I notice in particular that pretty much anything medical, anything scientific, or anything involving proof in the world, always entails this belief that something external causes something to happen.

It also accompanies the belief that, because the external causes stuff to happen, you can 'fix' the problems you have by carefully selecting which external causes you expose yourself to.

This seems to be a clever ego trick. On the one hand, it says "you are at the effect of external causes and they will destroy you", and then it swoops in with its salvation, saying, "choose an external cause that you prefer, and you will be saved."

Well... its the belief in external causes that's the problem, not whether you're getting the ones you like or the ones you don't like.

Pretty much all medical solutions rely on an external cause, producing effects internally. Really this is a form of attack because it sees the person as a victim. So to the ego, "help" is actually "hurt", and this is why it always has side effects.

I saw a science report just yesterday, on one of the science news websites I sometimes look at, which said, that scientists uncovered the secret to happiness... that happiness is always changing and its never constant so you should be more realistic rather than hoping to be happy all the time. I was like...well... that's depressing.

The course holds out a promise of permanent, constant, unwavering happiness that never changes. But to the ego (ego-based science) that's absolutely an alien and impossible idea.

Happiness comes from within from extending God and being free of all forms of ego suffering, which ALL come about when causality is separated from your self and seen as outside of you attacking you or causing you or affecting you either positively or negatively.

Externally-caused "desirable influences" or magic or medicines or therapies or whatever else, are no different in their psychological damage to external attacks, enemies, victimizers and threats.

This is why there is no such thing as a perfect diet. All dependency on external food, water, air, etc is set up by the ego to be a lose-lose situation no matter what. All foods, if they affect you at all, victimize you, and they all have side effects. And none of them cause health.

I am not at the effect of the world I see.

I am not a victim of the world I see.

It is the world I see that is impossible.

The world holds no causes, being but an effect.

There is nothing the world can do to hurt you or make up ill or weak or upset or afraid.

You are a cause, not an effect.

We need simply to learn how to stop being affected by illusions of causality, and return to a state of being only the cause of everything.

There is no world.

The entire content of the physical world is happening within the split mind of the ego. It is all happening inside the one mind of the ego, shared collectively by all individuals within it.

Every event that takes place always has some form of separation involved, where there is a cause and a separate effect, a victim and victimizer, some kind of opponents, enemies, conflict.

Every role, every side, every persuasion of someone being for or against or right or wrong, all of them are part of the ego split mind.

The ego mind is a vast mind spanning this entire universe. It includes all planets and stars and galaxies. Every single event that transpires is an expression of self attack.

In self-attack, a single mind is at war with itself. It has divisions within itself which have split it apart and now, what used to be a single will has become multiple wills. And each of these wills is slightly different and has a different focus or goal. And none of them agree with each other, and so all of them are in competition. Chaos is the result (see the laws of chaos in the Course).

This gives rise to all manner of illusions across a vast spectrum throughout the world and throughout all history. In every war there appear to be two sides, the good and the bad, the oppressor and the oppressed, the attacker and the attacked. And yet both of those sides are happening inside the one ego mind. The one ego mind is playing against itself, is at war with itself, and is both its own attacker and its own victim.

When you do not see this and you fall for the illusion that one of the sides is better than the other side, one of the viewpoints is more justified or righteous, one of the parties is better or worse, or somehow there is an inbalance or difference between them, you have become fooled by the ego's illusions. You are misperceiving and are now experiencing the ego.

There is a line in the Course which says literally, "The world IS false perception." It does not say that the world is perceived falsely by individuals. It says there is one mind, the one ego mind, which contains the entire physical universe, within which there is a false perception happening. That means there are illusions appearing, there is misunderstanding, there is division and separation, there are multiple wills, and now there APPEARS to be many different sides all who do not quite agree with each other. And some of those sides now seem to be defending various positions or opinions, and yet ALL of those sides are part of the ego's state of misperception.

The world, the physical world, IS mis-perception taking place within the one ego mind. The world, the illusion of a world appearing, with all of its events and people, is actually a picture in a single large mind, where that mind is hallucinating, and is experiencing self-attack, and is having a major war with itself. This is why the Course says that the world is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" - an envisioning within God's Son of what it would be like if He were destroying himself.

Everything in this physical universe is at war with everything else. For particles of matter to even appear to exist there has to be difference and conflict, to allow there to be a fluctuation of some kind, which creates a localized point in spacetime where something shows up to demonstrate that what is true there is not true elsewhere.

If we are in the business of correcting perception, which the Course very much advocates, then we need to realize that this correction of perception cannot JUST take place within your little ego mind within your little ego body. Your little ego mind is only a TINY part of the entire ego mind. There is vast mis-perception occuring in and AS the entire world itself. THAT MIND, that large mind, which is dreaming the whole world, is mis-perceiving and experiencing self-attack all the time. THAT MIND needs to receive perceptual correction, beyond your own little PIECE of that mind receiving correction.

There is no world, by the way.

When you wake up to the `limits` of your own personal separate ego little mind, confined to a body still and subject still to the laws of the world, such as death and physics and biological processes and so on, and also spacetime itself, you have corrected the perception of a PART of the ego mind, but you have not corrected the grander perception of the entire ego mind, which is still hallucinating a universe-scale war against itself. This is the difference between waking up in the dream and having the war still wage all around you, versus waking up FROM the dream and ENDING THE WAR WITH YOURSELF, which means ENDING THE ILLUSORY UNIVERSE.

If there is a leaf on a tree which is not receiving quite as much sunlight today because there is another leaf above it which is blocking the light, this is a WAR on that leaf and will "cause" it to die off more quickly. If you accelerate what takes place underground as tree roots look for food, you will see that they literally fight with each other and try to fend each other off to secure ownership of food sources. The trees are at war with each other. When there is a cloud in the sky, blocking the sun, that is a war on everything beneath the cloud. I'm not kidding.

This entire universe is a state of war, a state of conflict, a state of self-attack. The one mind is dreaming of what it is like to attack itself and kill itself. It is a dream of dying and death. It's a desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to DIE, having hated a while. Do not glorify one little part of this world over another - that's still part of the ego thought system.

You do not escape this dream of death until you are able to completely transcend all of the laws of this universe and become supernaturally miraculous. You do not escape it by taking a side or seeing one thing as better or worse than another. You do not escape it by falling for the oldest trick in the book, which is that one thing is more spiritual or worthy or special or better or worse or more righteous or more justified or more ego or less ego than something else. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS AN ILLUSION OF SEPARATION.

This entire world is a mis-perception, an hallucination, happening in the mind of the One Son of God. It is a vast ego delusion, where every single role or side that can be taken "against" another is taken, and all sides and all roles are played simultaneously by that one mind. NO-ONE is more justified than another, and no side that anyone takes is better or more righteous than another. All victims, all victimizers, all opposition, all enemies, those who appear innocent, those who appear guilty, it is ALL part of the same ONE MIND PRETENDING that it is multiple individual selves with different opinions. This is also why no-one's opinion matters to the truth.

Perpetrators of suffering and war and violence and murder and death are just as much a part of the ego dream as those who seem to receive those effects. Both sides are a team. Both of them need each other. Both of them depend on each other to exist. Both of them must exist together in order to exist at all. Look at the whole of the mind - the universal mind - the one mind. Look at what it is doing to itself, within itself. It's beating itself up. It's pretending to put on a performance where one part of itself attacks another part and pretends it doesn't know it's doing it. This is the illusion we need to learn to overlook. This is what forgiveness must teach us to see past and not fall for or be hemmed in by.

There is no world here. it's just one mind's dream of hurting itself. This is the CENTRAL THOUGHT the Course is attempting to teach. That there literally, right in your fucking face literally, IS NO WORLD. This world we seem to live in and on is NOT REALLY THERE. It's a lie. It's a big fat illusion floating in the one mind. It is mis-perception of Self, and mis-perception of God. It's an attempt to destroy who you are. It is the crucifixion of God's Son, of which Jesus's crucifixion on the cross was just a reflection or symbol within a symbol.

There is no world. Can you handle the truth?

When considering "what are you?", the body could be said to be responsible for a vast majority of what you think you are, including most of your personality and aspects of your mind.

All bodies are different, even if there are similarities. All brains are different. The body gives rise to a superficial personality as well. Within this personality there are different parts and some of these parts even conflict with each other, are activated in different scenarios, and have sub-personalities within them.

Consider what happens in the eyes of your soul, as it passes through different lifetimes with different bodies. Sometimes you are a man, sometimes a woman. So right away your seeming gender is not a consistent and permanent part of your real self. Sometimes you are gay, sometimes straight, sometimes asexual. Your sexuality is not a permanent part of what you are.

Sometimes you are black, sometimes white, asian, mexican, chinese, english, who knows. None of these qualities or ethic backgrounds or body types or genetic materials defines what you really are. Sometimes you have brown eyes, sometimes blue or green. Sometimes you have dark hair, sometimes blond, or red, or whatever. None of this is part of your permanent identity.

The body also gives rise to personality. Personality springs from the various qualities and focuses and 'talents' and attributes and wirings of the brain and the rest of the system. People are born with certain qualities, which give rise to preferences and interests.

Some are born with a strong intellect, while others may lack the precision and brightness of thought. Some are born highly emotional, while others may be shallow. Some are born flamboyant and dramatic, while others may be more subdued and withdrawn. Some are extroverted, some introverted. These are largely all based on the nervous system and the brain wiring.

You'll notice also that you generally keep roughly the same personality throughout the lifetime. Even if you're working on spiritual things, your voice is much the same, your mannerisms, your way of walking, your intonations, your subtle ways and nuances, all much the same still.

In the course for example in the manual for teachers, Jesus remarks about how teachers of God retain these attributes:

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct." UrM5A1

So here he's saying that the physical appearance of the body is going to be much the same, to the body's eyes their bodies are all different still, they have different backgrounds and experiences, they have superficial personalities still which we quite distinct etc. None of that changes just because your mind is waking up. And notice how it says the personality is superficial - ie appears to be an entire character, but isn't really you.

You'll notice also for example that people who go through awakenings don't suddenly really change their physical or personality nature or style. They still have the same body, the same general personality, the same way of talking, the same sense of humour, the same general way of expressing etc. Their personalities are much the same. They might be more serene and calm, more peaceful, happier, lighter, healthier, etc... but in general the body and personality stay much the same.

So that being the case, we have to ask ourselves, WHAT exactly is your real self, if all of these many varied bodies and personalities are NOT what you are? And how do we transcend or rise above or dis-identify from this superficial personality, if it is not our real self?

You might've been thinking all this time, doing the course, waking up, that "you" or "your mind" is somehow "your real self". That you are applying things "separate from" some kind of lower ego self or body. But perhaps that isn't true. Perhaps the personality that you've been using and thinking is "you", is actually part of the body's personality. Maybe this whole character, this person, that you think you've been all this time, isn't actually you at all. And maybe your real self is actually so far out of sight and out of your awareness that you don't even know it's there.

"You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has INTERFERED with reason. Reason lies in the other self you have CUT OFF from your awareness." UrT21F5

Perhaps you've divided up parts of your fictitious self and called some parts the real you and other parts the fake you. But maybe all of it is the fake you. Maybe quite honestly, the whole of what you think has been you all this time, is not you at all, except for what? What exactly is left over, when you take away the body, the gender, the sexuality, the nervous system, the brain wiring, the personality, the preferences, the things you feel comfortable with, the compatibilities and incompatibilities? What part of any of your experience is actually the real you at all?

We're told that CHOICE is at least a freedom we still have, which is part of the mind. Here is Jesus saying that even our seeming "consciousness" is not really what our real mind is like.

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. CONSCIOUSNESS is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that consciousness cannot reach knowledge." UrU2A6

So it seems that in some regard, "consciousness", in its essence, which is a separation-based psyche, and part of the larger "mind", is the only part of our experience and reality that we would retain if we awaken. And indeed consciousness itself is based on a split mind, and that split will end when we wake up, restoring us to "awareness". But it is mind that has belief and denial and choice, and mind is where we can have perceptual changes and alterations to values and desires.

Yet some parts of what seem to be mind may not really be our real mind. And many of our thoughts are not even what ACIM would consider real thoughts. Ego thoughts, separate thoughts, thoughts about bodies, thoughts of attack, etc, these are illusions of thoughts, in what is really a sort of blank mind not really thinking anything real. But we have to work with thoughts to get our mind to re-align with spirit.

"Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors." UrT1B27E

"You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training." UrW94L4

"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth." UrW1Ln11

So it seems that overall the "course" or curriculum is about training the mind to be put back into its proper role as a medium for the soul to use for creative constructive purposes. This mind is trained by various practices, in the mind, including a shift in a sense of identification. From believing that you are the body, or that you are even the body's "personality", to identifying yourself as Christ/Spirit/Soul/Sonship. And this includes dis-identifying from the body's "personality" character.

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification." UrT1B26

Along the way, we have to sort out and question, what parts of what we think are our "self" are actually part of self, and what are just transient temporary things. All aspects of the body are not permanent and not part of a permanent identity. Even across lifetimes. Whatever body attributes seem locked in for a lifetime, are irrelevant to what you are. But this also extends to major personality traits, the way you handle emotions, the sensitivity level with which you experience the world, the way you speak, how your body moves as an expression of your sense of your "character", all of this stuff is superficial.

I think then at some point we have to realize, even our personality here is not likely to really be true to how we are in spirit. This "person", this character in a dream, that you thought was you, maybe that too is an illusion. Maybe it would change radically if you switched bodies. Maybe none of these personalities are real personalities. Maybe all that is left over in your awareness that is real, is a much more fundamental underlying "pure awareness", coupled with the magnificence of the soul and the attributes of being part of God.

For now, this "you" that you have to work with, is like an interface to the world, a tool... just a figure in a dream, like a puppet, complete with a built-in software character, that has certain characteristics. A sort of persona. And you can work through that and use it, but must find a way to not regard it as your self. If you could see all the seeming selves you've been across lifetimes this would be far more obvious.

The fact that the personality is part of the body, and that we have a superficial egoic mind, is revealed in this paragraph, where we're told that "the body" "seeks for friends and enemies", it has a concern for safety, it looks for comfort, it looks for pleasure, it avoids hurtful things. These could not be attributed to a mindless body, they have to mean that the body and personality-mind are part of one system, this "character" of a dream person, a false self comprising physicality AND personality, which interacts with the world and has motivations and actions and preferences - like a favourite ice cream and favourite music. This is all part of the body, and not part of what you really are.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart." UrT27I1

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU." UrT21F3

"I want the peace of God." W185

There's over 100 references in ACIM to "the peace of God". Years ago I wouldn't have thought that peace is something I want. It wasn't a priority. I just wanted all the stupid people to go away, lol.

But the more I've done the course the more it's becoming apparent that peace is very central to the experience I SHOULD be having.

I had a dream a few years ago which showed me an example of extraordinary peace.

In the dream there was a small outdoor scene with some trees and a wild grassy area, and a sort of sky with clouds, although the clouds seemed to be very nearby.

The clouds parted and as they did, they took on an extraordinary emerald green color, rich and vibrant and beautiful. An opening appeared and there floated in, from beyond the clouds, were a pair of beautiful orbs of light, which seemed to be radiating life and light and coloring the landscape as they went.

These orbs were spheres, and glowed gently from within. It wasn't like a dazzling light, just a soft glow. They seemed mostly transparent, and about the size of a bowling ball.

The two orbs floated very slowly and quietly past where I stood, and continued to float on forward, under their own will. But the thing that really struck me was the quality of the atmosphere and how it felt.

The orbs were alive, and were aware, and were extremely peaceful. They seemed to have no ounce of a sense of attack or irritation or disturbance. They were so incredibly calm and quiet, so perfectly innocent, holy even.

They could not not have been more pure, more simple, or more beautiful. They just glided along softly together, as though accompanying each other, and were perfectly unhurried and peaceful.

That's about where the dream ends. But I still think back on it and, when I do, I feel that same peace, and it becomes an inspiration. As I think about what that felt like, I can draw a number of ideas from it.

A total lack of all conflict, a total absence of war, a total lack of any sense of fighting or disturbance or angry aggression. A total innocence, so pure and gentle and simple, like it was just born from God.

No sense of irritation, or annoyance, or frustration or any kind of bitterness or resentment. No sense of guilt or sin or shame or unworthiness. Not the slightest speck of inflammation or agitation or interruption of any kind.

Perfectly calm and tranquil, with no force or pressure, no sense of threat or danger, no concern or worry or doubt or fear. Nothing complicated or distorted, no denial or rejection, no defences, and absolutely no sense of urgency.

Just total calm and total peace and total simple being. Total freedom, total beautiful innocent simplicity, and total calm gentle joy.

This I feel is what I really want, and what we all want. And it highlights how all these things that were absent - are all things that we are so accustomed to living with and tolerating. All the ego emotions and hurts, all the fighting and war and conflict, all the fear and guilt. All of it has to go.

I used to think somehow that the pinnacle of human experience might be some kind of heroic role in which we have superpowers and can do whatever we want, flying around the room with a cloak on. But this ego fantasy of being the savior to wretched peasants is being replaced with a simpler goal of humbleness and quiet.

And when all of that stuff goes, stuff that we think is normal and commonplace, all the sense of separation and tension and conflict goes with it. And what is left is just this lovely extremely calm peacefulness, lacking all sense of something being wrong in any way.

Perhaps that's what we are really. Just simple orbs of light floating around calmly and happily, in total surrender and total contentment, with no enemies and no reasons for concern. Just being at peace with God. Free and alive, floating along with not a care in the world.

"If I defend myself I am attacked."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Defense do what they would defend."

"In my defenselessness lies my safety."

It's interesting but, when we try to defend ourselves, under the belief that we are making ourselves more protected, more safe, more secure, we ACTUALLY are undermining ourselves and attacking ourselves. So now self attack masquerades as self defense.

The ego splits off the illusion of attack and defense because it splits cause and effect. It tries to make out that attacks are not defenses, and defense are not attacks. That you can cause in order to not be caused. Or you can defend in order to not be caused. But both attack and defend are forms of the same ego plot to weaken you.

A defense automatically presumes that you need defending, because there is something weakened, vulnerable and wrong with you. That you are frail and fragile and attackable. Without this belief in being attackable, you cannot have defenses, and there would be no point defending something that isn't attackable in the first place.

Therefore the defenses undermine your integrity and require you to believe that you need them, due to being attacked already, and therefore your defenses attack you. It's the same as with e.g. virus protection software. It is designed to save you, but the belief in viruses causes the eruption of enemies.

And so defenses are attempts at saving yourself from attack, but in fact are themselves attacks. So they cannot work. And all they do is paint an illusion that you are safer without in any way undoing the belief that you are weak or vulnerable. You then think you are safer because of the illusion of protection, but you have not really increased your belief in invulnerability whatsoever.

To be truly defenseless requires you to be convinced that you cannot be attacked, which requires you to recognize that you are immortal.

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free."

When you defend yourself, you make yourself sick. Defenses are self-attack. You think you need to be defended and this attacks the body, making it sick. Sickness is a defense against the truth, or in other words, sickness is a self attack masquerading as being attacked by something else in an attempt to defend yourself. Attempting to defend yourself weakens you and makes you sick.

If you defend yourself, you undermine your immortality.

"The body is hardly worth the least defense."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, ****by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer.**** Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick.""

---

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and ***hardly worth the least defense***, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed."

If you are innocent, you recognize that everyone is innocent, because your innocence overlooks their guilt and looks to the truth about them. Truth is eternal and unchanging, so their innocence is permanent, as is yours.

If you are guilty, you will see everyone as guilty. Having lost sight of the truth you will not recognize it, and will mistake everyone's innocence for guilt. Seeing the guilt in them results from seeing it in yourself. Seeing them as guilty you will assume this means you are not guilty, which disguises this fact.

It works kind of like wearing either clean or dirty glasses on your eyes. When your own glasses are clean you will see a clean world free of guilt. When your own glasses are dirty you will see a dirty guilty world. And how you see them you see yourself reflected in the mirror.

It is not possible to accurately determine whether someone is innocent or guilty, from the perspective of ego. You are not sitting on a fence being neutral. You have no neutral thoughts. Either you are making everyone appear innocent or you are making everyone appear guilty. You are contributing to what you see.

If you think you can determine that someone is guilty, but you are innocent, you are mistaken. If you think you can call someone innocent while you believe in your own guilt, you are mistaken. You cannot see past what's in you own mind.

The ego counsels that you can find someone guilty and yet you can escape this guilt. This is impossible. Either BOTH you and your brother are guilty, or BOTH you and your brother are innocent.

You actually therefore are blind to whether or not your brother is innocent or guilty, independently. You cannot tell this independently because your brother IS NOT independent of you in a separate, compartmentalized way. You cannot section off his worth from your own.

The Golden Rule, the law of God, is always in effect no matter where you are or what you believe. What you believe is true of you is always believed to be true of others, even if consciously you think there is a difference between the two. You cannot find someone guilty without making yourself guilty first. And you cannot see your brothers innocence if you are not willing to accept your own.

This is how your brother is your savior. He does not actually save you in the sense of doing something for you that you have not done for yourself. He merely is recognized as reflecting back to you either your own innocence or guilt, depending on what you believe is true. If you regard yourself as innocent, you will regard him as innocent also. If you find him guilty, you have condemned yourself.

You do not have the faculty to be able to say, ok, my brother is the guilty one, and I am a passive observer, and I can tell he's guilty because I'm neutral and objective. There is no such thing as objective judgement. All judgementalism is inherently biased and pulls the judger INTO the judgement. Think not you can judge lest ye be judged.

Unfortunately, its not possible to find someone guilty, if you want to find your own innocence. It will drag you down. Maintaining enemies and scapegoats and pointing fingers at people keeps YOU in hell. You HAVE to find everyone to be innocent if you want to find yourself to be innocent. And so long as you find even one person to be guilty, you have relegated yourself to death.

The truth (about you and your brother) is always true, and nothing else is true.

What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.

On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.

What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?

What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?

Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.

This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.

A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.

A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.

All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.

The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.

Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.

Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.

You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.

Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.

Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.

At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.

At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.

And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.

And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.

So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.

So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.

So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.

What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.

And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.

"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? (W-135.13)" - ACIM

It's all for the best.

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

Every anger, every attack, every blame, every scapegoating, every projection, every accusation, all of them do ONE thing. They all emphasize that you are SEPARATE from another. They all say, "I am not you." "We are different" "We are not the same" "What applies to you doesn't apply to me."

The form that these expressions can take are extremely varied. The justifications for them are all over the place. They seem to depend on what the other person is doing, how they behave, what they look like, or whatever. As if this makes your expressions different, or valid for different reasons.

But the underlying truth is, that ALL of these expressions are ALWAYS designed to do one thing - emphasize the separation. They all are attempts to widen the rift between you and another. They are all designed to deepen the pits of hell and cut you off and make you isolated, so that you can pin all the sin and blame on someone "totally not myself." To abolish the idea of sharing and oneness completely.

Separation is really the ONLY gameplan the ego has. It does whatever it can in a million different ways to INCREASE the separation. The separation increases between you and other people. In every relationship, every conflict, every war, the SOLE PURPOSE is to attack, so that you are pushing someone away, and increasing the SPACE AND TIME between you. So that "the world" of spacetime is given greater weight.

Without separation there is no ego. Ego IS separation. It is the inequality and difference which comes about when some part of existence is split off and pitted against another. "You are not my self" it exclaims. "I am not part of you" it exclaims. "We are not one" it claims. And the more it hates another the more dissociated you become from that other and from yourself.

Every attack is an attempt to separate. Every anger is an attempt to claim you are not equals. Every hurt is an attempt to prove someone else did this and not you. Every wound testifies to the separation between wills. In every way, all sickness, all death, all war and murder, is all the ego attempting to increase separation. That is all it does. That is all it can ever do. Because its entire existence is rooted in the idea of being separate.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies."

The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found." - ACIM lesson 291 The Real World

Here's a different way of describing this.

There is a forgiven world out there, a happy dream, which is beautiful and peaceful and forgiven. It has no guilt in it. There is no threat in it. There is no danger in it. It has no power to do anything to anyone. A beautiful mirage.

When you see this forgiven world, there is absolutely no perceived cause for fear. There are no enemies. Nobody is seen as against you. You are not in any way disempowered. You are simply happy and confident and free. There is no cause outside of you. You don't see sin in anyone. Everyone and everything seems to be for you, not against you.

In such a perception of the world, you can't have any grounds for fear. The real world is harmless. You will feel profoundly at peace because nothing real can be threatened. You will feel completely confident and empowered because nothing will seem to be threatening to take away your power. And you will not be giving away your power.

But also the reason you will not be ABLE to be afraid when you are experiencing the forgiven world, is that your mind will not have any attack content in it. You will only see the forgiven world WHEN your mind is free of attack, and has realized that it was actually attacking itself. When it's taken back its power and has stopped taking its own power away, it won't be able to experience or USE fear to attack itself.

And coupled with clearly perceiving the world as it IS, which is a forgiven world of innocence, you won't be able to distort perception and will not be able to see a world that threatens you. Not because it is really a threat, but because you believe and perceive it is. So if you don't believe it you won't perceive it. Projection makes perception, so don't project attack and don't attack yourself in the first place.

As it says above, the real world cannot be perceived except through the eyes forgiveness blesses. So once your mind has forgiven itself, or rather, has undone its self attack, it will perceive the real world properly rather than a world of darkness and danger. The darkness and danger will not be in the mind so it will not be perceived, and will not interfere with perception.

The 'witnesses to fear', are your false perceptions which are based on your self-attack, which force you to perceive causes for the fear outside of you, seeming to 'make you' afraid, but really this fear is coming from inside you.

When you aren't attacking yourself you will not see these witnesses, and cannot be afraid. You literally will experience invulnerability.

There is no real cause for alarm.

We need to learn to stop treating fear like it's just some kind of natural phenomenon, or a normal response, or some aspect of a biological flight-or-fight mechanism, or something that protects us from danger, or any of the other bullshit explanations for fear.

We actually need to question what fear is doing and why it is doing it, and where it's really coming from. It's all too easy to simply "be afraid", to experience the fear, without any kind of questioning of whether the fear is natural or needed or well founded.

Fear is the opposite of love. You can't be loving when you're afraid. Which would you rather be, loving or afraid? Which one is a more truth-filled experience?

It's one thing to become afraid and to think, well, I'm afraid "because of" a big long random list of outside influences that you think cause the fear. And to then be locked inside that perception with no apparent way out of it, since you believe that you are not the one who is choosing the fear at all.

But we can't do that. We have to bring fear into question, because fear is actually untruth. It is always a lie. There is never any good reason to be afraid. Fear is never justified. And fear is always a deceptive ego mechanism for making your situation worse.

We have to look at our "fearing" and take some responsibility for generating this condition. We have to be willing to admit that we are the ones who have actually created fear. We keep making it. We keep putting it in our experience. We keep choosing it. And we keep using it ON PURPOSE to play the part of victim so that we can get some side-benefits.

Fear allows us to disown responsibility. It allows us to seemingly shield ourselves from guilt. It lets us pretend that someone else is at fault. It allows us to label others as enemies and project guilt onto them. It lets us hide from God. It lets us have a separate identity that God did not create. And it allows us to pursue our 'dream' of being an individual. These are quite significant reasons for fear that we need to look at and own up to if we're to live a life without fear.

Is it possible to live with no fear? To be 100% fearless? Not like, some idiot that is over-confident and reckless and putting on a show of bravado while being secretly insecure... but the complete absence of all fear, and therefore, only the presence of unconditional love at all times? A love that is so certain and so secure that within it there can be no reason for fear? And no desire to choose it. Of course it is possible, as Jesus has demonstrated.

So don't think fear is just some natural biological or human thing. It's not. It's a state of mental illness. It is insanity. And it is a game that we keep playing with ourselves to pretend we're not who we are. There are some very sneaky reasons for having fear, and none of them are honest or truthful.

So when Jesus says "be not afraid", he isn't just saying, don't freak out when I appear out of nowhere, He's saying, stop choosing fear and recognize that love is the only reality. He's not telling us to be brave in the face of danger, he's telling us there IS no danger. And that any efforts we're making to go into fear without questioning it, are really a deception on our part. We don' need to be afraid because only love is real.