Concern about being noticed in public, wanting to hide, feeling anxious etc... stemming from a sense of guilt or shame. You walk around with it believing that people will find out or point it out. You feel exposed by it, as if it is a label that everyone can see and which you must recoil from just as they would. It makes you experience yourself as though you are highly visible, like a red flag with a wailing siren, drawing all attention to what you are ashamed of. It makes you think you stand out like a sore thumb, which makes you afraid of attack or judgement, which makes you hide even more. You feel unsafe, because your shame and guilt have condemned you and now you think it's only a matter of time before punishment comes, which you try to avoid all the time.

You don't have to be ashamed of what you think you did. It is forgivable. Doesn't matter what it is or how serious or dark or twisted. You still deserve love and forgiveness. God still smiles and shines upon you with happy acceptance. You don't have to walk around feeling vulnerable and exposed and afraid of revenge. Stop attacking yourself with it. Its your own belief in your own self-attack that makes you believe in the attacking advances of others. In your innocence you no longer have something about you that you need be concerned about, or self-conscious about, or worried that people will agree with and attack you for. Defenses which hide your self-condemnation doesnt make you feel safe. But in your innocence lies your safety.

In ACIM, there is no real devil. However, he does describe our BELIEF in the separation, or the denial of God, as "the devil". It's like putting a label on our authority problem. Since "the ego is part of your belief about yourself", and its a belief in something opposite to God and Christ, the BELIEF can be said to be "evil". It's a belief IN evil, or an attempt to be "anti-christ".

"An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ which constitutes a gap BETWEEN the Christ and what you see."

"All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His Face like a dark veil which SEEMS to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do." Someone whose mind believes in separation from God, or who denies God, or who wants to overthrow the Kingdom, or who tries to attack the unattackable immortality of God, is in effect trying to be evil. They are becoming "a devil", or have a devilish attitude. This attitude is destructive instead of creative, and it also holds within it all the perspectives and behaviors that we might describe as "evil" in the world.

"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. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

So Jesus is saying that our belief in separation from God, in sin, in death, in illusions, in sickness, in bodies etc, which is really our mental illness ie insanity, is "the devil". Another way of saying that is our egotism is the devil. The ego isn't really a real entity either, any more than the devil is. If you are being egotistical, ie "the ego is the idea of selfishness", which includes beliefs in specialness and so on, then you are effectively TRYING TO be evil. This means you're trying to change yourself from christ into the anti-christ.

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." "Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you. Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to Savior; from the devil into Christ."

In effect, if we deny God and reality, we attempt to turn ourselves into devils. We are trying to oppose the Kingdom, to oppose life, to oppose the truth. The word we'd properly use for that is "evil". But evil isn't REAL, in the big picture. It's a mistaken sense of what is real. It's really a state of insanity in which that which is true is swapped with that which is false. The attributes of nothingness are assigned to God, while life's attributes are assigned to death. Hell is thought to be heaven, and heaven is hell.

This also gives rise to what you might call satanism ie a kind of rebellious attitude against God, which wants nothing to do with God. A system of thought which is seemingly unholy and dark and destructive and vengeful etc. A way of believing that is distorted and sick, giving rise to inhumane and insane ways of relating to others. Ways which you might call evil, or unnatural.

But such minds which seem to be "hell bent" are simply mistaken minds that are mentally ill. They are out of touch with reality. And these are the minds of christs, sons of God, who temporarily believe they are not themselves. You can see here Jesus talking about the devil ... ie our belief in hell and separation and death, in terms somewhat similar to those laid out in christianity.

"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. Yet, he ATTRACTS men rather than repels them, and they are perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all."

All of these aspects are in fact metaphysically sound and in keeping with ACIM's principles. Devilishness is an attempt to oppose God, to use the power of the mind to actively being in combat with God. This produces "the ego" mindset or belief system in which everything unreal and untrue attempts to TEMPT you to believe it is real and true. And thus temptation is part of the evil, just as the belief in sin is.

This "evil" tries to keep you in hell by tempting you to believe it is heaven, ie reality, and that you want it. And therefore it tries to offer you to gain the whole world and thus lose track of your soul. In being unaware of or not remembering who you really are, in insanity, you then "lose your soul". Of course, souls cannot really be lost.

This egotism is a lie, just as the very notion of evil or ego or devil is al ie. They are NOT real, or even possible. But you can BELIEVE things which are false and this believing IS "the devil at work". It is even said for example that if a person is "a sinner", ie is indulging in some kind of unholy belief or action, then this gives "the devil" permission to enter that person and manipulate them.

This is a rather ... storytelling take.... on a simple principle. ie if you BELIEVE sin is real, then you are "being a sinner", and this makes your mind seem unholy, which means you believe in and WANT destructive beliefs. And that means you see yourself as sinful, therefore deserving of punishment and suffering. And indeed this is an invitation to insanity, which could be easily blamed for a whole host of bizarre behaviors which, in less civilized times, would have been likely described as the activities of "demons" or "the devil."

Basically then the devil is your "ego beliefs". It's you being devilish, in your attempts to reject God. It's your way of rebelling by denying reality and moving into insanity. It is indeed a twisted, backwards, self destructive, self harming, suffering-inducing, attacking, seemingly unholy, tormented, dark, hellish nightmare of an experience. Because that's what minds experience when they are out of touch with God.

"Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

So when you deny God, you are rejecting his fatherhood, and therefore rebelling against heaven, and are trying to convince yourself that an opposite to holiness is possible. That evil can exist, or that you can attack or kill, or that suffering and death can happen. These are beliefs in sin being real. That punishment is inevitable.

People who believe in such seemingly evil things, are in effect "sinners". But not in the sense that they are REALLY sinners, because they are really just mistaken. Their mental illness is just confusion about who their father is and who they really are. Anyone in touch with the love of christ in them couldn't possibly believe any of this. Jesus does refer to sinners a little.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"The magic of the world can SEEM to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it IS. For sin is a REQUEST for death, a wish to make this world's foundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself."

"Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to sanity."

"To the world, justice and VENGEANCE are the same, for sinners see justice ONLY as their punishment, perhaps sustained by someone ELSE, but NOT escaped. The laws of sin DEMAND a victim."

"Love is NOT understandable to sinners. BECAUSE they think that justice is SPLIT OFF from love, and stands for something else. And thus is love perceived as weak and vengeance strong."

Being "a sinner" is just a temporary state of being mistaken. And mistakes can be corrected without punishment. This is why sin does not have to be punished, even though the ego/devil would say otherwise.

"We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are. And lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

"No-one is "punished" for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners."

We are not really sinners, but we BELIEVE we are. And that is our attempt to turn ourselves from Christ into the anti-christ or devil. It is an attempt to make an ego of ourselves, to try to replace the soul. And in this belief system we make a world of hell and attack it and destroy it in attempting to enact the wages of sin. Sins that we think we are guilty of that deserve nothing short of death. This is all a mistaken state of mind and nothing more. A simple

insanity that needs healing. And it also means that in the big picture, THERE IS NO EVIL. There is no ego, and there is no devil. There is no sin and there is no death.

"What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

What we call evil is nothing but the seeming LACK of love, or the seeming absence of light. It's just a distortion of mind. It isn't really dark any more than darkness can make light go away. It's just a lack of light. It's just confusion. Those who seem evil are not really evil, but they may seem that way. They are just mistaken. What they believe is not true. And they do believe they are sinners, which is a call for love and forgiveness.

Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.

An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.

Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.

The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."

When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.

Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.

All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.

The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.

When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.

The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.

It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.

The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.

Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.

As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.

The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.

The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.

Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."

Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.

THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).

To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."

Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."

A desire to affirm what is true or spiritual or more positive, can actually be a form of denial.

What you are actually doing is you are trying to make the bad stuff go away, not by its proper undoing, but by glossing over it, replacing it, trying to create an illusion of peace or happiness, or trying to attack it with images of something you prefer.

Years ago this was my only strategy to deal with long-term unhappiness - to try to pull myself out of the mud temporarily and yearn toward the light and try to be positive and look on the bright side and act as if it wasn't there. And then it pulled me right back into it, because I was being a spiritual ego. I was in denial and using denial to try to make stuff go away rather than dealing with it.

So if you are thinking that you just need to repeat what the Course says, or say your favorite quotes, or use certain magical phrases, in an attempt to "deal with" the problem, what you are doing isn't so much correctional as it is a reaction and a way to try to make the bad stuff go away.

It is not our job to make bad stuff go away. This was an ego strategy and it is the ego's attempt at being spiritual. It will try to cover up bad stuff with a glossy surface layer, painting pretty pictures and having positive thoughts and trying to strive towards a happy-go-lucky attitude, all the while keeping depression and self hatred and thoughts of suicide buried underneath.

Dark shit is not healed this way. It doesn't go away, it merely goes out of awareness. The ego's strategy for dealing with anything has always been to make stuff go out of awareness, in an attempt to create the illusion that it no longer exists. This is how it "got rid of God". This is how it denied sin and covered it up with fake guilt instead of undoing it.

This is how it turns guilt into fear and fear into punishment and punishment into death. It uses a form of denial and replaces it with something which looks, on the surface, to be something initially better or more promising or which creates an illusion of things having improved.

But all this does is KEEP the underlying belief, does not correct anything, and in fact makes things worse, because now you have a solid belief in sin covered over with a nice layer of fake innocence, so now you have two layers of problems.

Don't think that denial only looks like denial. Denial takes on whatever form is necessary in order TO deny the truth, and so it is always deceptive in its appearance. It can look like salvation. It can look like peace and light. It can look like becoming more spiritual or being happier. It is the ego's coping mechanism for trying to "deal with" the underling problem in a way which DOES NOT REALLY WORK, but which SEEMS to work.

So if you are trying to combat the bad stuff with quotes and sayings and phrases as if to say these things is getting your mind to believe them more, you are not really directly tackling the problem. You are not looking at the problem squarely and asking yourself, is this even true? Is it even real? Why am I even believing this in the first place? Just assuming it is true and then using denial to make it go away, does not work. At all. Ever.

We come to the course with the ego, and that means we come to it with the ego fully functional in its efforts to cope with life and to manage what it thinks are problems. Its mechanisms for doing this need to be uprooted. If you have always tried to be light and positive and happy while burying your belief in sin and guilt, then you're going to be in for a surprise when someday that 'body of pain' erupts in your mind and cannot be ignored.

When something happens or someone seems to upset us or something goes wrong, if our response to this is to quote course at it or try to be positive or to "see it a different way" (ie see only the good in it, even though we still believe it's happening), then we are using the ego to do the course and are in denial.

Denying what we've already made real does not undo it and this is not forgiveness. Forgiveness is willing to look directly at the dark shit, with truth and light, and examining what it is made of, where it came from, whether there is any real truth or reality to it, and upon recognizing that it is FALSE, letting it go, rather than hiding it.

If your bath is overflowing and there is water all over the floor and it's starting to leak through the floorboards and go all over the place, the solution is not to fetch a magical mop and bucket or to throw down some towels to soak up the water, or to just shut the door and deal with it later. It's to turn off the fricking tap! The problem must be addressed at its CAUSE, its SOURCE, not in terms of its effects or things further down the line.

This is why we have to QUESTION EVERY ASSUMPTION about the ego or about what's seeming to happen. To question even whether it is even really happening at all. To question whether sin is even POSSIBLE, yet alone whether someone sinned. Accepting anything of the ego as a "given" is a mistake, and all of the reactionary band-aids that you use to try to cope with the "effects" of those "real causes" are not going to work. The only thing that will work is to correct the problem at its source by learning to recognize what it is and what it is not.

Physical objects are forms, taking on one form or another, to produce a range of forms. Some of them we call life forms. Others we might call lifeless forms, forms of materials, forms of objects etc.

The body's eyes look at these forms and takes them to be exactly what they are. It looks at the shape, the position, the color, the nature of it, and claims that this is what the form MEANS. It derives meaning from the form based on how the form looks.

A form will then imply something, suggest something, seemingly tell you a truth about itself and its world, as if the form is a cause which has influence and power. And so we look to forms with the body's eyes and ask the form to tell us what the world means.

We see the form of a broken body and we think that this means the body is damaged. We see the form of a puppy and think this means it was recently born and still innocent. We see a rotting apple and think this means death is taking place.

We constantly are sending the body's eyes out to look upon the world, as if the world can then tell us what everything means just by looking at it. If a body is sick we think it means the person is sick. If the body is dead we think life has ended. And we thus allow the world to dictate every sense of meaning.

This has happened, therefore .... that has happened, therefore. ... constantly analysing situations and scenery and coming up with explanations based on what appears in form to be there.

This way of seeing is what we call false perception or unforgiveness. It holds the form against itself and derives meaning from it, suggesting the form is defining meaning from the outside in, telling us a story of truth through perception.

But all we're doing here is failing to overlook the form, we're fixating on differences, emphasising the way one thing is not like another, finding the ways that nothing is shared between them, and trying to elicit meaningfulness from the uniqueness of the objects.

When something then seems to go horribly wrong, there is a severe damage to the body, a car is crashing, a house is on fire, or any other such drama in which form is screaming at us to believe it, if we only look at it based on its form we will be horrified.

Whatever the form dictates we'll take as truth, and will react accordingly. We'll absorb the hierarchy of illusions and have emotional reactions and disturbance based entirely on what the situation appears to be. We can't seem to rest in peace until all the forms have resume their proper arrangement and the bodies have stopped dying and the threats and dangers and pointed spiky things have become blunted.

If all we do is look at the physical world, believing everything we see, not questioning anything, falling for differences and appearances, buying into every little nuance of change and inequality in order to tell what's going on and what it means, we are lost and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as perceiving forms.

Forgiveness asks for an entirely different way of looking at this. It does not mean that you continue to focus on specific, individual, exclusive, separate things, in exactly the same was as before, with the body's eyes, but trying to find some kind of new angle on it. This is not an improvement whatsoever.

Forgiveness actually requires that all the sense of differences, inequalities, uniqueness, shapes, sizes, colors, behaviours, all physical properties, be completely OVERLOOKED, not dwelled upon, not seen, not thought to mean anything, not thought to dictate what the situation is, and no sense of truth whatsoever is derived from them.

Forgiveness must transcend the form entirely and look past it, past all sense of "many separate things" to look for a singular oneness of truth. And that truth is not inherent to those forms, or a part of them, but lies beyond them, because the forms were made to hide the truth entirely and to obscure all meaning. This is why Christ Vision does not become distracted by bodies or forms or the planet and looks past it to the light, to real meaning which lies beyond all objects and all physicality.

When we are buying into the way the world looks, with separate objects vying for attention, objects at war with each other, objects having differences, and being deceived to believe that these differences are important and meaningful, we are not being forgiving. We are being lost in a dream and falling for an illusion.

The appearance of one object seeming to have properties that another object does not have, if regarded as meaning something, is an illusion. It deceives you just by looking at it and not seeing through the disguise. Believing that a bike is not a house and a car is not an airplane, your vision splits apart and separates out and becomes totally fragmented, turning into a hierarchy of illusions instead of a singular vision.

These appearances of different form are all lies and deceptions designed to steer the body's physical sight down a rabbit hole into a dark corner where the mind cannot escape. This is temptation. This is falsely perceiving. This is believing the world is real and that constantly shifting forms and constantly dying objects are somehow the truth.

To forgive we have to find a way to not simply regard "what happens physically" to be in any way true, in any way a whole story, or in any way meaningful. A dark disturbing physical situation should not be seen as dark and disturbing. The darkness and dustrbingness are just properties of its form, the appearance it's taking, and is NOT meaningful.

A bloodied body should not induce feelings of horror and upset, otherwise the form is now acting like a cause and is dictating the truth based on its shape and appearance. A broken body, a disabled body, a suffering person, a scenario of starvation, a warzone, a battlefield, are all deceptive lies in which objects in certain forms suggest that certain things are true, that bad things have happened and that they are real.

Configuraitons of objects are meaningless. The entire physical world is meaningless. Its forms do NOT mean anything at all. Bodies in one state and not another does not mean anything. Sickness in one form or another does not mean anything. Bodies seeming to be alive or dead does not mean anything. These differences are all lies. A change in form from one state to another is utterly meaningless.

Remember that we have given everything all the meaning that we think it has, but typically we're doing this by looking at the form of objects and asking it to dictate TO us what "that" means. One shape means this, another shape means that. If the shape changes, the meaning changes. And then our response to it changes.

What we need to be striving for is a complete ignoring of all forms, all physicality, all objects, looking past it with forgiveness, taking none of it seriously, believing nothing we see through physical sight, ignoring all differences, having absolutely no change of reaction when external circumstances change, and being completely unmoved by the bullshit lies and temptations of the physical world. Not one single thing the physical seems to suggest is true. And nothing that happens physically is really possible in God's reality.

True meaning comes from God and is a singular whole meaning, a consistent unconditional meaning, which does not change or waver. It is the meaning of love and is so genuine and valuable that it is truly meaningful to us. It is all that means anything at all to us, and it's all that we really want. We can look out through this one meaning onto a world of a trillion meanings and disregard all the world's claims as false. Nothing in the world matters and it means nothing.

A teacher of God, a healer, does not consider for a moment the appearances of form, the forms of sickness, the stories of suffering about how this form came about, the family history, the background of what happens or the chain of events. None of it means anything and none of it is a cause. The miraculous mind considers only administering the love and truth that is missing, extending the power of God to fill and erase the gap, ignoring the form entirely.

The forms may change, the body may heal, the world may resurrect, but these too are illusions that ultimately mean nothing. Temporarily they symbolise changes in the mind and perception but ultimately there is no world to mean anything anyway. How can a world which does not exist mean something, and how can the events that transpire mean anything at all? There is no meaning to be found in a meaningless world. Only God's Kingdom of heaven has any meaning at all.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"Therefore, He OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not RECOGNIZE, and does not know if it is there or not. Everything which the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real."

"Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"For form is not enough for meaning"

"The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of MEANING."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain."

"Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"God knows not form. He CANNOT answer you in terms which have no meaning. And YOUR will could not BE satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap which is not there."

"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

We've become proud of what we've learned, we've become proud of our education, proud of what we've accomplished on our own, proud of how we've overcome problems by ourselves, proud of our problem-solving abilities, proud of the development of various other abilitites, proud of the information we've accumulated, proud of the 'success' that we've had as a result of this. And therefore we have become very enamored with ourselves and how SPECIAL and IMPORTANT we've become... But.....

This is all to do with what we did alone, in isolation, separate from Holy Spirit. This is all to do with how we depended on ourselves and a our limited little abilities in place of allowing ours leves to be helped. This is all to do with not being open to guidance and support from Spirit. This is all to do with running the show and playing at being God. This is all an authority problem where we can't accept that God is the authority and that we are what He wants us to be. And really none of this has anything to do with being spiritual or real or honest.

This is all to do with what the ego has to offer you. It's all to do with the ways that the ego deceives you and LURES you down a dark alley. It's all to do with how the ego wants you to get further away from God so that you will not wake up to your TRUE POTENTIAL. It's all to do with how the ego wants you giving IT your power and trusting in IT for success and USING its services to get what you want to happen. The ego is running this world - or it thinks it is anyway.

And so after all this 'filling up' with yourself, your accumulating of abilities and skills and information and prowess, all of that has to come melting down as you relinquish and let go and surrender to a power greater than yourself. You can SHARE IN God's power and use it far more supernaturally than anything you can accomplish on your own. But you cannot posess it and claim "I did this on my own". That's the game that you have to give up. Are you going to be of service to the ego, which is what you're being when you're not of service to God, or are you going to put yourself back into your proper place and role as an extender of God's will?

Thy will not my will be done.

Anyone believing in death or thinks death is inevitable or irreversible needs to read this.

Here is a *FANTASTIC* section of the Course which explicitly details why death is not normal, natural, inevitable, or irreversible. And in fact, that the body can become completely incorruptible when it is free of YOUR attempt to kill it.

It hardly paints a picture of a body which suffers and dies against your will. In fact, it tells us the body can be IMMORTAL AND INVULNERABLE and remain so while it is useful.

I love the opening paragraph about funerals especially!

"The Incorruptible Body

One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself.

You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose.

The body no more dies than it can feel. IT DOES NOTHING. Of itself, it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. IT IS NOTHING. It is the result of a tiny, mad IDEA of corruption, WHICH CAN BE CORRECTED. For God has ANSWERED this insane idea with His Own, an Answer that left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer, and ACCEPTED it. You who are dedicated to the incorruptible, have been given, through YOUR acceptance, the power to RELEASE from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that SEEMS to be the hardest can be accomplished FIRST?

The body can but serve your purpose. As you look upon it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego’s goal. Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they CALL to it, and bid it come to SAVE them from communication. For death is seen as SAFETY, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God’s Answer is its end.

The obstacle of your seeming love for death, which peace must flow across, SEEMS to be very great. For in it lies hidden all the ego’s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego’s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on life Itself. Under the dusty edge of its distorted world, the ego would lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay that God Himself is powerless before the ego’s might, unable to protect the life that He created, against the ego’s savage wish to kill.

My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments, nor twisted rituals of condemnation, to which the BODY leads you. Ask not release of IT. But FREE it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation, you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL?

The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love’s REAL attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union, ready to grow into a mighty force for God, is very near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was GIVEN you. Your new-born purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit, and protected by God Himself. It NEEDS not your protection; it is YOURS. For it is deathless, and within it lies the END of death. What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless?

What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God AND you. In its tiny hands, it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to YOU. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time, but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting-place by your forgiveness of EACH OTHER, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, NOT to the cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life.

When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is ALWAYS for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be CONFUSED with source, for they must STAND FOR something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning CANNOT lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the IDEA which they reflect.

Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One GIVEN you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge FOR you, and say:

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.

Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace,

but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."

"

A Course in miracles does not mention the phrase "unconscious guilt". However, Jesus does teach about it. In fact, the whole course is about removing the BLOCKS TO AWARENESS. A blocked awareness is indicative of UNCONSCIOUSNESS - not being consciously aware of love.

Here for example he refers to "veiling in shadows", things which must be "raised to understanding" (brought back into conscious awareness), in order to make the choice for heaven consciously:

"Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help, and all mistakes in judgement which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

Anything which is a hidden hate, a secret sin, something concealed, any form of denial, all illusions, all forms of sin guilt fear sickness and death, are forms of unconsciousness.

The entire idea of "awakening" is of returning to full conscious awareness, out of a state of semi-consciousness or, in the case of death, unconsciousness. It is also the same thing as the idea of "forgetting".

Here are for example paragraphs from 5 separate chapters talking about unconsciousness...

"These mad beliefs can gain UNCONSCIOUS hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection."

"Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be UNCONSCIOUS but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them."

"Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is UNCONSCIOUS of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something NOT himself."

"He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose upon Him, to re-establish your own will in your consciousness. You have imprisoned it in your UNCONSCIOUS, where it remains available, but cannot help you."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of consciousness. This is a pathetic way of trying not to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

So you can see our unconscious states are quite well discussed in the course and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

There is one test by which you can find out if you have "unconscious stuff". First of all, realize that even if you have some amount of conscious awareness, it does not mean that you do not have an unconscious. When something is unconscious, you LITERALLY are NOT AWARE of it. There can be huge sections of your mind which have been walled off and kept hidden in the dark, which you do not even know are there.

It is the assumption of just about everyone that because you have conscious awareness, you are aware of EVERY part of your mind. This is usually far from the case. The test to determine whether you have an unconscious mind is simple:

If you perceive there is a cause affecting you which has not come from yourself, you have an unconscious mind.

This must be true because the only way you could perceive that something is happening against your will, is by being unaware of the way that you do everything to yourself. The secret to salvation is realizing you do everything to yourself. Therefore, if you are not directly confronted with AWARENESS of the way in which you are CAUSING everything you are experiencing, no matter what form it takes or how it is projected, YOU DO have a part of your mind which is unconscious. And yes, that means pretty much most of us.

It is valuable to realize you have unconsciousness, because you DO need to bring those parts of your mind back into conscious awareness in order for your mind to be FULLY AWARE OF LOVE’S PRESENCE, and to be able to consciously choose heaven. You cannot enter heaven while part of your mind is unconscious.

Typically, most people walking around this planet, believe that they are FULLY aware. When they wake up in the morning, they believe they have woken up fully. They believe that everything they are aware of comprises the sum total of all things that exist. And therefore, whenever they are trying to make sense out of what caused something to happen, they will reference everything they are aware of, trying to make sense out of how this could happen. And since they believe they are fully aware (but are not), they HAVE to find an explanation for what causes thing, usually by blaming it on someone else.

If you are blaming others or the world for causing ANYTHING, it is proof that you do not recognize that YOU are the cause, you did not SEE yourself cause it, and you seem to have asked for something without realizing it. So recognize this, if you are a victim in any way, you are unconscious.

That means there is a whole bunch of information, facts, truth, and content, which has been BLOCKED from your conscious awareness. These are nothing less than blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. These blocks, these barriers of denial which make the mind unconscious, is precicely what we are REQUIRED to UNDO, in order to restore our awareness of God.

But if you are walking the world thinking, you know everything there is to know, and are aware of everything there is to be aware of, and yet stuff is happening to you seemingly against your will, in any way, then YOU ARE IN DENIAL. And that means, you have a portion of mind which is currently NOT CONSCIOUS, which you are not aware you even have. It is tucked away, out of sight, and you don’t even SUSPECT that you have it.

It is vital to uncover these portions of mind and to heal their content. Too many people think that "forgiving" only means taking back projections. This is beause they have no idea that they have unconscious stuff in their mind. They think that they only need to deal with what they are consciously aware of, ie what someone seems to be doing, and to take back that projection.

That’s a fine stepping stone, but if it does not lead to a) removing the denial that made guilt go unconscious (fear), b) removing the denial which made sin go unconscious (guilt), c) removing the denial that made God go unconscious (sin), by bringing all of those into conscious awareness and undoing them, and accepting Atonement, then this is NOT complete forgiveness. It’s scratching the surface, and many people are NOT forgiving fully.

These hidden dark secrets are hidden behind shadows and illusions and layers of denial. Fear for example is made entirely to make guilt unconscious. Fear defends against guilt and protects the guilt. It causes you to fixate on what the fear is being caused by, anywhere other than within, so that you will not look within to see where the fear is really coming from.

All fear has its source in your unconscious belief that you are GUILTY. It has absolutely no other cause. But while you remain unconscious/unaware of that guilt, you will keep trying to make sense of why you are afraid by blaming the cause on something outside of you. And since that is never the cause, it will not provide you with a solution.

Fear has to be recognized as a decoy, an illusion that is nothing more than an effect, not a cause. It is the effect of guilt. Fear is not causing anything because it is only guilt that can cause it. When you can recognize fear as an effect of guilt, the implication as to what caused it automatically will start to give you some breadcrumbs which will bring that guilt back into conscious awareness. Then you can work on undoing the guilt.

Guilt also is a problem because, guilt is not the problem. Guilt actually is another decoy like fear, designed to block and keep sin unconscious. It’s sole purpose is to pretend you did not sin and did not want to sin. It disowns the sin and disassociates from it, projecting blame for it on something or something outside of you. So long as you are feeling sorrowful and guilty and allegedly unworthy of forgiveness, this will block the dishonest fact that YOU DID WANT TO SIN, and that you yourself believe in it. Guilt keeps sin real and prevents you from looking at it. It keeps it out of conscious awareness.

Guilt has to be then recognized as just an effect of sin, and not a cause of anything. It’s bullshit lies of "didn’t mean to do it" has to be seen through. Guilt is fake. It is there solely to stop you from bringing your unconscious belief in sin into awareness. When you can see that guilt is just an effect, and all guilt is caused by a belief in sin, that will help you to bring the sin into conscious awareness. It will resurface as soon as you make the connection of causality that sin caused guilt, therefore behind guilt there is sin lurking there.

Once the belief is sin is in your awareness, it is not going to be pretty. Always look at this stuff with Holy Spirit, because there is some really dark murderous death-wish kind of beliefs tucked way in the unconscious mind. But these beliefs like all the rest are fake. You have to realize then that sin actually is yet another block to awareness. It keeps something out of conscious awareness. Can you guess what it is?

God.

The belief in sin makes God unconscious. Not only is it a belief that God is dead and IS unconscious hisemself, it also shuts awareness of God out of the mind. It can only do this through denial and unwillingness to accept the truth. It is just another block to let go. You must recognize sin is not a cause of anything. Sin is just an effect of a mistaken idea of separation. It has not caused anything, and therefore has not happened. Undoing this will REVEAL GOD to you, consciously.

So you see, we have a LOT of shit that’s just sitting there in the unconscious areas of mind, and yet not exactly inert or inactive. Unconscious self-hate will project outwards and cause all manner of SHIT stuff to "happen to you", and it will seem to come out of nowhere, because you will not see that you asked for it. And so you will think you are just an innocent victim.

This is the big problem. Believing you are "innocent" just because you are not AWARE of the fact that you attacked yourself, is the entire foundation for projecting blame outside of yourself for everything you experience. You won’t be able to ACCEPT that you have done this to yourself, until you can consciously own up to it and actually SEE that you have in fact been the one who did it. To recognize that YOU PUT THERE all of the suffering you are experiencing, including all of your sickness. Until you can own it, you cannot let it go.

Just because you THINK you are innocent right now, on the basis of not being fully aware of your whole mind, is FAKE INNOCENCE. And it is this fake innocence which leads many people to not even suspect that they have unconscious shit to undo. It also leads many to believe they DID NOT CAUSE the shit that happens, which actually is an act of profound irresponsibility. It is this irresponsibility, the disownership of self, that produces all suffering.

Remember that the secret to salvation is that you have done this ALL to yourself. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect. You are to learn you are the CAUSE of everything in the world, not the effect of it. And you can only do that by becoming AWARE consciously that you in fact DO cause things. That means removing the blocks to AWARENESS, which are simply forms of denial which have made you partly UNCONSCIOUS. And extreme denial produces all denial of life, which leads to sickness and death as total unconsciousness.

If you want life, you must become willing to bring this unconscious stuff back into awareness for healing and release. And that’s going to have to mean, taking full responsibility for everything you are experiencing. Otherwise, guaranteed, you will suffer at your own hand without even realizing it. No-one dies without their own consent!!!

"Maybe I am causing this" "I must be responsible for this" "I am doing this to myself" "I am the cause of this" "I must have some unconscious stuff to heal if I seem to be suffering against my will" "There must be something I am not aware of where I am attacking myself" "I need to undo my belief that I sinned by bringing it back into awareness and letting it go."

Remember, "heaven is a choice I must make" - a conscious choice. You cannot have stuff lurking in unconsciousness, otherwise you are in denial, and the beliefs you are denying will make you unwilling to accept the atonement. A healed mind is a wholly conscious mind.

Faith (trust in God) reaches outside of the illusory world and connects to a Source of miracles you may as yet not see or fully understand. But your willingness and openness to even conceive of it, coupled with even a vague belief that it holds truth and reality, is sufficient to establish a psychological "connection" to a higher mind.

Believing there is a possibility beyond the physical laws, or a potential or freedom that transcends appearances, is the same thing as believing a Higher Power and disbelieving that the ego's laws have complete power over what happens.

Even if you can't see God or Jesus, or you are not even sure if they really exist, if you have even a little willingness - which is all the Course asks us to have - this is an invitation to the Holy Spirit. It's not just a little willingness to be mistaken, but a willingness to be open to a source of healing and truth which is more true than how things currently appear.

This works both in the areas of healing your illusory mistaken perceptions, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to correct your mind, but also in the grander area of the entire illusion, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to perform demonstrations of miracles through you for others.

Your mind has the ability to open itself to connect to a Source of miracles even if the majority of the mind is still in the dark. If there is enough of a "leap of faith", this will create a pipeline across which the Power of God can flow. You are able to them become a conduit for the Holy Spirit to work through you, in spite of you having a large body of delusions of your own that need to as yet be corrected.

Reaching outside the illusory world to join with God is all that it takes. Some measure of belief in the real truth. Many people just don't as yet realize that it is as easy as this, and so don't act in the role of extender of God's love through miracle working. You may not realize that you really only need to have some faith/trust and believe in the truth in order to now be a vessel for Holy Spirit to flow through.

A vast majority of miracles performed in the world today are performed by students of whatever spiritual system, students who are still "in process" of awakening and who are still learning about the truth. They do not need to be completely purified in order for such miracles to work through them, if they have willingess to allow Holy Spirit to "use them" and work with them.

Some trust in God is all it takes, a little willingness to accept that God's truth is true.