You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

This pretty much explains why you have the freedom to deny God.

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. 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.

You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack HIMSELF, and God is not insane. When you denied HIM, you WERE insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's Creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HIMSELF to you in your Creation, and His gifts ARE eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?"

Note also that "separation" as in the theoretical idea that you CAN BE separate (which is impossible), is totally different from "THE separation", which is another name for the fall of man, the tiny mad idea. We DID in fact have the idea, we DID believe it, and we DID "fall". This is why there appears to be a facebook. BUT, the fall is not actual real separation, it's just belief in it and a denial that actual separation is impossible.

"The Separation (not ACTUAL separation, but the state of believing it's possible) HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

So we did have the tiny mad idea, we did go into it through belief (which is really denial), and we did find ourselves in a "lower order reality". But this state in which we SEEM separate is not ACTUAL separation or real separation, which is impossible. It's just us MISTAKEDLY believing that it's possible and happening.

THE separation, the fall from Heaven, did occur. But it was not an actual separation.

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. "

The failure to communicate (to receive, to give equally), resulted in a state of denial, not listening, being unaware of perfection, a breakdown in the experience of oneness. It did not change anything perfect, it just closed the communication channels to a degree.

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened.""

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

"Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception.

Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam". While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anaesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor."

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer.

The fruit of only ONE tree was "forbidden" to man in his symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it, or it could not have BEEN eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?"

"Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the "self concept," a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself."

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior."

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.

In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:

First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him.

These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.

To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

So you see, we are IN a state of sleep, dreaming, denying, pretending not to be as God created us, imagining things are true which are not, being unwilling, and trying to give it reality through belief. But none of it is true, or really happening, what it represents (an actual separation) is fictional, and it's just an illusion masquerading as a separation.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

I asked Jesus some questions about "the script", what it is, how it works, what freedom we have, etc.

He pulled together information from all over the Course in ways I would have never imagined. Here are the key points.

1) Scripts, as sequences of events or arrangements to meet, set up in what seems to be "before" incarnation but which is somewhat in parallel to it, are better described as "templates". They are frameworks which present lessons which you may, or may not, learn from.

2) You ALWAYS have the freedom to choose WHEN you will take the curriculum. You can deny it, you can avoid it, you can prolong suffering, you can fail temporarily to learn a lesson, and then it will be presented at a later date. That means you are not 100% "locked in" to being "forced to wake up" against your will just because it's written into some kind of premeditated sequence of events.

3) YOUR MIND has to choose when it will awaken. Awakening cannot be forced upon it, and the script cannot MAKE the awakening happen, because you have to wake up FROM scripts. The scripts can only contain an exit point, a doorway, through which you must still willingly walk by free will.

4) The Holy Spirit's script is also referred to as the curriculum, and it is considered Holy. The curriculum means that the truth is OFFERED, just as love is always offered, but it is up to you when you will accept it. You can choose to delay accepting it. But sooner or later you will accept it, depending on how much tolerance for pain you have or how much willingness to elect to give.

5) In the Holy Spirit's curriculum, all events are planned by Him in general. This is also referred to as the "plan of atonement", which Jesus is in charge of, and which you are to become a PART of. This is reflected upon here: "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

6) The Holy Spirit came into the dream in a sense, with us, "this world has two makers" and reorganized what we made in order to GUARANTEE that we would eventually return to God. Thus events and life situations and people you meet ("those who are to meet will meet"), and the general themes of your life, and certain things you have chosen to "work on" in this life, are presented at the appropriate time when learning is optimally possible.

7) Challenges and what seems at first to be difficult situations or lessons, are only difficult due to what has NOT been learned yet, and present an opportunity to change what you believe, when seen correctly and accepted as helpful. When the lesson is not accepted or learned but resisted, now you are into the ego's script. What that means is, you are now choosing to interpret the world using the ego and plan or enforce selective attitudes about the world which influence your perception and adjust your experiences in isolated ways. Since the ego thought system generally leads towards death, participating in this way of being puts you "under tyrannical rule" and you now become sort of "subject to" the consequences of that decision. Not because you are forced to, but because you choose to.

8) Because those who are to meet will meet, the manual for teachers talks about 3 types of relationships, short term, mid-term, and long-term, depending on how much learning is possible, whereby the long-term ones are the ideal balance of teaching and learning for both involved, such that a great deal of progress can be made over a long time period without destroying each other.

9) Within the scope of the "template" of your life, there is room to maneuver. Because you have free will and can choose whether to learn or not, there MUST be some degree of freedom of mind not just to manipulate your perceptions or thoughts but also your actions, because your actions stem from your thoughts and beliefs. While "people who meet" may be scripted, and while certain properties of those people or why those people were chosen is scripted, to present an "opportunity", the fine details of how you interact and physically move and what you do in situations or whether you are willing to change, is up to you.

10) You are not locked into a rollercoaster ride which forces awakening upon you or enforces that you will learn a lesson or implements experience into your mind. Lessons are PRESENTED, but it is up to you how you USE them. We should not concern ourselves with being so locked into some kind of pre-recorded "movie of time" as to think there is no flexibility of outcome or that you "must succeed" in that sense. What makes you succeed is the Holy Spirit's infinite patience in presenting further lifetimes as needed until you are finished resisting the truth, by your free will.

11) You decide on what your script for your lifetime will be before you incarnate into it. You decide which family to choose, the type of body, your name, your astrological background, how your brain will function, any special bodily conditions you might be "born with" or manifest early, any scenarios which will arise, who you will meet and when, what lessons/trials you will be exposed to, and so on. Sometimes people's life lessons turn out to be too strong and the person is allowed to "die early" in order to "rest" between lifetimes. Love is compassionate not cruel. It's like we're all people with mental illness who are gradually going through a healing process and there is give and take and always a gentleness in terms of "mercy" from God about what you can tolerate.

12) There is some truth to the idea that God only gives you lessons you can handle, although this speaks more to the script you chose knowing what it would likely entail and also knowing the long-term outcome if you were to be successful at learning from it. Since you know, when not incarnate, the long-term goal of being with God, and can see sense in "whatever it takes to get there", you are WILLING to expose yourself to all manner of positive and negative situations AS NEEDED in order to awaken. What seems like short-term suffering can ultimately be a blessing in the long-term plan.

13) In the biggest possible picture, there never was a real separation or any real time. However our belief in it made it seem real to us, which is why we "need" these "scripts" to help us learn that it is not so. We wrote the need for the scripts, the Holy Spirit provided the curriculum for the correction. That means we wrote a script with the ego for what we wanted to be true, and Holy Spirit wrote a counter-script of lessons and learning which would lead us back to what is really true. The time you elect to LEARN His curriculum is up to you. No-one is forcing you to be awake and no-one is keeping you asleep.

14) Ultimately free will is only free when it is embracing freedom which means embracing God's Will. It is free in Heaven. It is free to willingly choose to agree with God's will and to extend it in joy and love. That is why it was given you, that you would share and increase it. When you will against yourself/God, you are trying to NOT will, which renders your will ineffectual, and stops your will. Thus your will seems to become powerless and you turn to wishful thinking which produces no effects. As you regain your power and your will becomes more whole, you become stronger in the truth and more miraculous, and more able to consciously will whatever you want to happen. Ultimately you can master this to the point where EVEN in this world, what you desire happens and what you do not desire does not happen. At that point, you do not need corrective scripts because you are not writing ego scripts.

15) While from a high vantage point it seems all of time was "written" at once, or all possible moments of time were expressed simultaneously, they were organized by the Holy Spirit into a linear sequence NOT as an ego creation but as part of His plan of atonement, in order to USE TIME for the purpose of learning, and when time's usefulness for leaning is done, it will be UNMADE. Our ego self perceives time as linear in an attempt to believe in appearances, but time is not inherently linear.

16) From a high vantage point, the time that you began dreaming and the time that time began and the time that you stop dreaming and the time that time ends, are all essentially seen as happening at once. Dreaming began and God answered it with the Holy Spirit who has already succeeded in undoing it all. We are guaranteed to return to God because God's Answer is perfect and cannot fail. That doesn't mean that "in time" our experience will be as if all of time's events or sequence is pre-written. There is some flexibility built-in. There are multiple "dimensions" to time, parallel timelines, and you can skip between slices of time depending on your willingness to awaken. Nor does it mean that within each slice of time there are only certain pre-scripted actions you can make. YOUR MIND HAS FREE WILL and it can choose to ignore the script if it wants to. That's why the time you take Holy Spirit's curriculum is voluntary. Ultimately, one way or another, from the highest perspective, "all paths lead to God", and Holy Spirit has ensured that they will.

17) Miracles are the only means at your disposal for controlling time. Also miracles entail a shift into vertical perception which positions you and the person you heal further along in time than you were, having skipped an interval. This tells you that since miracles happen within the world `in time`, that they are capable of manipulating time and thus essentially take you out of the script. Ultimately they lead to revelation and atonement, because they are the means of the atonement, and so miracles must be performed in order to receive and give and share the truth, to have it.

That's all for now.

Read this carefully from ACIM.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

These are Jesus's words. They are correct. It does not say that impossible separation from God has been made possible. It does not say that we in fact DID separate from God. It says that something called "the separation" HAS happened. There is a major difference between THE separation, and the general impossible potential for actual separation.

There is a very popular myth in ACIM circles that we're supposed to just assert that "nothing happened." Jesus is saying this is NOT appropriate and is a misuse of denial. Did you ever notice that for example you actually are having SOME KIND of experience of a world, a world in which you have a body, you type posts on facebook, you respond to people and so on? Technically speaking if these "things" were UTTERLY impossible, in the strictest sense, there is no way that you would even be able to dream of them happening. You wouldn't be ABLE to sit there right now reading these words, whether they're real or not.

There is a view of many people that the separation - confused with separation in general - did NOT happen, and therefore the logical conclusion is that "there is no facebook". This is CLEARLY A DENIAL. It makes no sense at all. It does not explain how it is clearly obviously possible for there to be some kind of a facebook, some kind of a body, some kind of a physical life.

No-one who believes that "it never happened" has ever been able to satisfactorily explain HOW ITS POSSIBLE that we can be sitting here typing little text messages to each other. They don't have an explanation because they believe we're supposed to just sort of turn a blind eye to all this stuff, slap a label of "not real" on it, PRETEND ITS NOT THERE (denial), and carry on trying to assert its unreality.

Jesus is telling you that this is a MISUSE OF DENIAL. Because in fact, per his words, "THE SEPARATION HAS OCCURRED." This isn't a real separation, it is fictional. But a fictional separation HAS occurred. A belief in, a dream of, an illusion of, an impossible separation, HAS occurred in thought, in the mind. It HAS in fact produced a whole other "order of thought" in the mind.

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."

Read it carefully. The separation is NOT symbolic. Jesus says it is an ORDER OF REALITY. And that while it "lasts" ie in time, it is PERFECTLY REAL. This is NOT something that most ACIM students are very happy about, do not want to admit to, and will run away from at high speed. It seems to fly in the face of what so many people are saying, that "it never happened". Well, if it could not have possibly happened in ANY WAY, you literally would not be reading these words right now. And you are. Whether its a dream or an hallucination it doesn't matter, you ARE reading.

In the separation we did in fact produce a second order of thought and gave it a sense of reality. "Whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you." It doesn't mean it is ULTIMATELY real, or that it really has permanent existence. It is truly an illusion of a possibility. But Jesus is clear the mind is perfectly equipped to sleep and to dream. These are NATURAL CAPABILITIES.

In fact, God gave our minds free will. And part of that TOTAL FREEDOM, is that you can freely try to use your mind to deny its own freedom. Yes, you have that freedom. It doesn't mean that anything real or possible can necessarily come from it, and it hasn't, but you CAN TRY TO. And when you do try to, your mind DOES SEEM to go to sleep, entering a state in which it dreams. This is entirely WITHIN THE LAWS OF GOD.

"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."

This means God has given you the POTENTIAL, the freedom, to choose, per your own free will, whether to accept reality or not. You are CAPABLE of denying reality. This denial doesn't remove reality because denial is a pretense that you're doing something impossible. But while you are IN denial, your mind IS in a certain state. You ARE IN "the separation." This is why we DID produce a state of mind which Jesus refers to as "the separation". We DID have a mad idea, we DID fall asleep, we DID dream of spacetime, and we DID make bodies and facetime.

Denying any of this is not in line with the course. This isn't to say that these things we dream of are ultimately real, but they ARE real to the dreamer. They don't have permanence because they are denials of permanence, making them temporary, and reversible. But while they are HAPPENING, while the mind IS sleeping and dreaming, we ARE in fact CAUSING the mis-creation, the production, of states of mind, which entail a denial of reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In order to return TO ultimate reality, the denial has to be undone. But the denial is, itself, an actual state of mind. It's something you're holding in your thought. You are having a dream of being separate. "You are safe in God, dreaming of exile". It is not helpful to claim that you are NOT DREAMING. "you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy."

Jesus does not really ask that we "deny the dream is real" while STILL dreaming it. Because this is an false denial. The proper denial should END dreaming entirely. If you are still dreaming, then you are still giving reality to an order of thought.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

This order of reality is being maintained by the mind and it HAS some reality while it is being maintained. That is why the world seems real. It is a kind of subjective reality but it's still a reality. Jesus asks us instead to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE HAS BEEN A SUBJECTIVE SEPARATION - at least a state of denial and belief, a state of TRYING to oppose God - and that we must admit to this before we can heal it.

"However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

He doesn't say "just assert that it never happened." He doesn't say "just assert that separation is impossible." He says that you are supposed to ACCEPT THE ERROR TEMPORARILY, to acknowledge that your mind is in an unnatural state, so that you can change your mind into a more natural state. Eventually the unnatural state will diminish and be replaced by, or reveal, a more natural state. And by CHANGING YOUR MIND, which is always your freedom, you can revert it back to the service of spirit.

Remember that "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

We HAVE chosen poorly, we HAVE used psychic mechanisms - mind power - thought and belief - to mis-create an illusory world. We did not create a NOTHING. We mis-created a distortion of reality. That HAS happened. But it can be undone. This far more accurately acknowledges your ACTUAL EXPERIENCE that you drive a car and eat food and go to the bathroom. There is SOME reality to this, some possibility to this, otherwise you literally could not even dream of it.

The dream is not nothing, it is a way of thinking that's out of alignment with God's will. That's why we NEED atonement. "Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you NEED Atonement BECAUSE you have DONE something loveless because you WILLED without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its CREATION."

So Jesus is really saying that we did in fact enter a state of mind in which the mind does in fact experience strange illusory worlds as if they are real. A state of insanity. And we have given reality to this and it HAS SOME reality. It is relatively real, but not absolutely real. And because of this entering into a freely-chosen state of denial, a legitimate mind-state that is POSSIBLE because you have the freedom to try to deny your freedom - we DID in fact experience a "separate from God" - the fall of man.

And now we find ourselves in a mental state that NEEDS correction. There is a legitimate NEED for atonement, and we NEED to change our mind by free will in order to return to the acceptance of God's reality as the only reality that truly makes sense. A movement out of a state of sleep and denial, into a state of awakening and acceptance.

That's why the Holy Spirit was created, to guide us out of a state that we are PERFECTLY FREE TO ENTER, but which does not resonate well with our true nature, and so brings experiences of suffering. The atonement legitimately offers correction for this and restores the mind to a more natural functioning. It's not enough to just say "oh it never happened." You HAVE used your freedom and your power to choose something unnatural, and you DO need to choose again.

You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM

How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?

One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?

Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.

In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.

This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.

To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.

So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.

You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.

God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.

When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.

So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.

Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.

Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.

if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.

"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.

Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.

True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.

Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.

You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.

God has a nature and a power to express that nature. It is automatic to him to express what he is, to uphold his own nature and to extend it. He is willing to do this because it is natural to him. And because he has absolute power, his will has no opposition and is immediate.

When God will's something, it is done. There is no uncertainty or delay. He wills it, it is so forever. Also since God is eternal, what he wills is always there and his mind maintains it forever. It's kind of like a permanent endless expression.

In reality, God wills the creation of living beings, who share everything in the sonship. His will comes from his own nature, in terms of what he is naturally open to, capable of, able to do, and so on. God expresses himself with his unlimited causal power, and creation occurs.

His will extends his being and his nature. His nature is innocence, holiness, immortality, wholeness, peace, love, light, happiness, joy, power, perfection, permanence, etc. So when he expresses his will, ie what he is and wants, these are what come from him. He gives himself.

God wills that you exist as an eternal soul. Therefore, it is done. There is no question in this. It is always and forever permanently fact. This means that you are what God wills, and God has willed you into being. You therefore represent and are what he wills, meaning you are now an extension of his will. You are what he wants AND you are now capable of expressing what he wants.

This puts you in a position of sharing his will, because now the nature of himself has been given to you through your creations. You now share a similar nature to him and are like him. So, naturally, you now will - or are open to and support and want - the same kind of stuff that he wants - happiness, love, eternal life, peace, joy, power, etc.

You are now able to will in alignment and accord with God's will, to create with him and like him, along with him, as a co-creator in harmony and collaboration. Just by merely being yourself as God created you, you are "doing his will". Just by creating with him, you are doing his will.

God simply wills to give you ... to create you, as a blessing to everyone, and for you to continue the giving through your creating and sharing, so that God is continuing to give and create endlessly. You are a kind of medium through which his will expresses forever. As such, your function is to co-create with him and to share in and give what you have received.

Simply by being your natural real self as you are in heaven, you are doing God's will. For example God wills that you be happy, so when you are being true to yourself, knowing yourself, you are happy, because you know you are with God and are perfect. What God wills for you, or wants for you, is simply what he already gave you in your creation.

It's not like God's will hasn't finished being done yet. God completely willed you into being and willed that you be exactly all of what he wanted you to be. It is finished. So now you are the fulfillment of his will. And yet because this is open-ended, you now continue to will with him and like him in support of and gratitude for what you have received, so that his will can be done again.

So it's not like God's will is that you buy a car, or God's will is that you move to a new city, or God's will is that your enemies are conquered. It's more that, God's will is for you to exist in your natural condition. To be the will that God already willed. And in fact, it's more like you cannot NOT be God's will, because his will is already done. He already willed in your creation and you're already automatically doing it.

When you deny God or block awareness of reality or try to attack your immortality or pretend to be a victim etc, you are not doing God's will. You are in a mode of unwillingness, in which you're trying to use your free will to will against itself, to will nothing or to will death/ends/destruction. If you move your mind and body toward death you are not doing his will, because he wills there be life. This is why Jesus says that people at a funeral are not doing God's will.

"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."

God wills that there be only life, and that life be eternal. When a person is pretending that death is possible and is portraying this by using the body for attack, thus rendering it harmed and seemingly symbolizing death, they are opposing God's will. God wills life and resurrection and healing and permanent existence. God wills endless happiness and freedom and perfection and joy. God wills that you live forever.

Sometimes ACIM speaks of you doing God's will on earth as it is in heaven. This means that you are honoring what God wills in heaven, psychologically, and are using the body to symbolize that as closely as possible while you're in the world. That means that you're using miracles for healing and resurrection, that you're giving life and bestowing love, that you're making happy, and that you're being as true to heavenly relationship as possible. "The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

So what this means is that you can be the reflection of heaven's laws, God's nature, the condition of your true self/soul, here on earth in a body, temporarily, symbolizing how you would be in heaven. When you are "doing God's will" on earth it's again not so much about certain activities as it is about the quality and contents of your mind, whether you are in alignment with the nature of God or not. Although that said, the Holy Spirit can and will direct you specifically as well. And you can be truly helpful.

To "do God's will" then is simply a matter of being God-like. Aligning your willingness to the nature of reality, accepting atonement, being forgiving/loving, adopting miracle mindedness and using creative miracles for healing and resurrection, sharing the Holy Spirit's goal of eternal life, and being happy. If you are unhappy or are suffering in any way, you are essentially trying not to do God's will, because God does not will that you suffer.

This also entails honoring and respecting the freedom of will that is present in all your heavenly brothers, even while they are in bodies. Freedom and willingness are aspects of free will, everyone has it, and therefore you have to respect the freedom everyone has to both do God's will and to be unwilling if they so choose.

"I cannot will what God does not will. I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you."

To be "still as God created you" and thus to perform your natural function, which in heaven is creation and on earth is healing, is to do God's will. God's will is not pending, or not done yet. God's will is already completed. Creation has occurred. You exist to share and extend it.

On earth you can reflect temporarily that which, by God's nature, is really permanent. The body can symbolize eternal life, and the mind can raise the dead through miracles. To return to eternal life is to return to the will of God. And it is God's will that you live forever.

"Oh my children, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete! And what He wills HAS happened, for it was ALWAYS true."

"But I CAN tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for YOU, and what He wills for you IS yours."

"I want all of Heaven and only Heaven, as God wills me to have."

"THE WILL OF GOD CAN FAIL IN NOTHING. Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you. "

"They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you."

"It MUST have been accepted by the Son of God, for what God wills for him, he MUST receive. For God wills not, apart from him."

"We will be told exactly what God wills for us each time there is a choice to make."

"Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you."

"God's messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who wi

ll accept their Father's gifts as theirs." "And, being IN ACCORD with what God wills, he HAS the power to heal and bless all those he looks on with the grace of God upon his sight."

"God wills you perfect happiness NOW."

"Instead, accept His answer, for He KNOWS you are worthy of everything God wills FOR you."

"Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened."

"God wills NO-ONE suffer. He does not will ANYONE to suffer for a wrong decision you have made, including YOURSELF."

"Only you can limit your creative power, but God wills to release it. He no more wills you to deprive yourselves of YOUR creations than He wills to deprive Himself of His."

"Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love."

"For what God wills is whole, and part of Him BECAUSE His Will is One."

"YOU STILL WILL WHAT GOD WILLS, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in his purpose."

"God wills you learn what always has been true. That he created you as part of Him, and this must still be true BECAUSE ideas leave not their source."

I received this inspired definition of what A Course in Miracles is today.

A Course in Miracles says it is a "required course", that you do not have any option on whether or not to take it, and that only the time that you take it is voluntary. It says there is a curriculum which you must follow which you do not have any say in defining, meaning there are no other curriculums.

This is a point of much controversy and misunderstanding. But Jesus is telling the truth.

The "Course", if you will, the actual Course that Jesus is referring to in the book "A Course in Miracles", is not a Course that exists AS the book, but the book is REFERRING to the Course.

The Course, the one curriculum, is referring to every metaphysical truth and every metaphysical step which must at some point be taken in order to return to God. This applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There are no exceptions or options. It doesn't matter who you are, what religion you belong to, what you believe, you do NOT have a say in determining what the metaphysics of existence is, how it operates, what the laws are, or how you are meant to function.

There IS only one truth. And from that One Truth, following the separation, extends all of the metaphysical levels and layers and facts, which are on an absolutely colossal scale in the trans-personal, trans-temporal mind of the One Son of God. The structural composition of the levels of mind, the stages of separation, the steps that you have to go through in order to fall asleep, the things you MUST experience if you take those steps, are all absolutely irrefutable FACTS. There is a "WAY", there is only ONE way, and it is this one way that Jesus has labelled "A Course in Miracles".

Stop right there before you associate the book form with what the Course is. Jesus, outside of the book, is referring to the metaphysical structure of reality and the illusion and everything that can possibly take place in it, the "true nature" of existence, and in His book titled "A Course in Miracles" He has chosen to NAME that experiential metaphysical structure "the curriculum." There is no room for bending the rules or breaking the laws of the curriculum.

As a result of choosing separation, certain things came into existence which have a certain structure, a certain behavior, a certain inter-relationship with each other, and it is all entirely based on metaphysical facts. Everything that seemed to happen after the separation happened according to completely clear-cut causes and effects. Basically, by choosing ego, you MUST experience very exact "effects", and it is only by reversing those exact effects that you can be free of the ego. You took 3 steps forward, you MUST take 3 steps back.

Therefore there IS only one real curriculum. Either you are moving away from God or toward God. Movements toward God are the curriculum. This applies to everyone in all walks of life regardless of whether they heard of "A Course in Miracles" or not. In a way, though, Jesus has associated the term with the curriculum, because at the beginning He says:

"This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required Course."

Therefore Jesus is really referring to the one universal curriculum, the one universal metaphysics, and the steps required in order to follow the curriculum, as "A Course in Miracles". Not the book per se. The metaphysical structure of the dream and all of its levels and layers and facts and side-effects is all what defines the fixed curriculum, and taking a "course" in that, is the "Course in Miracles".

It is called a Course in MIRACLES because if you take an actual step in following the curriculum, making actual metaphysical progress in awakening, no matter what belief system you are surrounding those steps with, you are performing miracles. Corrections of mind.

It must be true that you are ALWAYS inside of the curriculum, you are always taking the curriculum, and you are alway bound by its rules. However, the option you have is whether or not to LEARN, i.e. take the curriculum, and so you are free to choose WHEN to learn it, i.e. when to take the next steps toward God. You do not get to choose what those steps are because they are based on the metaphysics. You can continue to be in DENIAL of this truth, which is an attempt to not take the curriculum, but you cannot CHANGE this truth, and sooner or later you MUST take it.

The curriculum therefore exists outside of the "book" of the Course, and applies in ALL belief systems at all times. There is only one "real" path to God. There are corrections necessary in order to awaken to the one truth. Whatever so-called path you are using, even if you never heard of A Course in Miracles, it MUST contain at least some metaphysical truth IF it is going to WORK at all. If it is not in alignment with the metaphysical truth and if it does not advance you along the ONE curriculum, then it CANNOT work.

Also different belief systems and religions either make the metaphysical truth clear, or obscure it, to varying degrees. Some belief systems obscure more than others and may obscure heavily. For example, satanism most likely is going to be very effective at denying the curriculum and electing "not to take it yet". Similarly there are many other delaying maneuvers.

However, what we see as the BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", the FORMAT it takes, and the way it describes the metaphysical truth, is perhaps one of, if not THE, most effective, clear, inspired, ACCURATE, least obscuring, and maximally EFFICIENT formats on the planet today. It can save significant time, because it very closely aligns to the one curriculum, and very effectively teaches about what the metaphysical truth is.

The BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", is piggybacking, or describing, the "real course", which is the curriculum, which is experiential and applies to everyone at all times. The book itself is not necessarily "required" to be read or followed in order to awaken. HOWEVER, whatever FORM of a path you choose, whatever the belief system, whatever theology, it MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* correspond to the metaphysical truth taught in A Course in Miracles if it is going to WORK at all, and if it does not, it will NOT work and will only delay your awakening by producing more delusions.

You can wake up to the ONE TRUTH, through many many many paths. In fact, "all paths lead to God" is true because even the most obscure, highly delaying, extremely denying paths still have at least some amount of the curriculum applying to them, still present lessons, still offers the truth in some small way, and is still governed by the same ONE metaphysical system.

For example, Christianity's interpretation of the metaphysics is correct in some areas and a little off in others. It is correct that there is One God, and that Christ is God's One Son. It is also true that as Jesus (as Christ) said, He is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Not one of many. THE ONLY ONE. And it is also true that no-one can come to the father but by Him. HOWEVER, Christianity is mistaken in its claim that this means you are forever separate and non-equal with Christ, that other FORMS of paths to God are wrong, that the Christian religion is the only "way" to God, and that all other paths are evil. That's not true.

Christianity CAN be an effective path to awakening and to becoming equal with Christ, but in many many of its flavors and interpretations, it is riddled with a heavy weight of delusion, illusion, confusion, and deception, which masquerade as truth but actually are part of the delaying maneuvers which attempt to PUT OFF the true curriculum. The only way Christianity can WORK is when it is in correct alignment with the truth that has been described in the book "A Course in Miracles", and is following the ONE CURRICULUM which Jesus has basically named "A Course in Miracles" (beyond the book).

Effectively that means that anyone who takes the Christian path (or any other religion or system), CAN ONLY wake up to the truth IF they have actually either inadvertently or on purpose taken the One Curriculum, which IS actually A Course in Miracles. Remember that Jesus begins the Course with "This is a course in miracles. It is a required Course." He goes on to say this is the only curriculum and that you do not have an option about what the curriculum entails. That means, if you woke up "through" Christianity, you actually DID take A Course in Miracles - the metaphysical, experiential, spiritually corrective path back to God, which is present in EVERYONE's mind and MUST be followed in order to return to God.

In this respect, A Course in Miracles, the one true curriculum, IS the only way to God, it IS the way that Jesus is referring to that HE woke up to being Christ, it IS the way that Buddha woke up, it IS the way that any other ascended master woke up, and It MUST be the way that everyone wakes up.

All of the rest of the descriptions and forms and formats and supposed ILLUSIONS of separate paths that people seem to be taking, where they might claim "I am not doing A Course in Miracles", or that they don't believe in it, or that they aren't taking the One Curriculum, are heavily clad in ILLUSIONS that make it seem like they are not taking the One Curriculum, BUT THEY ARE.

*cue meme with "there is no escape" and evil laugh*

Either you are taking A Course in Miracles and learning the metaphysical truth and following the one curriculum and are waking up to God, which is THE ONLY WAY, which does not necessarily have to entail having anything to do with the book whatsoever,

OR

You are delaying the one curriculum, are attempting not to take the "Course", and are in denial.

THAT is the true nature of A Course in Miracles. It is not just a Course that you are only taking IF you are doing your forgiveness or IF you own the book of IF the book is in your hands with you studying it. It is ALWAYS the course, whether you like it or not, and you are always taking it, whether you like it or not!

It is not just a book. It is not just a bunch of text and a set of lessons and a manual. That's just one format. One expression of ACIM. It's one way of explaining what the Course is, one way of TEACHING what the Course is. The Course is the one metaphysical curriculum for awakening which applies to everyone at all times. There are many ways to teach it. The BOOK "A Course in Miracles" is Jesus's way of teaching it, and is a very accurate way. There are an unlimited number of ways of teaching it. Some will appear to be extremely close to the true nature of the one curriculum, and some will seem to be so far removed that you would not say it is the one curriculum at all. But there is no escaping the one curriculum.

This is the metaphysical nature of A Course in Miracles. And this is why it is REQUIRED, and this is why Jesus said it is required. He is not lying. You just have to get your definition of what the "Course" is correct so that it makes sense.

If Christians are making ANY headway towards God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Muslims are making ANY headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Hindu's are making headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. What Jesus has described AS A Course in Miracles is the one, the only, the profound metaphysical teaching, which is completely factual and 100% FIXED and cannot be changed and has no exceptions. That's what He has revealed to us and has attempted to outline and teach in the book. Whether you opt to use the book or not, you are still bound by the curriculum and you still cannot take any other curriculum that works without it being a curriculum in miracles.

I've been looking at this closely because I want to find out how this course is supposed to be applied, without a bypass and without denial.

At first I recognised that there was a whole lot of spiritual bypassing going on. That is, trying to adopt thoughts, theories, concept etc far beyond where my 'actual experience' is, such that I am out of touch with actual experience and am living in a kind of mental fantasy. This becomes the spiritualised ego, getting lost in the intellect, 'bypassing' the experience and the feelings and pretending to be more advanced etc.

So then I thought ok, I am not supposed to deny what's happening, I'm supposed to accept it. So then I went kind of the other way, went more into feeling the feelings, having the experience, and it seemed like if I would attempt to avoid or invalidate that in any way it would be a bypass. But this led to just being swamped in the ego, continued suffering, false perceptions, and essentially no room for forgiveness.

Now I am asking myself, where does forgiveness come into this? If forgiveness is going to try to offer some kind of interpretation or way of seeing something that is different to "what it is" or "what's happening", surely forgiveness is a bypass? There has to be a way to move from "I am a body" to "I am not a body" without it being some kind of faulty application or an attempt to deny the body. One thing to recognize is that there are always two parts to experience - what stuff is physically, PLUS an interpretation of it, and the interpretation can be wrong while still allowing the physical/biological/emotional part to be there.

The overall approach seems to be that we should first acknowledge what we ARE experiencing, what we feel, the situation we seem to be in, without denying that we're feeling and experiencing it. We HAVE to admit first that we're suffering, that something seems to have gone wrong - which we tend not to want to do because it induces FEAR that something is "really wrong".

This is part of the "fear of healing", because we don't want to acknowledge that something very convincingly "bad" seems to have happened - and if it is real, it would be frightening, and we DO believe it's real. Admitting it is frightening and so we deny and avoid this step. But THEN, having removed the DENIAL of the situation, seek for a better way to look at it and to reinterpret the experience, or to question the foundation or cause of it.

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

We need to make sure we don't shoot for "it's not happening" BEFORE we've admitted "this seems to be happening" ie "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace". That is acknowledgement, not a bypass. And it means willingness to admit that things have gone wrong, you don't feel happy, you are suffering and THEN that there must be a better way.

The course does speak to this in a few places. e.g. admitting first that the separation HAS occurred - which we don't want to admit to because it implies its real and is horrible, but we DO believe it has occurred - but looking at this WITH the Holy Spirit makes it less frightening, and then having admitted "something's gone wrong" we can be in a position to then immediately seek atonement. But if we seek atonement WITHOUT admitting to the denied dark belief or feeling or ego scenario, we are bypassing.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

Notice how it says we 1) stop denying that we've separated and made a wrong decision and are suffering 2) accept the error, the suffering, the feeling, on a temporary basis 3) having acknowledged the suffering, now seek for atonement ie a more right-minded interpretation with the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that it broadens the perception, admits to bigger truths, allows in God's light and laws, and re-frames the ILLUSION of what you seemed to be experiencing before as "bad".

As per the secret of salvation, you can then SEE and admit that you've been doing this to yourself, and seek to choose again and let the Holy Spirit undo the consequences through healing. This is the proper "application of forgiveness". If we skip the acknowledgement of "what's gone wrong" we are in a spiritual bypass. If we skip admitting to being in denial about how awful we've made ourselves feel, we're in a bypass. If we don't want to look at the GUILT, having first asked the Holy Spirit to help us to LOOK AT IT, and we skip ahead to "I'm innocent", then we're in a bypass.

You have to not pretend that everything's okay. Admit you're suffering, admit you're not happy, admit to your feelings, feel the feelings if you need to, AND THEN work with the Holy Spirit on a reinterpretation. When you then see it from a higher place, or remember its a dream, or affirm you're not a body, or recognize you're not a victim etc, that is indeed "contradictory" to what you were seeing and experiencing before but its NOT a bypass because it's changing the interpretation OF it, not trying to dismiss it. We should end up with a higher christ-vision view of what we were seeing from an ego perspective., but having acknowledged the state we were in fully first.

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I asked ChatGPT about this a bit, here's some AI commentary:

In ACIM terms, the process looks like this: Notice the upset Acknowledge the feeling Recognize it comes from a belief Offer the belief for correction Receive a different perception Step 1 and 2 are not bypassing. They are required. The ego says: “If you don’t validate the feeling as true, you’re bypassing.” But the Course says: “You can acknowledge a feeling without agreeing with its interpretation.” That’s the pivot. There is a difference between: Allowing a feeling Agreeing with the ego’s interpretation of the feeling For example: “I feel hurt.” → acknowledgment “They betrayed me and I was wronged.” → interpretation The first is honest. The second is the ego’s narrative. The Course invites you to question the second — not suppress the first. ACIM is not about: Emotional catharsis Endless processing Validating the ego’s storyline It is about changing the teacher in the mind. Bypassing says: “This pain isn’t here.” The Course says: “This pain is here because I chose wrongly — and I can choose again.” That is not bypassing. That is reclaiming authorship of perception. When you shift perspective, the ego feels invalidated. It reacts with: “You’re suppressing.” “You’re not being authentic.” “You’re spiritually bypassing.” But what’s really happening is: You’re declining to make the ego’s interpretation real. The ego equates: Not agreeing with me = denial. But correction is not denial. It’s reinterpretation. ACIM doesn’t say: “Sit with your ego forever.” It says: “Notice it, forgive it, and choose again.” If you never shift perspective because you fear bypassing, you’re actually preserving the ego. Ironically, that becomes a different kind of bypass: bypassing the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation. When you shift perspective, ask: Am I suppressing the feeling? Or am I gently allowing it while becoming willing to see it differently? In A Course in Miracles, there’s an important distinction that clears this up: Denial of error is not denial of experience. Statements like: “I am not a body. I am free.” “My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.” are not meant as psychological affirmations. They are metaphysical corrections aimed at the level of cause, not effect. If you use them at the level of emotion — to override fear, sadness, anger — they will feel like bypassing. Because they’re not designed to suppress feelings. They’re designed to loosen identification. When the Course says: “I am not a body,” it is not asking you to deny that a body appears to exist in perception. It’s asking you to question whether the body is what you are. That’s a completely different move. A metaphysical statement becomes bypassing when: It is used to escape emotion. It is used to spiritually inflate. It is used to deny the felt experience. It becomes healing when: It softens identification. It introduces curiosity. It reduces personal attack. It increases humility.

It may sound simple enough to say "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." But if you think on this deeply, you'll realize how strange this is. It holds up even when you are angry at someone, and even when it seems like they are doing something wrong all on their own.

Jesus is basically saying you NEVER accuse your brother of THEIR sins. You actually ONLY EVER accuse your brother of YOUR SINS. When you think about that it's quite strange.

1) You believe YOU have sinned.

2) You try to pin YOUR sin onto someone else.

3) You project YOUR actual sense of sin and guilt ONTO someone else, to try to attach it to them and blame THEM for it.

How deceiving is that? What a disguise! What a way to frame someone for something they didn't do. What is this but finding a scapegoat? Blaming someone who is completely innocent and completely unrelated to your sin, for something YOU think you did.

Jesus goes even further to say that, not only do you only ever accuse others of YOUR shit, you actually are not even capable of seeing THEIR sins, yet alone holding THEIR sins against them. So it can't be possible that you SEE objectively "they are sinning and I am not", to enable you to be able to point a neutral finger and say "you are sinning, and I am not."

If you regard them as sinful or guilty, you are NOT seeing their sin or guilt. You are actually seeing the projection of YOUR OWN. Your own pain is hurled out of your mind onto them, your anger attempts to MAKE them be guilty, and you now see them as the CAUSE of YOUR suffering.

This happens because as you project sin and guilt, your perception inverts and becomes completely backwards. Cause and effect are reversed. You see causation or sin as outside of you coming into you, rather than inside you extending outward.

If your brother is guilty of WHAT YOU DID, then they are now the one who is sinful and "doing it", thus doing it TO YOU. You now see yourself as threatened and attacked BY THEIR sinfulness, but it is in fact YOUR OWN sinfulness coming back at you. You may fear their wrath but really you only fear YOUR OWN.

It's such a bizarre thing to do. It's like someone accuses you of being guilty, you feel bad about it, then because you don't want to heal it in yourself or admit it is yours, you find some random target outside of you, some innocent party, and suddenly hurl all of your guilt onto them, try to FRAME them as being sinners, ACCUSING them of all kinds of stuff, to try to SHIFT THE BLAME, so that you can dissociate from your guilt and associate them with it. So they can take the fall FOR you. And if you can be convincing enough, you may even convince yourself and others that YOU are the innocent one, throwing everyone off the scent.

That's what we're doing every single time we are angry at someone, trying to make them guilty, accusing them, seeing them as doing something to us. In fact, when there is any judgemental sense at all of them "doing something wrong" or not being good enough or failing or sinning or attacking, it MUST MEAN that we ourselves are projecting OUR OWN inner misery, pain, unhealed wounds, onto them.

Jesus is clearly saying that you are actually INCAPABLE of judging another's innocence or guilt. You can ONLY see that either you believe BOTH of you are guilty, or BOTH of you are innocent. Because if you have guilt in your own mind, you can ONLY see guilt. And being unable to see innocence at all, you have no way to discern whether they are separately innocent. And if there is innocence in you, you CANNOT see their guilt, because your own innocence blinds you to guilt. So again you cannot discern separately whether they are innocent or guilty.

If you accuse yourself of sin or guilt, you ARE accusing BOTH yourself AND others. And the truth is that NEITHER of you are guilty or sinful. This is why it's not enough to simply take back projections and reclaim ownership responsibility for the sinful junk in your mind. You have to actually UNDO it, FOR BOTH of you, through forgiving yourself. Because you and your brother are one, and either you condemn you both to hell or lift you both to heaven.

Next time you are in the middle of heated anger or blame or judgement to any degree, even if it seems the other person is definitely doing something wrong, even if it seems they are the whole CAUSE of the problem, and MAKING you suffer, even if it seems you have done nothing to ask for this, and especially then because you are in denial, YOU ARE in the middle of hurling YOUR GUILT onto them.

It will seem like it is NOT your guilt at all, and entirely theirs. And you will make them responsible for CHANGING in order that YOUR upset be resolved, so that they stop seeming to CAUSE YOU to be at the effect of them. And you will seek for THEM to stop their sinful behavior so that YOU can be happy, believing THEY have the POWER OVER YOU to cause you to suffer. How dare they be so guilty! How dare they infect you with THEIR sin! But it's all YOURS!

You take your hidden hates and secret sins and sense of guilt and unworthiness and self-hate and miserableness and hurt and pain and unhealed disgust, and you try to PIN IT ON innocent passers by who have nothing to do with it. And now they look like an enemy, and you hate YOUR sin IN them, you attack them for YOUR sin, and you try to destroy YOUR sin IN them. But ideas leave not their source, and it is still your mind attacking ITSELF. Your mind is still containing the shit you are accusing them of.

How strange that you would first of all hurt yourself, then displace the hurt onto someone else who has nothing to do with it. That you would then attack the hurt that is in them, trying to destroy it and the owner of the hurt along with it, to get rid of it. All the while still secretly believing it is YOU who is hurt, and YOU who you are attacking FOR it. Because if you attack your brother for YOUR guilt, that really means you are trying to destroy YOURSELF for being guilty.

This is why the secret of salvation is ALWAYS true. No matter who seems to be the victim or victimizer, or who seems to be doing what to whom, it is always YOU DOING IT TO YOU, even when it seems like someone else is doing it to you. Barking at someone for doing something wrong is your way of hating the sin in you in an externalized way, so that you pretend that you're not targeting yourself. Attack is always made upon a stranger, and that stranger is you.

"Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack."

"As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him. You want to see them there, and not in you."

"Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence be found. Who but the sinful need to be forgiven? And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself."

"Let it never be forgotten that prayer at any level is always for yourself. If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you. The enemy is you, as is the Christ. Before it can become holy, then, prayer becomes a choice. You do not choose for another. You can but choose for yourself. Pray truly for your enemies, then, for herein lies your own salvation. Forgive them for your sins, and you will be forgiven indeed."

"If he be lost in sin so must you be; if you see light in him your sins have been forgiven by yourself."

"How can he live, with all your sins upon him?"

"BEYOND his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation. You gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him, to save yourself. And yet his holiness IS your forgiveness. Can YOU be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness IS your salvation?"

"And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are."

"For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die INSTEAD of you."

"When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, "Should I accuse myself of doing this?"

"Who would send messages of hatred and attack, if he but understood he sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn HIMSELF?The ego's messages are ALWAYS sent AWAY from you, in the belief that, for your message of attack and guilt, will someone OTHER than yourself suffer. And, even if YOU suffer, yet someone ELSE will suffer more."

"What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

"It can be but myself I crucify." All that I do I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me."

"You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself. You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself."

"The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross."

"Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself."

"Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts."

"In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God, lies the conviction of your OWN guilt."

"You cannot see his sins and not your own."