepting the pre-existing truth that you already have eternal life, it cannot be removed, it's always been true of you, and you literally are incapable of really dying. In this, you are accepting that you are immortal and therefore CANNOT die and never did. And in this acceptance, death is recognized as and becomes impossible for you.

Let's start with a simple fact, "an opposite to God does not exist." God is everything, and the opposite of everything is nothing. Nothingness DOES NOT exist. You cannot go there, experience it, live in it, or have it. There is no nothing.

However, in the separation, the tiny mad idea asserted that THERE IS an opposite to God. It was an attempt to believe that you CAN go into a nothingness, experience it as if it exists, and live in it. This produced a fictional world, or "lack of God", which the mind believes really exists. Believing this is obviously a mistake.

So we've now "made a world", whose nature is opposite to God's nature in every way, and which does NOT really exist because it's impossible, but the mind BELIEVES that it does. And whatever you believe in your mind will accept as "reality".

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

This world also comprises planet Earth.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made " .... "and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way"

Every single attribute of God is opposed. Whatever God is NOT, this second world seems to BE. God is possible, the world is impossible. God is permanent, the world is temporary. God is changeless, the world can only change. God is immortal, the world dies. God includes, the world excludes. God loves, the world lacks love. God shares in oneness, the world separates and fragments.

So this sort of "fiction of a world", an assertion that an opposite to God exists, seems to have properties which are totally opposite to God's nature. A world of limitations, suffering, sickness and death. A world of opposition and conflict, of war and attack. This is the physical world, including the Earth and the galaxies etc. It is space and time.

By believing that an opposite to God does exist, we have thus made a world which "depicts" what it might be like IF that opposite really existed. As if nothingness, in all its ways, were something to be experienced. But it is still NOT really total nothingness itself, because that totally does not exist.

"Actual nothingness" WOULD be the total extermination of God and his creations. It would be a complete lack of existence, a total negation of life, an absolute permanent end to creation, and oblivion. We could say that the proper name for that is the idea of "hell." A true opposite to heaven.

One of the things that happens when you oppose God, is you oppose what is true. You make out that what is true is false. You also make out that what is false is true. You take what does not exist and believe it exists. You take what does exist and try to kill it off. As such the true and the false become SWAPPED, which results in total confusion and insanity.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

This total confusion is part of the state of mind of believing in being separate, ie opposite to God. It is a total lack of recognition of what anything actually IS, and so is out of touch with reality, and is therefore insane. This is what comes from the "mad" idea. A mad world in which everything is nonsense.

The mind that believes that separation is possible, is insane. It forms what we call "the ego", which is really just the belief in nothing. A belief in total opposition to God. When mind rejects all truth and asserts everything that's false, it becomes very "twisted". This twistedness is what we might call evil. This belief in God's opposite becomes something along the lines of "satanic" or "devil worship" or "death worship."

"The denial of God is the ego's religion."

Evil is the state of mind in which the truth is completely denied and opposed. A mind that does not want God and sees God as evil. Such a mind is very very confused. It sees death as life, separation as joining, hell as heaven, heaven as hell, conflict as resolution, attack as healing, guilt as forgiveness, and punishment as atonement.

Such a mind is "sick", in every sense of the word. This is extended into what we would call depraved, disgusting, murderous, torturous, manipulative, hateful, vengeful, deceitful, etc. All these characteristics arise from opposing God's nature, leading to a seemingly "evil" sense of identity (lack of) and a completely backwards and distorted attitude. "The evil self I made."

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made."

This ego projects itself ONTO the "believed in" world, the world that was made in an attempt to oppose God. The world is a void and an emptiness and a lack, so it has no inherent meaning. Our mind has to give it meaning. Earth can thus reflect back to us, like a mirror, whatever meaning we GIVE to it, regardless of whether that meaning is unholy or holy.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell, and always as you wish."

When ego, whose nature is THE SAME as the nature of nothingness, and THE SAME as the nature of physical world, projects onto the physical world, it EMPHASIZES and AMPLIFIES its nature. It hones in on separations, differences, appearances, inequalities, conflicts and attacks. It takes sides, pitting one part against another. It reduces identity to physical form ie bodies, and completely shuts out and kind of abstract level of mind.

The ego thus "projects hell" onto the Earth, and then perceives it IN the Earth. Earth itself isn't hell, but it is an illusion of or FORM of hell. It symbolizes hell in its form and function, but isn't inherently anything - good or bad. Ego MAKES it bad or evil, turning it into an experience of hell, psychological hell, by USING it to BELIEVE IN hell.

So the belief in the mind that believes that an opposite to God IS REAL, and does exist, and can be experienced, MAKES an otherwise neutral nothing illusion of a world into what SEEMS to be an actual existing happening world. As such in its view of this world, of Earth, the ego sees the world as actual fact, as true, as a creation, as God, as heaven, as existing, and as really being experienced.

It is this engagement with, investment in, belief in, choosing of, siding with, and USE OF the nothing world, to try to MAKE IT BE something, that converts what would BE nothing into seemingly something. It then takes on "a life of its own", the world is thought to be causal, it is now doing things to you, you are now under attack as part of it, and your whole sense of its reality blots out the mind and God.

Earth is now experienced AS hell. At first merely an empty symbolic image depicting what hell (nothingness, opposite to God) might be like, but then made vivid and meaning what it appears to be, turning it into an actual happening hell, to your mind. Now you are having a nightmare, in which an opposite to God seems to really exist, really happen to you, and really threaten your existence, robbing your peace of mind and disturbing you.

So first we make an illusory empty world which is not really anything but appears to have a form which symbolizes laws opposite to God's, then our mind turns to ego and invests it with reality, making it appear to be a living hell. Identifying AS a body puts you on the battleground, in the midst of war and chaos and conflict of forms. And everything that happens threatens your life, stresses you it, frightens you and seems unfair.

Our mind can in turn transform into thoughts of heaven, wholeness, healing and God's love. It can project this onto the neutral Earth just as the ego did. It can use the neutral Earth for a higher purpose. That higher purpose is to use it to remind you of how an opposite to God cannot exist. This projects God's actual truth onto the "opposite of God", producing a reflection of God seen "in" the world.

This also entails revealing and RECOGNIZING the nature of this world. In this recognition the world is seen only for "what it is", which is an illusion of nothing pretending to be something. It is not seen AS hell, but as a strange hell-like world that you made by mistake in your attempt to bring about God's opposite. It is seen with love, which reflects love in it, but also reveals that such a world cannot exist.

This recognition, which is enlightenment, finally perceives that this world - opposite to God - is not a real hell, real hell does not exist, only heaven exists, only heaven is reflected in it, and no longer do we need it. The world then slips away and fades into nothingness, into the idea of nothing which it came from. The idea of an opposite to God vanishes and the whole world along with it. We wake up in God, knowing as we always have that an opposite to God does not exist, and "heaven is all that remains."

I've recently been diving into doing more physical things than usual. Clearing out old junk. Reorganizing rooms. Throwing out old furniture. Buying and assembling and installing new furniture. Changing layouts. Cleaning. Just lots of physical stuff.

And while I do these things, on the one hand I feel more appreciative of some of the appeal of physical objects. Things look nice. The function better. They have flaws. But at the same time, I am seeing them more as all the same. Instead of seeing individual objects, I'm looking at the laws that drive them, and their sameness. The laws of physics which apply to them all.

Just about everything that happens in the world is more or less driven by physics. Snow melting. Ice forming. Objects falling over. Soup boiling over. Things not staying put. Stuff dropped on the floor from a pile of laundry. Bumping into things. Making food. Cleaning the house. It's all just basically physics interactions. Chemistry, forces and energies and forms and states and so on.

It's becoming part of my forgiveness practice to recognize that almost everything that happens physically is simply what was inevitable, given the states of the objects and the physics that's applying to them. The world is mindless and very automatic in its obedience to the laws of physics. Stuff just does what stuff does. It doesn't do it to specifically spite you, it just blindly follows the rules.

Objects falling off shelves, bumping into things, stuff dropping on the floor, pens rolling off desks, garbage cans getting full, water boiling, leaving the keys somewhere, changes in temperature, fingers trapped in a door, knees banging into table legs, hands cold in the winter, all the just normal everyday stuff. It's all just the laws of physics playing out. It's just part of the system.

It's almost like this whole world is just one big machine, sitting there poised to do what it was always set up to do from the beginning. Which makes everything that happens somewhat inevitable. If enough force is given to an object, it falls off its resting place. It has to because the laws say so. If enough wind blows, the branch will break. If enough impact is made, the window breaks.

In a sense then the world's laws are laws of inevitability, based on the idea of original sin demanding death as punishment. Kind of a system of logic, the laws of chaos are simply sitting there poised for action, waiting for something to trigger them. Then pretty much everything that occurs physically cannot be said to be "personal" as such, it's just stupid matter moving around and doing its thing based on its properties.

So if you slam your hand in the car door, you might swear at the door and kick it in a rage, but the stupid door was totally impersonal in its behavior. The amount of force on the hinges, the degree of rust, the tension in the springs, the amount of wind blowing, the position of the door relative to your body, all colludes to produce a corresponding change in state, and lo and behold your hand is impacted. It's just the system playing out.

If you can recognize then that the whole world is on a kind of autopilot, whenever anything physically happens it's really just yet another case of the world doing what it does. The laws are just governing the particles like they always do. Objects obey the laws so much that it's like they're dead, until the laws tell them to move, then they move, and then the laws tell them to stop and they stop. The world is like kind of a giant graveyard of trash that just sits there until something stirs it up. You can't really hold it against itself, it just follows the rules.

If this is all there is, if this is "life", where we plant certain objects in the garden, where we turn the dial to flip the radio station, where we cook foods and shove them in our bodies, where we walk to and fro mechanically and just about everything that occurs is one object doing something to another, that's not much of an existence. It's more like a lifeless prison.

It also means that death becomes inevitable, because it's basically built into the system. Death itself is part of the laws of the world. The laws of physics determine that there is going to be decay and separation and attack and damage and degradation and lack and sacrifice and suffering, eventually breaking things down until they are rotting in the ground. This isn't "personal", it's just the laws playing out. It's just the system. The machinery of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

If this is all there is, then life is meaningless and pointless and fundamentally cruel. It means life is not life, but a system of death pretending to be life for a while, all the while ensuring that death will eventually come. So then you seem to live a while and pretend you won't die, and then you die. Or as my wife likes to put it, "life sucks and then you die." That's all this world really has to offer, in the big picture.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

There has to be a better way. There has to be something more sane and meaningful and lasting. There has to be a way to be free of all this, to break out of the laws of death. To break the laws of physics. To work miracles which raise you above and beyond the world, beyond the battlefield of attack, and into the celestial order. Only by moving beyond the laws of the world of inevitable death can you be free, and that means you have to surmount death and overcome the world, like Jesus did.

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death."

"A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? "

"We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so. Temptation may recur to others, but never to this One. He has become the risen Son of God. He has overcome death because he has accepted Life."

"To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained."

"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then... I cannot speak of that."

"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer."

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID. "

"In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. "

YOU MADE UP THIS WORLD. IT DOES NOT EXIST. WILL YOU DENY IT?

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts."

"Your mind has the power to create planets."

"My self is ruler of the universe."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."

"There is no world apart from what you wish."

"The world you see is what you have put there to see."

"The world you see does not exist."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."

"If this were the real world God would be cruel."

"Perception selects and makes the world you see."

"The world you see is nothing to do with reality."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"Salvation is no more than the idea that this world is not your home."

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach."

"On confusion this world has been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon."

"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world."

"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel."