There is a myth in the ACIM community relating to how perception works. It's based on the belief that we only have one perception, one outlook. There's us, in the body, perceiving. We read stuff about how perception shifts and how it changes what we see.

So we think ok, my one perception will shift and it will show me a different world. In other words, the bad stuff I was seeing will seem to disappear and I will see good stuff. We read about the spiritual eye and christ vision and we start to think that our entire perception is going to shift to ONLY seeing perfection and beauty.

This of course then implies that all the bad stuff, all the sickness, the wars, the conflict, the decay, it's all going to magically disappear from my perception and I will not see it at all. Which in turn means, all the hospitals will be empty, everyone with broken limbs will magically be fixed, it's my dream so the entire physical contents of the world will transform into a heavenly condition.

This is not what ACIM teaches.

Perception is a little more complicated because there are actually two perceptual mechanisms involved, and Jesus goes to great lengths describing them.

One perception mechanism, the spiritual eye, is direct "mind seeing", also referred to as the eyes of Christ or Christ Vision. This seeing does not rely on or depend on the body whatsoever. It is not limited by space or time or distance. The mind can be anywhere, go anywhere, see anywhere. It can see through walls.

In fact, the spiritual eye does not really acknowledge what ACIM refers to as "the veil" of physical matter, the granite block of sin. It looks right THROUGH it as if it's not even there and looks to the light of the real world beyond. This fixation on the face of Christ is one way of perceiving. But there is another.

The body has its own perceptual mechanism. It has physical eyeballs. Its form of perception depends entirely on illusions. And the body's perception is not capable of seeing anything else.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see"

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"The body's eyes behold it as solid granite"

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation"

"This is the function you have given your body's eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

The body's perception relies entirely on the laws of physics, which the spiritual eye completely transcends. They rely on photons of light, concentrated particles of finite energy. Light has to collide with surfaces of physical forms, objects, matter, and be "denied" by the form. The light is thus "reflected" rather than passing through it. This reflected light then enters the body's eyes and passes images to the mind for interpretation.

This is a fundamental difference between the two types of perception. What Jesus refers to as "physical sight" can only "see" when vision is blocked. In other words, seeing has to stop at the surface of objects, in order to see them as being there. This seeing is therefore blinded by physical objects. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." Your eyes cannot see through matter.

Spiritual vision is the opposite, in that it does not stop at physical objects, it is not limited by matter or surfaces, it looks right through them as though they are just a very thin transparent veil. It overlooks the physical world because "to forgive is to overlook", looking beyond to the light.

Christ vision sees past the illusion of physical form to something beyond it - the face of Christ. Vision therefore doesn't really pay attention to what we would call physical stuff or the world of bodies, nor dose it function based on "seeing photons".

"This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ"

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ"

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body"

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all"

Essentially, body vision is blinded by perception of the form of physical objects/matter, but to the body this causes it to "see" them. ie my vision "stopped at" the surface. Spiritual vision does not use photons of light, does not depend on physical matter, and sees directly with the mind.

The thing is this. For anyone who has a body or is in a body, BOTH mechanisms for seeing are simultaneously functioning. It does not matter how asleep or awake you are, whether you have false perception or true perception. It does not matter if your mind is sick or healed. If you still have a body, the body's eyes STILL will continue to report images of the PHYSICAL ONLY world to the mind, at the same time as the mind trying to see past it. It will still see the forms of matter, bodies, wars, sickness and death.

This is also why for example you can read the ACIM workbook and STILL READ THE WORDS, even if you are making progress in opening christ vision, because you are still using the body's eyes at the same time. Those who wake up in the world are still perfectly capable of watching tv and choosing food and navigating around a building and driving a car.

This "double vision" of body sight and mind vision, will occur as a kind of parallel perception. As the spiritual eye opens, as your mind opens up to direct vision, as you overlook (forgive) the world of matter, your body is still going to function in exactly the same biologically limited manner. It is still going to relay messages to the mind as to what it senses and sees. And the mind has to sort out what these messages mean to it.

Mind, as the only seer ("only the mind sees"), is therefore receiving impressions either directly (the real world, face of Christ), or indirectly (via the body's eyes). It is experiencing TWO inputs for a while. In order to open the spiritual vision, investment in physical sight has to be diminished. But this only means that the images coming from the body are recognized as illusions not to be believed. Visions of reality are accepted as true, visions of the physical are recognized as false. There are two levels of perception:

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye (which is now a second way to perceive), simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the ***two types or levels of perception*** is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind ***that has let itself be healed*** (has christ vision AND is using the body) will no longer acknowledge them. 3 ****There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others (seen with the body's eyes still), and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before****. 4 But the healed mind (having true perception, accurate recognition) will put them all in one category; they are unreal (recognized as false)."

This does not mean the mind is blind to sick bodies. NOR does it mean that seeing sick bodies is proof that your mind is sick! You see them because your BODY shows them to you, but your mind decides whether to BELIEVE what the body sees.

You still see physical signs of sickness because you're still USING the body. Even when the body is used by the Holy Spirit for communication and healing, even when your spiritual eye is very open, physical sight STILL functions and the mind DOES still SEE the images of the physical world. But it categorizes these images as "these are not reality, they are illusions." It is not tempted by them, deceived by them, nor does it believe they depict the truth. This means you are AWARE that you are in a dream ie "awake in the dream."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die*** (via physical eyes).Yet they are not deceived by what they see (because the mind is not tempted and doesn't believe the physical is real)."

So you see (pun intended), while having a body, your mind is going to be in a state where you keep seeing the physical world, in its continued condition of constant inescapable corruption and death, complete with sick broken bodies and suffering and time and everything going wrong. BUT, the condition of your mind will be such that the MEANING of these images will be different. How they strike your mind will be different. And what you recognize them AS will be different.

You WILL still see the same FORM of physical matter, people with missing limbs, rotting leaves, dead carcasses, the signs of decay and weathering, rot and animals eating animals etc. But your mind will not regard them as true, real, valid, wanted, heaven, or God-created. They are simply recognized as an illusory dream. You will be aware that it is a dream. This doesn't mean you are blind to them, it means you see them accurately for what they are. True perception produces ACCURATE perception, which correctly interprets body visions, and is therefore NOT an INABILITY to see bodies.

Being in this position, where your mind can see beyond the physical world to the light of reality, where all differences and forms and shapes are not given credence, but where the physical is STILL included in what is seen due to still having eyeballs, you are now above the battlefield, in the world but not of it, aware of dreaming. And now you are in a position to be truly helpful.

What that means is, you can discern accurately what others are doing in the world. You can see their physical ailments. You can recognize their emotional and mental sickness - their call for love. And you are in a position to offer them help, WITHOUT making their sickness real. It's because you DO NOT believe the sickness (that you do see) is real, that you CAN help.

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

This is what makes you a teacher of God. Being in a position of greater truth YET STILL IN THE WORLD. Able to still REACH those who are still in bodies, able to heal both the minds AND bodies of others, able to see sickness and famine and war and death, and able to offer help. Able to heal the sick, transform matter, raise the dead, move mountains, etc.

This sets you up for the situation where there is a ground for performing miracles. Because only if you can be "more healed" (have opened christ vision, mind seeing past bodies) while simultaneously being exposed to those who are "less healed" (can still see them with the body's mechanisms), do you have any way to HELP anyone. You are still "where the sickness is" but are not sick yourself.

And miracles are a service. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less. They supply a lack. This is ONLY possible if you can be in the world in a healed state, NOT disappearing into a state of perfection. This is the function of a teacher of God. They help those who are less loving than themselves. They dissipate the fear in others. They raise the dead and heal the sick. This is ONLY possible because you have simultaneous Vision and body sight.

Christ needs your body to reach those who need reaching at a PHYSICAL level. Miracles are needed to demonstrate PHYSICALLY symbols of truth and to prove to those whose eyes are not open that there is a better way. The body is used to communicate to those who see only bodies, that their spiritual vision may open. And miracles are performed to liberate their minds from being blinded by perception of form. To demonstrate that the laws of the world can be broken.

ONLY when the face of Christ is FULLY seen, at the instant of atonement, is the investment in physical sight COMPLETELY undone. And investment only means dependence upon and belief in. The "veil" of physical matter, which the body alone can see ("only the body makes the world seem real"), appears as thin and transparent to the healed mind. It is seen through like x-ray vision to the light beyond.

And then eventually it vanishes from sight completely as the real world is seen but for an instant. Only as the world is not seen AT ALL do you stop seeing sick bodies. Because only as the BODY ITSELF is utterly transcended and let go does the mind awaken to a body-less reality. This means the mind goes beyond being awake in the dream (vision + body vision), and returns to a state of ONLY seeing with the mind (and only seeing the Kingdom of God). That's what it means to wake up FROM dreaming, in which for you the world ends.

This is why Jesus was able to walk the Earth in a highly healed state of mind, HELP OTHERS, perform miracles, SEE LEPERS, SEE THE DEAD, and demonstrate the laws of God. Without his BODY'S SIGHT, he would not have been able to see OR communicate with those who were limited to bodies. And because He had both christ vision and body sight, he could act as a Teacher of God in this world, before he woke up FROM the dream of death entirely.

"But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this ***no longer sees the world***."

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, ***and disappears*** before His holy sight."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. ***What further sight is needed***? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love ***behind all forms***, beyond all purposes. "

"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and ***in that instant is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from which it came."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And ***gone are bodies*** (sick ones and healthy ones) in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, ***no walls, no bodies***, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

Catchy title eh.

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."

The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.

At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.

You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.

All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.

This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.

So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.

Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it."

By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.

You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."

But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.

But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.

Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.

These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.

Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."

"The worlds nothing that I want."

The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.

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

The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."

"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."

"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

"My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else."

"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."

"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

"My salvation comes from me."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."

"Salvation comes from my One Self.

Its Thoughts are mine to use."

"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains

Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan

For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."

"My salvation comes from me."

"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."

I'm posting these quotes which focus on the ways that this world - Earth - is not created by God, is unlike God, and is the world WE made.

I'm posting these not in order to "be negative" or to attack the world or to make the world out to be something it's not. Nor am I trying to correct perception with these quotes - the true-perception view of this world is an entirely different topic.

I'm just offering a willingness to LOOK AT and recognize that ACIM is teaching that God DID NOT create this world, and that this is clearly stated. If God HAD created this world, the world itself would be perfect and would NOT be something requiring forgiveness, or needing salvation, and there would be no function for the Holy Spirit. The world HAS to be opposite to God's will in order for there to be any point to forgiveness at all.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

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

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"For where God’s memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world."

"Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"To give this sad world over, and exchange your errors for the peace of God, is but YOUR will."

"He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. "

"Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so. For what could you need in eternity? In YOUR world you DO need things, because it is a world of scarcity, in which you find yourself BECAUSE you are lacking."

"God’s Son is not a traveler through OUTER worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world OUTSIDE himself holds his inheritance."

"Salvation FROM the world lies ONLY here. My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me, in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to TAKE AWAY."

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love’s absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"We must save the world. For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ"

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves"

"It is not the world that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible."

"I am come as a light into the world which DOES deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, MAINTAINED by fear of the same loneliness which is its illusion."

"My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."

"The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me ARE the reactions of the world to God."

"My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world."

"If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

"You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

"This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

"Except for God’s teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real. The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is hell?"

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. "

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment."

"When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"The final lesson, which brings the ending of the world, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."

"The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep?"

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function."

""What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?""

"The world is very tired, because it IS the IDEA of weariness. "

"Memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final obstacle, AFTER which is salvation completed, and the Son of God ENTIRELY restored to sanity. For here your world DOES end."

"It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you, if you but raise your eyes. Yet all that WILL occur is YOU will leave the world forever. This is the re-establishment of YOUR will."

"The world is nothing in itself. "

"Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again."

"Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist."

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

"There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?"

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. "

"Never forget the world the sightless "see" must be imagined. "

"This they do not believe. And so they keep the world they learned to "see" in their imagination, believing that their choice is that, or nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived. Thus they DEFINE their life and where they live it, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they have, and all their brothers have. They try to reach each other, and they fail. And fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could CONCEIVE of it. 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."

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. But you will not realize this, until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is NOT GUILTY."

"In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you see him then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

"Deny YOUR world, and judge him not."

"Let me accept the strength God offers me And see no value in this world, that I May find my freedom and deliverance."

"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego’s world because of this. "

"In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God’s Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? "

"Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. As the world uses the term, an individual is capable of "good" and "bad" judgment, and his education aims at strengthening the former and minimizing the latter."

"The world goes against your nature, because it is out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

"The unreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God’s Being with Him, could never be content WITHOUT reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible."

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

"Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin, and seems to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds."

"And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"But in this world there ARE no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear."

"There is no basis FOR a choice in this complex and over-complicated world. For no-one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. "

"Only the Oneness of Knowledge is conflictless. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world. Only IN this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth CAN be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits."

"God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning."

"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ".

""Heaven and Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states."

Personal note: For me it is perfectly clear that God did not create the Earth or this world. We made it as an attack on God and a defense against the nature of Heaven. As such it is a dream illusion, which does not really exist. Our task is to learn to see it in a different light (that's a whole other post), so that we can learn to recognize its unreality and go home to Heaven.

The "tiny mad idea" was an idea of madness, leading to an entire thought system of insanity. Within this thought system there is a sense of self that we call the ego. The course refers to this as yet "unmanifested" thought system as "the first dream", which was then projected out as a "second dream" as the physicality of spacetime.

"The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based." UrG3A9

The ego projected out, ie "mis-created" from fear, a world from the INSANE mind, symbolising in form its ideals, preferences, beliefs and attitudes. This produced the physical world, which symbolises the ego's "attack on God." A sort of solidified defence against the truth. And now the physical world SYMBOLIZES the ego thought system in all its ways.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear." UrW240W32

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death." UrT11J2

"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this." UrT19C6

This means that the way the physical world is set up and how it functions - its nature, the relationship of separate objects, what it seems to mean when things happen, was all originally a symbolic representation of an ego idea of madness. And this isn't with any kind of judgement or negating entering into it. Just its nature and how it functions is NOTHING like God's Kingdom.

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3

For example the ego sees you as a separated off person, and in its insanity (which is sin), this insanity led to the making of the body, giving the body eyes and senses, and regarding the body as a real person.

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" UrW250W41

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin (egoic insane thought system) made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master." UrT20G11

Similarly the ego believes that there is a separation between giving and receiving, between cause (God) and effect (Son). Thus it perceives that to give is to lose, and means deprivation and sacrifice. This plays out PHYSICALLY by virtue of the fact that if you give someone something physical you DO NOT have it any more and have lost it. This is a simple fact. Any object you give you lack.

The idea of SHARING (oneness), natural in heaven, is pretty much obliterated on a physical level. So too is any idea of oneness or real love or creation or extension or sanity or harmlessness or safety or any other property of God. This is why the world is so opposite to heaven and so dysfunctional on a physical level, regardless of any judgements about it. It is designed by the ego to be "physically insane." And yes - that confusion of mind and body is what the ego is all about.

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." UrW153L1

Also on the physical level, when a body is regarded as a person, and if the body dies, this is a statement of the ego belief that death is real and the son of God is dead. Its whole system is anti-life and death promoting. It is against health and wholeness in every way possible.

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain." UrW190L3

The entire notion of physical space is an idea opposite to omnipresence and depends on separation. You can't even have particles of matter without separation. While time is an attack on eternity, attempting to make everything that existed before stop existing (die). Change itself is the idea of uncertainty (fear) and instability and impermanence - the opposite of immortality. As such everything in the physical world is mortal.

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die." UrM13A6

"Death (physical) is the symbol (physical symbol) of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction." UrM28A3

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end." UrW129L2

Everything in the physical world is a SYMBOLIC VERSION OF THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM. Like a physicalised MIND. That's why it was made, that's who made it, and that's how it is set up. So it is indeed a PHYSICALLY INSANE world, so to speak. Riddled with separations, contradictions, attacks, death, murder, lack and loss, suffering of every kind, etc. All ideas the ego made up.

You can see throughout all these quotes that there is clearly a level of mind post-separation which is an insane thought system, which houses all of the ego's fearful beliefs. That mind is mad and dark and horrifying. That mind MADE spacetime and everything in it as a physicalised, condensed version of that thought system. You can see in the quotes sometimes references to the underlying "ego mindset", and in others to the physical world that was made FROM that.

"You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error (the insane ego mad idea thought system). It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge (the physical world/spacetime illusion projected from it). What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them (physical things). But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error (underneath the surface, the ego mindset that made it), which seemed to cast you out of Heaven" UrT18B12

"That was the first projection of error outward (the physical world was a symbolic projection of the mental error). The world (spacetime, physical) arose to hide it (to hide the underlying mindset of ego), and became the screen (like a physical screen) on which it (the ego mindset) was projected (as a second projection onto the world AFTER the world was projected), and drawn between you and truth." UrT18B3

The ego thus projects its mindset out, making an insane world, which symbolises TOTAL INSANITY and a TOTAL OPPOSITE to heaven, as physical form and spacetime and galaxies. And then it projects its underlying insanity ONTO that world in its purpose and USE OF that world. To sort of "operate it", make it real and believe that what happens physically is what it means. The physical world is a MEANINGLESS world, and has no meaning of its own, because it is really nothing, like a void.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space (void) which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void (spacetime) may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW13L2

You can see clearly that 1) We were in heaven ("level 1") and believed the mad idea, 2) This produces a whole thought system of insanity ("level 2"), 3) Ego symbolises this thought system, 4) Ego insanity projects out as spacetime ("level 3") a physical fake "universe", 5) That universe is meaningless and nothing, and now the ego tries to project its MEANINGS onto that spacetime world, using the SAME insanity it used to make it.

So now the ego's thought system, mindset, beliefs, attitudes, identification, starts to PERCEIVE (through the body) the physical world IT MADE, from its vantage point, with a psychological false perception that MATCHES a PHYSICAL false perception (physical sight).

It sees it through a thought system of insanity and darkness and evil. And so it believes that the physical world is reality, it believes people are bodies, it believes there is no level of mind (the physical denies the mind, hides the ego thought system), and basically regards physical things as the symbolic version of itself.

Thus even the body symbolises the ego, the egoic mind identifies with the physical, and believes this is all that exists, hiding in the body as "its chosen home." The ego in the mind sort of now "takes up residency" in the body it projected.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. UrT15I8

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS." UrT23B3

So now you've got the underlying ego thought system which is insane still, a physical world being projected by that thought system as an hallucination, and then further projections of insane egoic meaning ONTO that physical world by that thought system to try to keep the separateness going.

For example it says that a physical person is the son of God, and when the physical body dies the son of God is dead. That death is a hard ending from which you cannot return. That's the egos idea of a total and utter permanent destruction and cessation of all creation. Putting a STOP to God. So it sees the death of a body as a total ending, after which there is nothing, and no coming back from it, producing horrendous loss. And there should be loss if a part of reality itself has been lost.

But this is the ego's insane perception of the world that IT set up to look this way on the surface. There is ANOTHER WAY to perceive the physical world thought because the insanity in the MIND can be corrected, causing the mind to USE the world for a higher purpose. You can see it without the ego, without the insanity, without the murderous thought system of separation. You can see it with the Holy Spirit with Christ Vision and forgiveness.

This forgiveness looks upon the highly malfunctioning lacking world that your ego made, and OVERLOOKS the ways in which it falls horrendously short of an immaculate creation. It does not BELIEVE the forms of the world. It does not interpret change as death, or the death of the body as a finality. I takes no meaning FROM the world, because it knows it HAS NONE. It recognizes that what is real is NOT OF THIS WORLD, and is utterly unaffected by what happens in form. Thus death is nothing and the world is nothing.

To this mindset of sanity and reason there is no death at all, and all physical things are illusions not to be believed. A mere MIS-creation produced by a MAD mind. It can be forgiven and reinterpreted and UNDONE by sanity. And then it must disappear, when an ego insane thought system is no longer upholding its separations and its physicalised lies and literal physical madness. The world is a mistake, not a sin, and mistakes can be undone.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error (a projection from an insane mind), and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation (insane mind) has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world (physical) be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear (physical literal disappearance), and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well." UrW240W31

Even death can be reinterpreted and seen as "not meaning" what it means to the ego. It can mean nothing more than that the illusory form has changed and the soul/mind has left the body to continue its eternal existence. That is a thought and perspective of permanence and immortality and continuation, rather than a thought of death and endings.

And so thoughts of eternal life replace the egoic thoughts of death and interruption, and this causes us to PERCEIVE the physical world as "the forgiven world", overlooking its nonsense and disregarding its physical falsity. Such a healed mind RUNS OPPOSITE to the nature of the world, and the entire thought system and physical nature is REVERSED.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." UrM29A2

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away (earth, physical, spacetime, bodies) in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (Kingdom of God, heaven) is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE (cus ego made it FROM falseness)" UrT12G3

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7v "Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it (how it perceive it is the SAME AS how it is designed physically), but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home." UrT5E15

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

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

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world is the picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "The hell you made".

Okay so, apparently, we MADE some kind of a world, which was designed to attack God, is made of illusions, tries to shut God out, depicts the death of God's Son, and is totally opposite to heaven as a form of hell, where bodies sin and try to prove death can happen.

So now we're in a position where we can ask a really interesting question. What do we do about this? How is this resolved? What's the Holy Spirit's solution? How should we be regarding or viewing this hellish realm of sin and attack and death that we made? What is the way to return to Heaven? How does God deal with this situation?

There are many significant parts of the Course which talk about the fact of what this world IS. It's nature. As described above, an illusory hellish dream of sin and death. In some of the perspectives Jesus gives, he reminds us of how meaningless, pointless, non-existent, purposeless, substanceless this world is.

This seems to be a very important aspect of how we overcome it. A recognition of what it is and what it is not. No rose tinted glasses, no fluffy romantic language, no trying to make it out to BE Heaven or to BE God's creation. Just a simple recognition of its illusory nature, a picture of impossibilities and nonsenser. Just a straight forward honest appraisal of what we made and why it is not real. For example:

"(mind) ... 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."

"There is no world" "The world sill spin into the nothingness from which it came." "Eternity will shine away the world." "A world forgiven cannot last."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while." ... "The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?" ... "Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers." ... "Yet they are not deceived by what they see." ... Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

So in this perspective, Jesus teaches us that this world we made, is an illusion of a world, which we mistakenly think is REAL. And we're supposed to recognize it's an illusion/dream and not believe in it, we're supposed to recognize it holds nothing that we want, that it is unreal, that we are not of it, the body is not who we are, and really that none of it is happening. "All events are nowhere." It has no consequences, nothing that happens causes anything real, there is no real sin. "All changes wrought are substance-less." And this proceeds all the way to the world disappearing. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

There is no particular love-loss for the world in this view. It's just simple honest recognition of the fact that it is a world made from the denial of the Kingdom, dreamed in an attempt to attack God and His Son, it is illusory and has no real effects, no part of it is valuable or permanent, and it doesn't really exist.

There is, however, also an additional component to coming to recognize "awareness of dreaming of hell". To realize the world is not the real world. And this has to do with the Holy Spirit's reinterpretation of what we made.

The world we made, was made in total "false perception". The body was made to be fixed in a state of false perception, where it does not overlook/forgive ANYTHING. It is blinded by perception of forms. Its vision stops at the outside surface of nothing. It "sees" only what BLOCKS vision. "These eyes made not to see will never see."

The body's eyes can only report that "the world seems real" "it seems to exist" "it seems to be happening." They only see "sin is real" "bodies are sinful". We jumped all the way from perfect Heaven to total hell. We designed the world to be a total opposite to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But what does the Holy Spirit do with this hell that we made?

What he represents and makes possible, is an alternative way of looking at the hell we made. A re-interpretation of it. This doesn't really CHANGE IT, because it can't BE anything other than an illusion. You can't make it BE Heaven - God already accomplished Heaven's creation. But you can learn not to be deceived by it, so that when you see it, you don't BUY INTO IT. You don't MAKE it real to you.

"the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made".

"This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's ALTERNATIVE, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking BACK the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released, because the mind acknowledges "this is not DONE TO me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and ALL the dreaming of the world undone."

His goal is to UNDO the dreaming of the world. To take back the cause of it. To stop the making of it. To cancel it, reverse it, dissolve it, erase it, disappear it. To STOP DREAMING. This is His aim and guarantee. But before this happens, something happens to how you experience the world you made. We're introduced to this idea that the WAY YOU SEE, perception, can be modified and repurposed, so that you gradually invest in the dream less, believe it's illusions less, are convinced it is a picture of real sin and death less, and so learn to overlook/forgive/forget it.

This means that initially, it seems as if the world is really hell. Unforgiven, it is a "real nightmare". The body is designed to fixate on the nightmare and make it seem real. But we have the ability to change our mind, which changes our beliefs, which change our perceptions. We can choose again and NOT believe in what the world is showing us, and to regard the body as DECEIVING us. It's still a picture of hell. It's still "the strange world you made." It still seems to run by ego laws of death and everything in it still is limited and flawed, per the laws of illusions/death. But if you don't BELIEVE IN IT, you don't take these appearances at face value. You are not deceived. You are not tempted.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."

"Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"And he will reinterpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."

"I am the light of the world" "It is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation. It brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose."

We're also told that God loves the world. Even though the world is an imaginary illusion of death, a picture of hell, somehow God still loves it so that He does NOT believe in it or mistake it for Reality. But let's be clear, that loving the world does not MAKE the world BE love. It doesn't MAKE it holy. It merely looks upon it WITH love and holiness, forgiving what is there, not believing in what it depicts. The picture of crucifixion turns into an empty MIRROR, in which you see YOUR reflection. In this, the world is meaningless in and of itself, so by taking away its meanings you reflect only Gods' meaning INTO it. This makes the world SEEM holy or heaven-like.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world."

"What the world is, is but a fact. (it is a picture of hell) You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose **how** you would see it."

"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right?"

What he's clearly saying here is that you have dreamed of hell, in an attempt to destroy God and His son. And Earth is still Heaven's opposite. But this hell only seems to have any reality while you believe it is real, while you are judging and deceiving. God does not believe in hell being real. He knows there is no real sin or death. So he looks UPON hell and does not make it real, does not see any proof of real sin in it, sees no evidence of real death happening, and so has no grounds for being anything other than loving. Laughing at it. Shining it away.

So now in the Holy Spirit's true perception, everything about the world is OVERLOOKED, ie not taken at face value. The world is regarded as a thin veil of nothingness hanging over the face of Christ. Substanceless, causeless, not doing anything, imaginary. An image of crucifixion still, but depicting nothing but a fantasy. An image of death and sin still, but depicting only an idle wish that sin and death can happen. It's not taken seriously. And so he does not see REAL sin in it. In this way, the picture of crucifixion is forgiven.

Here before your eyes is a vision of hell, a veil of death, which the body wants to report as real, but which the Spiritual Eye recognizes is entirely fictional and absurd. Not even worth paying attention to. But because the Holy Spirit does not see "real sin" in it, he does not project sin onto it, or judge it, or condemn it, or mistake it for reality. It is now a picture of death, interpreted as nothing, depicting fake sins, containing no real sin, and so it is forgiven. It is not seen as "full of sin". Nor is it sinless. It is a forgiven illusion, seen through and disregarded,.

And so instead it seems to symbolize innocence and holiness. If no attack or hate or judgement is laid UPON it, it's merely seen as a thin veil of illusions. It has lost its heaviness and darkness. It is now a very light picture of darkness. A thin picture of solidity. A loved picture of illusions of hatred. Because the world you made is always an illusion, always artificial, always not real, always false, always a depiction of impossibilities, and always nothing. Not taken seriously, it ends in laughter.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone ***what more remains to keep a separated world in place?*** For place has gone as well, along with time. (end of spacetime.) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate **it could not remain where separation is impossible.** Forgiveness proves it is impossible ***because it sees it not.*** And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"Can what has no beginning really end? The world ***will end** in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, ***will cover it***, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ***ends the world*** that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

The illusion of forgiveness covers the evil world by not BELIEVING that it is real. By recognizing SIN does not exist. So this picture of sin is false. The perspective of the big picture reveals the world's illusion, and correctly perceives it as a deception. It REPLACES the world's meaninglessness. It SHINES AWAY the world because illusions recognized must disappear. A forgiven world is a world recognized as FALSE. A FALSE world, perceived WITH love, which overlooks and shines away the world. God erases the world with love. You cannot love it and keep it. A world forgiven cannot last.

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (Earth, illusion), ***and do not want.*** The only effort you need make, to give this world (Earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (heaven), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all-embracing. Here is it nourished, for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real."

"When not one thought of sin remains" appears to be a long-range goal indeed. But time stands still, and waits on the goal of God's teachers. Not one thought of sin will remain the instant any one of them accepts Atonement for himself."

"***The world will end*** when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible.The final lesson, which brings ***the ending of the world***, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared *****to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach.*****"

"The world will **end** in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will **end** in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will **end** in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. **In blessing it departs**, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven (symbolically) is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is ***reflected*** (symbolic)."

To turn hell into heaven simply means, to learn to recognize that the world is not REALLY hell, it is not REALLY anything. It's claims are ignored. It's proof is thrown out. It's picture of death are laughed at. It's sins are not taken seriously. It's illusions do not deceive. The picture of crucifixion is SEEN WITH love, and a **reflection** of love and holiness is seen "in it". As if looking upon a picture of devastation and war in an extremely happy mood. What it claims to be is not what it is. You override it. And then the world disappears completely.

"**A world forgiven cannot last.** It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

"Eternity will **shine away** the world."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, **no walls, no bodies**, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The world (Earth) stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ***nothing more than just a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last **for only what it is.** (an illusion of a sin/attack/death world.) And now ***it cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

In ACIM we're told about "the real world" and many people have different ideas about what that's referring to. Here's my take on it. It took me quite a long time to realize this.

Contrary to popular belief, the real world is actually another name for Heaven. God's creation. Reality. This is why Jesus correctly uses the word "Real" in relation to it. It is the Heaven that God created, which also is another name for the Sonship. It is described for example in this quote:

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

The shining forever only takes place in Heaven. It's not a temporary shining or an intermediary place. There is no Earth there, no bodies, no walls, and no sun to cause "night and day." No buildings, no streets, nothing physical. It's talking about Heaven.

Now, in some OTHER statements Jesus makes, he is speaking in a context of having perception still. And when He is speaking within this context, He refers to "the real world". But is now referring to the real world, Heaven, from a perceptual standpoint. So now what he's calling the real world, is the PERCEPTION OF the real world. It's a symbol, within a dream. An interpretation or judgement, a partial glimpse or reflection of Heaven within the separated state. He refers to that "image" of the real world AS the real world, because you are PERCEIVING the real world - heaven - but this is not the same thing as being IN Heaven.

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."

"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

Jesus says for example that you can PERCEIVE the real world, which means that you can be still OUTSIDE of the Kingdom, looking in from a separated state - because "perception is a separated state". It's like window shopping.

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."

"The forgiven world", is actually a reference to Earth/this universe which is seen through, past, and beyond, as a thin veil which covers the face of Christ. The "face of Christ" is another synonym for the PERCEPTION OF the real world of heaven - sort of an outside exterior look at the surface of Heaven from a separated state. The forgiven world is Earth, the real world is Heaven. And "the real world" (perceived) is what you see BEYOND "the forgiven world" (earth) when you overlook it with forgiveness but are still having perception. And "those who perceive still need healing" and "perception of the truth (perception of the real world) is not the same as knowing it (being IN IT, one with it)".

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world (perception of heaven), reaching quietly and gently across chaos (earth/hell/forgiven world), and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf (part of the forgiven world, NOT the real world) becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection (signs are symbolic, not the ACTUAL thing - the perfection seen is the real world BEYOND the forgiven world of the leaf). From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

Similarly "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" really means that you look at/through/beyond the forgiven world of Earth, it becomes transparent, and you see BEYOND IT, to the real world, and it is the real world that is GOD... that you SEE BEYOND the physical, beyond forms, and seems to be "in" what you physically see, because you're seeing both the physical AND the real world at the same time. This does not in any way make the forgiven world REAL, NOR does it associate it with God. God is IN what you see because he is BEYOND the forgiven world that forgiveness is OVERLOOKING and seeing PAST, TO reality. And when you forgive the world and see God "in" it, the world disappears and reveals there is ONLY GOD, no world.

"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

Once the face of christ is seen, ie real world is perceived, the forgiven world - the veil - actually disappears from sight completely, because "it is impossible to see two worlds."

"This world you see (earth/forgiven world) MUST BE DENIED (not put on a pedestal!!!), for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS (there ARE TWO WORLDS, heaven and earth, and Heaven is HERE, Earth IS NOT HERE). For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - its like a seesaw, you can be up or down but not both. As true perception dawns, false perception ends. As heaven is recognized, earth is forgotten.

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ (earth/forgiven world) is powerless before His Majesty, and **disappears** before His holy sight." (thus earth can't be holy)

"Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light." (body is made of darkness - "the body is a dream" "the body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and projected outwards.")

Here for me is the key distinction between these "four" different worlds/terminologies:

Unforgiven world" Earth/this world, not overlooked, it is an illusion, and IF YOU BELIEVE IT IS REAL, you are delusional and insane and are blinded by perception of form. You are not seeing PAST form so are no forgiving. This makes the world seem like a real place, a real nightmare of hell. Where "things happen", people suffer, and there is real death. THIS is "the world you made." It has nothing to do with God, and the Holy Spirit DOES NOT see it because His forgiveness COMPLETELY overlooks it and fixates on the real world.

Forgiven world: Earth/this world, overlooked with forgiveness, seen through, recognized WITH truth of true perception as BEING FALSE, becomes transparent and disappears when the face of christ/real world is seen. True perception overlooks it. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Teachers of God (not advanced) still see it overlaid on top of the perception of the real world as a thin veil and so can operate "in" the forgiven world/earth from a state of "mostly awake" or "Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers". This awareness is NOT awakening. It is "conscious sleep", because dreams are still being DREAMED.

Real world (as perception of heaven from outside): Also is the same thing as the face of christ, and "the real world still is but a dream". This perception OF the real world isn't reality, it's a reflection of Heaven within the dreaming state. It seems heaven-like and "holy" but it is still an illusion. Perceiving this FULLYy you NO LONGER SEE planet Earth and cannot remain in this state longer than an instant before God scoopes you up and you return to awareness of BEING IN Heaven.

Real world (as Heaven itself): Being IN heaven, with no perception, no forgiven world, no bodies, no buildings etc. This is the living world of light. God's creation. The sonship. Reality. The REAL world that is not earth in any way.

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike (no perception IN the real world of heaven). Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done (includes atonement). And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God (all physical forms/worlds). God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant (perception of real world has made it impossible to see physical worlds), and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause (forgiven world disappears in this perception of light). For where God's memory has come at last (in heaven) there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies (no f'ing bodies in heaven!), and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

Here for example is a reference to how Heaven, the REAL real world, can reach into THIS world - the forgiven world.

"This aching world (Earth/physical/unforgiven world/hell/even as the forgiven world) has not the power to touch the living world (real world of Heaven) at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world (Heaven IS ANOTHER WORLD - the REAL world). But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here (outside the Kingdom, in this illusory world), BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you (from Heaven). Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth/unforgiven world), and do not want (earth holds nothing that I want). The only effort you need make, to give this world (earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (God created Heaven not earth), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE. (Earth, un/forgiven world, is FALSE!)."

"The world you made (earth etc) is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself (heaven)."

God created the real world of heaven: "The real world (heaven, perceived) is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade (earth will disappear). But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son ("And God so loved the world (heaven) that he gave it TO His only begotten Son - God doesn't give planets."). Your ONE reality (heaven) was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him. (in heaven)"

Now, the Holy Spirit is a simultaneous MAKER (not creator) of the world you made. You made hell, but he repurposes it to direct you towards Heaven, and to change your perception of/making of it so that you stop interpreting it as hell and reinterpret it as a REFLECTION of Heaven, once removed from Heaven. HE, therefore, made "the real world" as in, the PERCEPTION OF the world GOD CREATED, Heaven, from inside the dream. And this real world is the face of christ. It is NOT EARTH. He ignores, overlooks, cancels, everything of the forgiven world and points beyond it.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it (heaven), but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made (you made earth in error/sin), BECAUSE it has another Maker Who CAN reconcile its **goal** with His Creator's purpose.

In His perception of the world (forgiven world, totally overlooked), nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness (and "to see a sinless body is impossible" because perception does NOT SEE bodies). Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

You can only perceive bodies if you believe in sin. You can only see bodies if you are Unforgiving. You can only see bodies/the forgiven world if you are NOT fully forgiving! Because a forgiven world cannot last and sinlessness is not OF the forgiven world, it's of the real world. Holy Spirit totally overlooks Earth and bodies and the forgiven world and fixates on the real world, temporarily through perception OF the real world and simultaneously IN the real world (heaven).

The Holy Spirit offers a happy dream to replace the nightmare dream that you made. It does not replace the world you made, it reinterprets it, OVERLOOKS it, and looks toward Heaven. The world you made as opposite to Heaven is hell, this planet, this universe. Spacetime. It is opposite to Heaven in every way. Holy Spirit allows you to forgive it and overlook it and forget it. This does not mean looking AT IT and LOVING IT. IT means learning TO SEE, by NOT SEEING THE WORLD - not allowing "perception of form" to BLOCK YOUR SIGHT. To look away from dark dreams of hell towards the light and eventually beyond it entirely. The real world is BEYOND the forgiven world. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision.

"You will first DREAM of peace (forgiven world/perception of real world), and THEN awaken to it (in Heaven/THE real world). Your first exchange of what you made for what you want, is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love (false perception vs true perception). In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams (earth + symbol of real world) where ALL perception is."

"And the real world is but your welcome of what always was (perception of heaven gets you ready to wake up TO heaven). Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening (being IN heaven) to what you have NOT lost. "

"The world you made" and "The world you see" are this planet and the surrounding environment. All of spacetime. You are not supposed to hold it dear or value it or want to keep it. *****SIGHT OF IT, IS COSTING YOU*****. "This world you see (earth, with body's eyes) MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ****YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS****. (very key mechanic, one or the other not both) For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - you cannot see earth if you see heaven, period. You cannot see even the perception of the real world/face of christ and still see physical objects.

"You do not really want **the world you see** (earth + space), for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built (yes physical houses) have never sheltered you. The roads you made (yes physical roads) have led you nowhere, and no city that you built (yes like chicago, new york, london) has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of ***death*** upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it." (get rid of that shit!)

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

True perception, perception of the real world (heaven), the face of christ, the happy dream, are all the same. Perception is always within the dream, OF the dream, or as an interpretation of heaven. It can reflect heaven or rather you can shine heaven's light into the dream from heaven and illuminate it and shine it away or overlook it, and see YOUR reflection of your IMAGE of your real self there. Once removed from reality.

"Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth."

Knowing occurs only IN heaven, not through perception.

Notice also there is a huge difference between the REFLECTION of heaven, and ACTUALLY BEING IN heaven.

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them (YOU are the reflection), are ready at last for Heaven. There, ***holiness is not a reflection***, but rather the ***ACTUAL CONDITION*** of what was but reflected TO them here (on earth, BUT IN YOU, Earth does not become holy). God is no **image** (reflection are IMAGES in a dream), and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth (ACTUAL holiness). When **no perception** stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own (perception is gone), the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The **reflections** that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time (within the dream of spacetime), but bring eternity nearer or farther.

But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time (beyond spacetime!) Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its ***reflection IN you***, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."

PERCEIVING the real world (heaven) is seeing the "face" or "surface of" Christ from the outside. Outside the kingdom essentially. "The world", aka Earth etc, is a block - a literal physical blockage - a wall of sin - the veil - standing before and in the way of sight of heaven. Jesus refers to it as "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes are totally blinded by and cannot see past. PHYSICAL sin.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world (earth) forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

So as stated in you cannot see two worlds, once you FULLY perceive with true perception, you become INCAPABLE of seeing the world of bodies. The veil - which houses all the bodies and planets - DISAPPEARS, and now you PERCEIVE Heaven only. This is perception of the real world. What many people think "is the real world". But this reference, this perceived IMAGE of a real world, is a dream. ie "The real world still is but a dream"

The world of bodies, planets, animals, forests, civilizations, galaxies, is a dream world. It becomes the forgiven world. HELL, becomes forgiven. And this "forgiven world" WAS made of the idea of sin and separation and death. And by forgiving it, you are OVERLOOKING it, which causes it to DISAPPEAR. If you forgive hell, it will disappear. If you overlook sin, things MADE OF SIN, will disappear. If you overlook the separation, THE GAP, which contains spacetime, will disappear. And leave no trace in its going.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin (earth is made of sin), for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world (spacetime world) in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. (spacetime ends) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible (bodies cannot exist in heaven, they rely on spacetime). Forgiveness proves it is impossible (no exceptions) because it sees it not (forgiveness, complete as the atonement, DOES NOT SEE THE WORLD OF BODIES). And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty. This is the shift that true perception brings"

Once the world is forgiven by all beings/souls, the forgiven world will entirely vanish. It is made of darkness. It is the ABSENCE of light. It is the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." It is opposition to reality. It is denial. It is made of the attempt to claim that light does not exist and darkness exists. When the light comes, light shines away darkness because darkness is not a real "thing". It's merely the illusion of the absence of light/love/God, and being an illusion it vanishes when it is recognized as such. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot stay without illusions."

"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them."

"And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless."

"No darkness abides ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, so your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your OWN mind." (yes, your OWN mind, as an individual mind, one of many)

"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."

"The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes." (body's eyes cannot see reality ever, and it also cannot perceive the real world!)

"The body is darkness."

The universe, as we know it, the physical, with Earth and other stuff, will disappear in the light. Earth does not translate INTO light, because it an ILLUSION of light's absence. It does not BECOME heaven. Earth is the ILLUSION, that there is an absence of heaven. It's a lack of light, which is impossible. "It is the world you see that is impossible." It's NOT THERE NOW. It's just an illusion, not a real thing. IT doesn't have an "it". When there seems to be darkness it is only because there seems to be a lack of light. There is a huge difference between light's seeming absence, and ACTUAL real darkness. Real darkness does not exist. The world, does not exist. It will simply vanish as an hallucination. There is no world. There is no body. There is no earth in heaven.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

THERE WILL NOT BE A SINGLE SHRED OF EARTH KEPT WHEN IT IS SHONE AWAY BY THE LIGHT, just as all darkness VANISHES COMPLETELY when you switch the light on. "Illusions leave NO TRACE in their going."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it (because to SEE it you will NO LONGER see earth). For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

And yes it does say literally, the SUN.... will vanish.

And then... there's being IN heaven.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (earth) and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself (earth does this) is not of Him. He did **not** make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

Yes the physical planet earth, hell, is opposite to Heaven in EVERY WAY. And God would've have to have been SPLIT MINDED In order to make it because he DID create Heaven and heaven is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Earth's nature and laws. "The laws of this world go against your nature." So he could not have created Earth AS WELL as Heaven. And earth IS NOT Heaven, it's a "sorry outcome".

"He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. " (you think you abide in, live, in reality, on planet earth. It is not reality, it is hell)

You can go beyond this world to the world of light, Heaven, which God created as your true home. Your REAL HOME. The REAL world.

"Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams. (talking about PERCEPTION of the real world/forgiven world).

You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which ends together as you pass beyond the door." (into heaven).

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy (perception OF the real world from outside). It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. (forgiven world has disappeared). The bridge between that world (perception of the real world) and this (Jesus talking from INSIDE OF HEAVEN - the REAL world) is SO little, and SO easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different (yes, two entirely different worlds, earth and heaven). Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world (earth/forgiven world/perception OF real world) at all (from beyond it). This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time (spacetime) into eternity (heaven), and beyond all ugliness (YES EVERYTHING IN SPACETIME IS UGLY - the forgiven world is ugly), into beauty that will enchant you (the beauty of HEAVEN ITSELF), and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

A radical teaching in the Course which not many are willing to accept, is that the condition of your body is still subject to the Golden Rule. That means that what applies to you applies to others equally. So when your body is sick, it IS attempting to attack both you AND your brother. It is not sick in isolation, it is a double-edged sword. And while your body is sick, it IS accusing your brother of sin, attempting to show to Him HIS sinfulness, attempting to attack Him and make Him dead.

Therefore the ONLY way to exonerate Him and to PROVE to Him in an undeniable way, that He must be innocent, is to demonstrate a body which has no signs of sickness or attack. YOUR health is HIS health. The body must become a symbol and representation of immortality, a sign of life, so that when your brother looks upon its loveliness He recognizes HE must be innocent because YOUR body shows no signs of effects, and therefore He cannot have attacked you. This is not merely wishful thinking. It requires a supernatural state of protection in which it becomes IMPOSSIBLE for your body to be attacked, sick, or dead.

This is also very clearly and radically spelled out in Chapter 27, section 2... "the picture of crucifixion", in which Jesus states we are to stop demonstrating sickness TO others, in order to teach only life and innocence. He even goes on to say that the Holy Spirit has prepared an alternative BODY, which is free from all signs of attack, and we are to show it to others to prove "brother, at your hand I live", defying all attempts by others to find signs of the effects of their attempted attacks, thus exonerating them.

There are few sections of the course less understood and more denied than this one.

Additionally, in Chapter 27 section 3 "the fear of healing" (!!) which follows on, Jesus opens with this statement, building upon this:

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

So what he is saying here is that a damaged body (sick, ill, diseased, broken, in pain etc) is ACTIVELY ACCUSING. In order to BE in states of sickness the mind has to entertain level confusion, has to project causality outside itself, sees itself as at the effect of external causes, and thus sees brothers as the CAUSE of the sickness, thus accusing anything other than yourself of causing the suffering. And then the body SHOWS a representation of this mindset, accusing your brother through PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, that HE must be the sinner who caused this. "Brother at your hand I die".

And so when you are making your body show up as sick, demonstrating self-attack, you attack both you and your brother, because separation comes BETWEEN you. The physical form of sickness is a weapon of accusation against both of you. Therefore... and this should be obvious unless you are into justifications and level confusions and denial, that the ONLY WAY to EXONERATE your brother, while you still have a body, is to NOT SHOW HIM any signs of sickness or damage in your body. If your body is still in a state of sickness, you ARE still accusing him, and therefore your mind CANNOT be healed. This is why, without exception, "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." There is no escape from this. You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind.

This is a Course in miracles and it is a course in LIFE. It is not a course in being sick, which is a little death. It is a course in HEALTH. It is a course in healing. It is a course in removing ALL signs of attack and separation in the body PRIOR to being in a mental state capable of resurrection. The course ends in resurrection, not death. You MUST NOT SHOW SICKNESS OR DEATH TO THE WORLD!

Jesus goes on to say "Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

And so when your brother attempts to accuse or attack your body, you must DEMONSTRATE (which means to show physically), that his efforts produced no EFFCTS, your body HAS no effects of sickness or damage, your body could not BE attacked, and you are a picture of invulnerability. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" speaks of this protection, which is SUPERNATURAL and defies all ego laws and laws of physics:

"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. "

And let us also remember from the manual for teachers:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.

Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. THE MIND MAKES THIS DECISION, AS IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION. ...Sickness is now impossible to him. ....Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

In this there are no exceptions. The condition of the body REFLECTS the condition of the mind, and the mind is the ONLY CAUSE of the body's condition. There are NO outside powers that bring oppression or suffering, including death. You are supposed to DEMONSTRATE LIVE that nothing can hurt you or your body. Not even your brothers attacks. And even as he attempts to attack you, it has NO EFFECT, proving IN FORM in undeniable evidence, that he MUST NOT have sinned because it had no consequences, and therefore He is innocent. His innocence is proved to him through your miraculous demonstration. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle DEMONSTRATES this."

To suggest you can have sane healthy mind while the body remains sick is DENIAL, it is a split mind, and impossible. It is your responsibility to SHOW that nothing happens to you against your will, you cannot be attacked unless you attack yourself, and "no one dies unless they choose to do so" - which means NO ONE ELSE can make you die if you do not choose it. The message given by the mind and the message given by the BODY MUST BE ONE, otherwise you are giving double messages and are a LIAR.

So yes, this DOES MEAN, that the state of your PHYSICAL BODY is actually important while you have it, it is part of the MIND's experience, it is not exempt from your demonstration of sanity, it is supposed to be USED to communicate health and healing, and therefore YOU MUST STOP MAKING IT SICK OR DEAD in order to complete the Course! The course ends in resurrection, not death. No-one escapes a dream of death through death. You HAVE to make the body healthy and healed and whole and free from sickness of every kind BEFORE your mind can be ready to overcome death entirely. And that means there is a supernatural POWER that you must demonstrate to others. This is why "Miracles are teaching devices."

All those who would say the body doesn't matter, or it isn't able to be sick, or it doesn't exist, or mind is separate from body, or sickness isn't real, or whatever other DENIAL BULLSHIT, I suggest you reconsider and read what Jesus has actually said. HE says the body must be used as evidence of immortality and innocence, and you can't do that if it's still in a state of corruption. I suggest you look at Chapter 19 - obstacles to peace - the INCORRUPTIBLE BODY. Here is the opening paragraphs:

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

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

It's time to start raising the dead and showing that you cannot be hurt in any way, on any level, even in form.

We are not supposed to be moving TOWARDS death, in any way. Not even physically.

From Chapter 19 section 9 - "the attraction of death":

"And so it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life.

And yet, a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hand of forgiveness, and watch the chains fall away, along with YOURS. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him, he can escape with your forgiveness.

This is NOT arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you who choose His Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is NOT to death, nor to its master."

CLEARLY, if you are moving toward death, you are moving away from LIFE, and God's Will is that YOU LIVE. "It is not God's will that you suffer". You MUST NOT MAKE YOUR BODY DIE otherwise you are NOT DOING GOD'S WILL. This IS what the Course is teaching. STOP DYING!

Even if the body is not real, even if it is an illusion, you CANNOT continue having it be sick or dead while maintaining the you are awake and spiritual. You MUST use it to demonstrate immortality, health, happiness and holiness. You MUST use it to bring healing to others. You MUST use it as a communication medium through which miracles are performed for others. And you must use it to EXONERATE your brother of all sin. If you are moving into physical sickness, you HAVE defenses against the truth. If you are moving toward death, YOU DO WORSHIP IT.

You are supposed to become CAPABLE of overcoming death entirely, making death impossible for you, PROVING it is impossible for you, and not ALLOWING OR CHOOSING death to "happen to" the body against your will. "No one dies without his own consent." You CANNOT have a sane mind without a healthy body. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves".

It is all simple and clear. This is a Course in the LIVING and a moving closer TO LIFE, which is God. You cannot approach God, who is life, and have sickness and death be maintained on any level. The body MUST RESURRECT and become holy. Failure to do so is failing the course.

---

Below is the full quote from the course about how you use the body to teach the innocence or sinfulness of another:

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins.

Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.

It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.

The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short, and NOT esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures COULD there be that will endure? Are not the frail ENTITLED to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.

These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.

The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.

Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function be both reconciled at last, and seen as one."