In ACIM there is a theme which says ... we need to surrender control of our lives and hand it over to the Holy Spirit in trust.

We've put ourselves in a position of being greatly disadvantaged, blinded, confused, lost, alone. We can't see the whole picture, we don't have all the facts, we are lacking greatly.

And yet at the same time, we've adopted a position of trying to be an "authority". As though we have rejected the authority of God. We don't want God telling us what to do, what is true, how to live, or anything. We value our own judgement, we value our intellect, we value our experience and education, and think that we know it all - that we don't need or want any help.

In that position, we have to depend on our own strength - which is really a lack of strength, which makes us afraid. We have to make all decisions on our own, which leads to huge amounts of guilt and fear. We have to try to control everything, which leads to everything becoming uncontrollable. And we stubbornly refuse to admit to being mistaken.

What if God came along and said, hey, I will just plan your whole future for you, I will orchestrate everything that is going to happen, I will choose everything for you, I will make all decisions, I will smooth the way, I will cause the right people to show up at the right time, I will put you in the right situations, I will guide the right people to come to you for help from me, and we'll do this all together.

What would you say to handing over control and management of your whole life to the Holy Spirit? Would you accept an off-the-shelf inheritance, rather than one you made up yourself? Would you be willing to admit that you are not in a POSITION to be ABLE to correctly do anything on your own?

The course has several teachings that focus on this in different ways.

1) You cannot decide anything on your own

2) You're not in a position to judge anything correctly

3) You're supposed to put your whole future into God's hands

4) You're supposed to let the Holy Spirit make all decisions

5) You're supposed to go where you're directed

6) You'll be told specifically what to do

7) If you depend on yourself you become afraid

8 ) You are trying to take on the Holy Spirit's function

9) You're being asked to resign as your own teacher

10) There is an atonement plan in place

11) You're asked not to interfere with God's plan for salvation

12) The Holy Spirit leads you to eternal life by his planned events

13) You are nothing without God

14) The right people are being sent to you at the right time

15) You don't know anything because you lost knowledge

16) You have a big problem with God having authority

17) The ego in you has ruined your life and you trust it

18) You don't trust God to look after you

19) You think you are separate and autonomous

20) You keep trying to control and manage reality

The list goes on and on. The central core of all of this is you RECOGNIZING that you are NOT in a position of knowledge or capability. You have put yourself at a disadvantage, with limited abilities, a massive lack of awareness, a great inability to make wise decisions, you're making a mess of your own life. We've even given ourselves learning disabilities.

Rather than carrying on like a bunch of headless chickens, it would be better for us to have humility and humbleness and admit that we are ILL EQUIPPED to run our lives. That we do in fact NEED HELP. This takes surrender and willingness to look at the fact that we are essentially very disabled in our ability to be aware of the whole picture, or to know anything for sure.

In the course Jesus asks us to admit that we cannot judge on our own, and any time that we judge anything without total whole awareness we are making a mistake. That it's not just that we make bad judgements all the time, but factually we cannot actually make any judgement at all. Because we are so out of touch with reality and knowledge.

Instead of us being so arrogant, so dependent on ourselves, so alone and isolated, so putting our egos on pedestals, idols worshipping ourselves, thinking we're better than others and proud of all our useless education and worldly learning, perhaps we should be admitting that we generally suck. We have very limited resources, very limited perception, very limited truth and very limited ability.

So that being the case, we are far better off admitting that without God we are nothing. That since we're not aware of everything right now, we cannot do anything correctly. We are lost in the woods. We need help from outside of the scope of this world. And that means admitting that you are flawed and limited.

Egos everywhere will not like the idea whatsoever of admitting to being limited or incapable. Ego will take it as an affront, suggesting you are inadequate, uneducated, don't know enough, not successful enough, not enough social standing, not intelligent enough, stupid, flawed, lacking in some way. Ego does not like to admit that it is woefully inadequate at fulfilling the ROLE of God. Yet we are all in our egos trying to play at being God - being an authority, because we have a big problem with his authority.

How would it be, if you let the Holy Spirit run everything? Like, put your entire future in his hands, let him decide everything, let him tell you what to do, where to go, what to say. In which you TRUST that whatever he decides, whatever is in HIS plan, is right for all concerned. That you don't NEED to know the details. You don't NEED to be informed of the reasons and why and explanations of what it's based on - which all undermines trust. What if you just trusted that everything he's orchestrating and telling you to do is absolutely correct, and just went with it?

What if you don't need to know everything, don't need to figure everything out, don't need to explain the reasons for everything, don't need to "be sure", don't need to control and manage anything, don't need to find the correct judgement, don't even need to make any decisions? What if you just had faith and trusted? What if you just asked for His Help and listened and followed his guidance, saving you massive amounts of time and effort and thinking and worrying?

Adopting this position of humility and downplaying the ego's importance is not only VITAL to salvation and awakening, it is REQUIRED.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW136L19

"Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted." UrT11F11

"If you are trusting your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful. What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on? What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?" UrW47L1

"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum." UrM30A3

"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your function, and unless you accept this, you CANNOT learn what your function IS." UrT9C6

"You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS." UrT15F1

"The giving up of judgment, the obvious prerequisite for hearing God's Voice, is usually a fairly slow process, not because it is difficult, but because it is apt to be perceived as personally insulting. The world's training is directed toward achieving a goal in direct opposition to that of our curriculum. The world trains for reliance on one's judgment as the criterion for maturity and strength. Our curriculum trains for the relinquishment of judgment as the necessary condition of salvation." UrM10A2

"You are still convinced YOUR understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and MAKES IT WHAT IT IS. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing." UrT18E8

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2

"EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you. For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind." UrT14G1

"You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator." UrT13H16

"You do not know how to OVERLOOK errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you can CORRECT them without a GUIDE TO CORRECTION." UrT9C2

"The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ASK WHAT IT MEANS. Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE." UrT10H6

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

"I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself. UrT31E16

One of the major teachings of A Course in Miracles, also present in Buddhism and Hinduism and many other belief systems, even present in the very first lessons of the Workbook, is that the physical world is a world of illusions. That many different objects only appear to be different, and their differences are meaningless.

In effect, the teaching is that you cannot judge a book by its cover, and you absolutely cannot take the objects of the world at face value. While most of the world believes that the world contains many many different things, different forms, objects, bodies, types, shapes, sizes, configurations, combinations etc, in truth there is actually only one thing here.

At first, to a person who is somewhat "blinded by perception of form", the world appears to be a tremendously complicated place filled with many different things. The differences are identified by how they appear, or what materials it seems to be made of, or how it behaves, or how it's constructed, or what it is used for, or what the symptoms seem to be etc. But these are all disguises.

Such a person will then believe that there really is a major real difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, between a car and a house, between a man and a woman, between a cake and some icecream. Places will all seem to be different and offer different seeming experiences. The next new toy will appear to be something you've never seen before. And everywhere you turn every single object seems to be distinct, separate and unique.

In such a view, uniqueness is valued highly, as though being unique and different sets you apart and identifies you and defines you. As if you stand out and be yourself by being unlike anything else. This merely emphasizes the sense of separateness between things and reinforces the belief that space and time are real.

The more a person thinks that there really are real differences between things, the more they will buy into what we call the "hierarchy of illusions". That is where some things are considered to MEAN something different to others, such as that a death is far "worse" than a mild headache, or that a million dollars is better than 1 dollar, or a burning house is a far worse problem than just that your fingernails need clipping.

For such a person, the world is seen as having the power to cause them, to victimize them, to do things to them. They see the world as both offensive and attractive. Some parts of it they will separate out and label as desirable, wanted, meaningful and valuable. At the same time other things which induce more unpleasant reactions will be relegated to hell and labeled as unwanted.

A person then will be living half a life, separated off, trying to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. Always on the run and living in fear, trying to hide from and prevent all the terrible suffering and tragedies that happen, while simultaneously strongly investing in, believing in and wanting to keep, the very same world which induces these things - for its supposed benefits.

This is clearly an insane state of mind, in which a person is in a relationship with a fickle, unpredictable, demanding, controlling, overpowering world, which sometimes throws them a bone and gives them something to seemingly celebrate, while quickly turning around and slapping them in the face the next day with some horrifying problem.

Such a life is a rollercoaster of constantly being thrown around by the waves of whatever's next, with no real peace and no consistency and no true invulnerability. It is a life of fear, wrapped up in an interpretation which frames parts of it as a life that is wanted. A life of judgement, in which some aspects of the world are despised and rejected while others are overly embraced and absorbed into. This is not a spiritual life, it's a life of contradiction and conflict.

What we have to all come to realize, and what a person generally WILL realize given enough time, is that the offerings of the world are not REALLY different things. It may take exposure to a great many things the world seems to separately give, in order to "tire" of the lure of these differences, to transcend them, to see through them, and to realize they are all the same.

This is real spiritual progression, where a person begins to see that the differences between objects are all artificial and meaningless. That having that super precious rare gem is not really that important, versus having a glass of water. Where the extremes of the values of things versus others, flattens out, and a person becomes far less attracted to, or put off by, any particular "temptation" that the world is offering that day.

What this means is that the learning becomes generalized. As a person matures more spiritually they will realize there isn't really a significant difference between things. That in order to retain a sense of integrity, peace, consistency and honesty, the difference forms of things have to be ignored. In order not to be constantly thrown around on the rollercoaster of hell, reacting to everything as if it means something, you have to learn to become more stable and unconditional.

Not changing moods based on conditions, not adapting to what's happening, not allowing the world to do things to you, not seeing yourself as either victimized negatively OR positively, not giving power TO the world to change or define you, not allowing circumstances to dictate what will happen, not giving away power to the extremes of the hierarchy of illusions, and no longer falling for the temptation to believe that the world in certain configurations means hell on earth.

Being deceived by the forms and differences of the world is unconsciousness. It is a state of unawareness and spiritual irresponsibility. It indicates a person who is selfish and wants to get things from the world, but at the same time doesn't want the world to give them the wrong things. It's a person whose relationships are all based on specialness and unholiness, a person who is themselves not whole, who is in denial of wholeness and therefore distanced from God in their "independence."

In order to wake up to reality, a person has to learn that this world isn't really offering anything different. It is really regurgitating the same stuff. It spews out the same illusions in different forms. Masses of materialistic products are made in which everyone now tries to create every single possible variation of a thing. And how many such variations does anyone really need? Their differences are insubstantial and superficial. Their different appearances are regarded as the defining factor as to how valuable they and what price tag they come with. But it's all made of the same lies and untruths.

The real truth is that there IS no difference between anything in the world. All appearances are illusions. All forms and shapes and sizes and amounts and values are utterly deceptive. They are all designed to tempt you to believe, to deceive you into believing, that physical reality is real when it isn't. That there is a world of many things, all of which are unlike the others, offering you constant distractions and side-quests and tempting pathways, all of which lead to the same ultimate end in death.

The truth is that there is not really any choices in the world. ALL of the things the world offers lead to death and destruction. Whether it appears to temporarily give you something you want or to take it away quickly, all forms end in death. They are made of death because they are made of the attempt to separate things out, to attack the other, to be unlike, unequal, in a constant state of war and conflict, incapable of peace and never offering anything consistent.

Fluctuating illusions cannot be reality. If something can change its form and be something one day and something else the next, it has no real permanent identity. A flower goes from a seed to a bloom to a wilted mess and not one of those states is reality. It is all the same thing. Be not deceived by what you see in the world. The world presents a picture of nothing pretending to be something, and it has absolutely no meaning.

The entire drive of A Course in Miracles is to teach us and help us to practice NOT being deceived by physical differences, by appearances, or by any sense of there being any variation in importance or relevance between one object and another. As we look around the room and OVERLOOK any particular reason to categorize things or to say they are more or less applicable to the ONE truth, we are training ourselves to no longer be deceived by the world and its lies.

"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."

"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."

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change. The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

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

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived."

"Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same."

"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."

"This world SEEMS to hold out many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."

"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness; the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery, - it is all the same. For you can NEVER choose EXCEPT between God and the ego."

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of "separateness" into wholeness. We believed it was possible for there to be a lack of wholeness. This produced the idea of "over here" and "over there", each distinct and different and seeming to lack the some part of the whole, setting them apart.

This laid the foundation for both space and time - notions that what is here is not there, or what is there lacks what is here. And so each seeming part of it seems to have a different form, a partial collection of attributes which sets them apart from each other. And neither has everything.

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness." And then we continued to subdivide and split the mind. We tried to assign certain collections of properties, aspects, characteristics, to some parts, and others to the rest. To break wholeness into seeming isolated chunks of form.

Each part took on a different form and meaning. Various forms or examples or versions of the same one error of separateness. This caused a multitude of differences to seem to appear, each held apart from the rest and separated out as if many things.

This inevitably produced an entire universe of many "forms of error", where each object or body is different to the rest. Each lacks what the others have, rooted in sacrifice and limitation. Not one is whole, and every one is partial.

And so each form appears to comprise different materials, shapes, structures, behaviors, colors, textures and appearances. From these scattered fragments of illusion, entire worlds seemed to arise, each unlike the others and unique in its appearance. Including every human body and every atom.

An illusion is the appearance that something is other than what it actually is - seeming to be something it is not. The single idea of separation, the one problem, shows up as multiple things and multiple problems. It is really one thing, but separateness leads to many forms. And every form is an illusion that the one error is many errors.

Each form says, "look at the ways I am not the same as the rest". And so as one form pulls itself away from sameness, another form does the same. And the two forms try to disguise the fact they are one thing.

And now each form seems to vie for attention. Every form is different, and therefore in conflict and competition. Some are larger, smaller, more or less important, more or less valuable, more or less serious, more or less difficult to deal with.

And now we have an entire hierarchy of illusions, from the gigantic to the tiny, and everything in between. The form that each form takes deceives by distracting you with its claim that it is not like the rest. My car is not a house. My boat is not an airplane. My trousers are not shoes. My ice cream is not a burger.

Every form is designed to assert a deception, a temptation, an illusion, that if its form is real and true, then it IS NOT the other things. This was founded in the simple premise that this world is NOT reality, or the negation of God, and so everything appears to be NOT the rest.

If you believe it, you are deceived. Because every form is a form of deception, an illusion that a singular idea of separation is many things.

One part says, I am not like the other part. Look at how I am different. Look at my different shape, color, size and makeup. Look at what sets me apart. Look at what I have which the other lacks. Look at our differences. Look how we are separate and not the same at all.

And to believe this is to be completely blinded to the the truth. Because if you fall for this and take sides, if you come to prefer one form over another, or think they are truthfully unique and valuable, then you have fallen for the ONE temptation of the world.

Every form is a lie. Every physical object and every body is a lie. Every planet and every star and galaxy is a lie. They are all designed to hide and disguise the one single illusion of separation.

So long as you are caught up in a life where the worshipping of DIFFERENCES prevails, where you prefer some forms over others, where you think that two things are not THE SAME, you are deceived and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as to fixate your vision on the perception of FORM, making the separation real.

The body's eyes look only upon the forms of error. Only the body makes the world seem real. Its fixation on differences, changes, inequalities and comparisons, blinds you to seeing any kind of singular truth. It sees a world of a billion truths, none making any sense or meaning anything at all. The whole message of ACIM is that we need to transition AWAY from a world of differences, towards wholeness. To repair the sense of fragmentation in the mind and restore singular oneness.

This requires seeing THROUGH the deception of form, and not believing it. Not believing that a car and a house are real differences. Not believing that a living body and a dead body are real differences. Not believing that some objects are more important or valuable than others. Realizing that we gave the world of forms ALL the meanings that they have.

To flatten the hierarchy of illusions is to recognize that ALL illusions are one illusion. A single error presents itself to you in every conceivable form of deception. If you buy into it, you think there is an order of difficulty, where some things are harder to deal with or change than others.

To recognize there IS no hierarchy, is to recognize that all forms are the SAME. That every form of suffering is the SAME. That every form of sickness and death and life is the SAME. That there is ONE thing here, not many. That the manyness and the differences are entirely untrue. That one thing is sneakily showing up as a massive multitude to HIDE its true nature of being just one thing.

This is why there is really only one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, that ALL FORMS of suffering have a SINGLE cause. This is why the workbook lessons have us NOT be selective in which forms we apply things to, so that we will learn that forms are meaningless decoys. This is why we are to recognize there is ONE problem not many. And this is why there is ONE truth and ONE law and ONE atonement.

Every form that the world takes is a lie. Every time it says you should want this form or that form, it is trying to get you to take sides. Every time you take sides there is war. Every difference of form IS conflict. Everything you see with the body IS conflicted, with objects vying for attention, some nearer some further, some louder some quieter, some more "appealing" than others.

All of this is ONE thing, one effort, one scheme, to TEMPT you to believe in the differences so that you will not recognize they are ALL THE SAME. That this whole world is entirely unreal. That not one form is more real or important or valuable than another. That there aren't billions of choices, there is only one choice.

ALL illusory forms are like two characters who act and speak and present themselves differently to try to create the illusion that they are not ONE actor. The mind is ONE actor, taking on the role of multiple simultaneous parts, pitted against each other. So long as you do not recognize that ONE mind is playing ALL the roles, of both victim and victimizer, you will be deceived by form.

In a world of forms, all the forms are untrue. Not one of them IS reality. And none of them show you what is true. To see only physical form is to see nothing but error and sin. True vision will show you that their many appearances are lies, and that there is a singular truth behind them. We are addicted to a world of forms, believing in specialness and made-up values. Made-up worth. Made-up importance. Goals and toys and special jobs and relationships and things you want and things you don't want.

All designed to keep you locked into a hell of form and separation. To keep you tempted that the next big thing will save you. That the next form the illusion takes will be the one you've always wanted. So that you never realize NONE of them are true, NONE of them are real, and NONE of them are what you really want.

That without deception, lies, falsehood and temptation, there is NO WORLD HERE AT ALL. Without form, there is no planet and no body. And behind all forms is the one lie that started it all, which the world of forms was made to hide - that separation is even possibe.

"A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?"

"Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other."

"Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment."

"Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true."

"The meeting of illusions leads to war."

"EVERY illusion is an assault on truth."

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

"The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

"The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take."

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion."

"For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms."

"The dream is but illusion in the mind."

"The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing."

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

"You are so used to choosing between dreams, you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL ILLUSIONS."

"This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake."

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized."

"Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."

"Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent."

"Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms."

"NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false."

"Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"This illusion can take many forms."

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

"The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways."

"Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes."

"The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it."

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship you ever made is PART of it."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs."

"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."

"Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

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

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning. ... Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured."

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen."

Okay so, you hear people saying the Earth is flat - the "flat Earthers"... and obviously it's not. But... technically it is.You see, there is this thing called the "hierarchy of illusions". The hierarchy is an ILLUSION that there are differences. All differences are illusions.

So you've got things like different importance, different value, different size and weight, different difficulty, different materials, different appearances, different behaviors, different forms, all of that.

However, the world isn't real, and these differences aren't real.Imagine a canvas on which an artist is going to paint a picture. The canvas itself is just one thing, neutral, empty. There is nothing inherently pictured on it. This is the background of the illusory world.

The artist takes the paint and starts to paint pictures of humans. There's a large body over here, and a small one over there. There's one with two arms, and there's one with only one arm. There's one that's jumping in the air, and one that's laying seemingly dead on the ground.

But the truth always is, that these are all just images, made of the same paint. There is really no difference between the body jumping in the air and the one that appears dead. They're both equal in the sense that any of their difference are an illusion. There aren't really ANY bodies on the canvas, it's just images of bodies.

And so what the illusion of the picture of a world of bodies is, is really a picture of what those things might LOOK LIKE. A body which looks LIKE a dead body, a body which is similar to how a living body might look. And this makes the images on the canvas once removed from the actual thing, from "reality" or "real bodies". They are pictures OF bodies, not actual bodies.

The thing is, the physical world is usually considered to be real, where the "real bodies" are, but in fact the physical world is the realm of the what LOOKS LIKE a world. It's a picturing of a world, an image, like a photograph of some place that you visited. The photograph is not the place itself, just an idea of what it might be like there. That's what the world is. The world is the paint on the canvas, pretending to look like things. A picture OF some OTHER place that doesn't exist.

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. ***It cannot make a body***, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. ***It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.***"

ie The physical world is not REALLY a REAL physical world, it's a picture of one, an imagined idea of what a physical world might be like. It is like a dream about a far off land that you never really visited.

You have never actually REALLY seen a real body, you have only seem what bodies MIGHT look like if they existed. Because really the world is a dream of, an idea of, what it MIGHT be like IF you were able to separate from God. It remains true that you cannot separate from God because God is everywhere. Nor can you REALLY create bodies. So we've just pictured a world which looks LIKE some OTHER place that we've never been to, trying to form it in its likeness to represent it. To symbolize it. The world is a SYMBOL OF a world OUTSIDE of God, which does not exist.

Now, because the physical world of form is the layer of paint on the canvas, and let's say the canvas is what ACIM calls "the real world" which has no inherent forms or bodies or places or things, when you look at it and recognize it as "all made of the same stuff", or "its all just paint" or "its all an equal image", this FLATTENS the hierarchy of illusions. It's stops it appearing as though one thing is bigger or heavier or more important or different to another. Or that any of it is real.

This recognition that the world has NO hierarchy, and that it is all just one thing appearing to be many things, is what it's like to recognize that the picture is just the layer of paint, and it's all just paint. Which means that really a picture of a living body is just as much equal and just paint, as a picture of a dead body. Neither of them are truly different. They're both illusions.

The form of the living body may appear different to the dead one, but that is the illusion of it. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." When you focus on the forms and their differences you're being deceived by the painted picture, and are failing to recognize it for the trick that it is. You're not realizing it's only a painting, and are mistaking it for BEING the thing it visualizes. You think the PICTURE OF a body really IS a body. That pictures of death really ARE death.

When you overlook ie forgive the ILLUSION of things being different, and you don't fall for there really being a live body or a dead body, and you see the paint instead of the picture, that is true perception. That is accurate perception. It isn't a perception that looks at paint on a canvas and believes there are real people living there with real bodies. It isn't the way the "brain" sees a photo of a body and believes it's looking at the actual person. It's a recognition that it's JUST a photograph, looking at the grain on the paper and the blots of ink.

This is a "flattening" of the hierarchy. A PICTURE of a dead body is now equal to a picture of a living one. A PICTURE of a body with disease is no different in truth than a picture of a body that seems healthy. Because really they are both just images on a blank canvas. And neither of them is more dead or alive, in truth.

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. 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."

There is no more MEANING in a dead body. There is no more "seriousness" in a dead body. There is no more "lack of life" in a dead body than in a supposedly "living" body. Which tells you also that the living bodies are NOT REALLY ALIVE either. The bodies aren't alive, and they aren't dead, they are just pictures of bodies. They are symbols, not ends in themselves. All made of the same illusory stuff.

"The body neither lives nor dies, for it cannot contain you who are life."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"At best an illusion of life, at worst death."

"The body is not an end in itself."

So what that calls for, in order to see with forgiveness, is to recognize that there is no truth, life, will, mind, power, causality, strength, force, capability, or existence, to either the living bodies or the dead bodies. They are nothing but pictures. They don't have a "life" to be defended against death, and "death" cannot happen to them any more than life can. e.g.

"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."

The body is just a picture, in a painting in your mind, which has NO DEPTH. It is not really three dimensional. And its differences are ALL illusions of the way (form) that it's painted in. See the paint for what it is and you no longer see bodies there, or imagine that pictures of houses are real houses, or that pictures of cars are really cars, or that pictures of death are really death.

This ultimately flattens the hierarchy and means there IS NO DIFFERENCE between illusions. There is only one separation, one illusion, one picture, and it's all equally false. Even the suggestion that something would be more DIFFICULT to change than another thing, is part of the illusion of the hierarchy. It is not true. And this ultimately means that there really is no "orders of difficulty."

"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."

From the vantage point of recognizing it all as ONE THING, one dream, one illusion of a world, and ignoring its FORMS, overlooking its differences, and not being deceived or tempted to believe there really ARE any differences at all, there is no "orders" in the world. There are no divisions and levels and parts and pieces. It's all just one illusion, one separation idea. Which means live bodies and dead bodies are the same thing, pretending to be two different things. They are both the dream of death. An illusion.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."So ultimately THE WORLD IS FLAT, because the hierarchy is flat. When you take away all the illusions of difference, which is false perception - not recognizing it's all just paint - all you end up with is a FLAT world. A world where there is ONE WAY of looking at everything, and it is recognized as ONE THING. And so there is no bigger or smaller or harder or easier.

From that perspective, which is the state of miracle mindedness and true perception, in which everything is given NO extra meaning other than the universal ONE meaning of love, and there is no falling for the deception that a sick body is "a really serious bad thing", and there is no difference in meaning given to "that body seems really healthy" versus "that body seems disease-ridden and ugly", you are now coming from ONE perspective. One vantage point. One loving outlook. One all-inclusive perspective. No longer tempted by form.

From that one perspective, with Vision, for you there is no longer a rough terrain, or a 3D world, or a world where some things are dealt with differently to others. There is one problem and one solution, not many. And there is no hierarchy of orders of difficulty. So now it is ONE ACT, to change the painting, to any given form. It is ONE ACT to perform a miracle which modifies a PICTURE of a dead body into a PICTURE of a living one. One act which can in turn convert a living body into a dead one, and back again. Because all bodies are fake.

To that mind, there is "no order of difficulty in miracles." "They are all the same". Each one is an expression of a spark of life which repaints the picture. A modification to the mind projecting so that the paint on the page changes to SYMBOLIZE something else. Because remember the paint is what something looks LIKE, not what something is. It is all symbolic and once removed. So the body now SYMBOLIZES eternal life, instead of symbolizing death.

It now becomes useful to heal the mind to heal the body, ie to convert the PICTURE of the body into a body free of pain and suffering and damage and death, because this picture in the dream world demonstrates and SYMBOLICALLY communicates an IMAGE of, a representation of, innocence and immortality and harmlessness and holiness. And this TEACHES those who look upon it that they must be innocent, because it does not play by the rules of the laws of a world of difficulty. It does not prove their sinfulness. And proof of sin is not there, breaking the laws of physics.

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

So you see, the world IS flat, because it is only an ILLUSION that it has any FORM at all. And all its differences are illusions. Bodies and planets and galaxies are not alive, or dead, or anything. They are once-removed PICTURES on a canvas, the underlying canvas of "the real world", and the pictures shift just like the shadows on the wall of the cave. And they are not reality. They are just imagined ideas of what it might be like to go be where God is not. it's not the same place as actually going there. And so the world is just a brochure for hell, not real hell itself.

There is no death, and dead bodies are no more dead than live ones. And live ones are no more alive than dead ones. And all levels of sickness are meaningless. And all degrees of suffering are a lie. And miracles express from a higher vantage point in which the Earth is flat and the hierarchy is flat and every artistic act of "healing bodies" is merely a way of reconfiguring the paint, so that it can symbolize eternal life and point in the direction of heaven rather than hell. As a physicalized symbol of forgiveness.

In this view the body is nothing but an IMAGE in the mind. It has no sickness or health. It cannot be well or dead or suffer at all. I this no will, it has no mind of its own, or instincts, or natural ways. It does not really obey ANY laws of the world, unless your mind believes in the hierarchy of illusions. When you lift away from this PICTURE of a body, the rules and laws and restraints that your mind GAVE to it, trying to make it something OTHER THAN just a neutral image in a dream, it no longer serves the laws of the world.

And now the body is not under the effect of the world. And it cannot become sick on its own, nor can it die against your will. It is now simply suspended in the mind as a figment of imagination, and mind has complete power and control over it, to override any external influences. It cannot age, it cannot get sick, it does not need the world to exist, it does not depend on anything, it just moves around like a puppet for the mind. An avatar in a dream. A figure pretending to be you. A symbol of your immortal self.

Of course, when you throw the painting in the trashcan there is no world, and "heaven is all that remains."

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

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

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"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 (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "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. "

"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.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"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."

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"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."

"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."

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

"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. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) 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."

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

"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 (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"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 (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****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?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "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."

"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."

"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."

When the mind dreams, it is capable of projecting any kind of image at will. It does not require time in order for anything to "evolve" within the mind's projected images.

The mind doesn't have to wait for time to pass, for its projected images to develop certain states or conditions. It is able to project NOW, absolutely any image.

It can project NOW an image of sickness, an image of a body which seemed to have aged, an image of a baby which was just born, an image of a body in great condition, or any kind of body at any point in "time", with absolutely NO NEED FOR TIME TO PASS in order for that body to ARRIVE AT that condition. It is projected in its "whatever state", RIGHT NOW.

You can easily see this at work when you dream at night. When your dream BEGINS, an entire environment can show up complete with what appears to be qualities and properties which, in time, would have to have taken many many years to establish.

That environment isn't "brand new" looking. It isn't the beginning of evolving an environment. It isn't the start of civilization. It isn't the beginning of the universe. Instead, the mind projects NOW images of bodies already in a state of decay, environments which must allegedly have been "built" by people over time, trees which must have "grown" in order to become as large as they seem, and events which allegedly could only come about through an entire sequences of prior events.

The mind puts all of this in place NOW. It does not take for you to dream for 100,000 years in order to have a dream of a planet Earth in which you are walking around. The dreaming mind INSTANTLY projects what APPEARS to be forms at a certain point in time, with a certain condition. It therefore instantly also invents HISTORY, all of the prior events which SEEM like they must have happened in order to lead to THIS moment. And yet, you only started sleeping an hour ago, and here you are dreaming of a world which has been around for a billion years.

With this in mind, realize this about your current mind also, in your waking states. As Jesus says, your waking dreams and nighttime dreams differ ONLY IN THEIR FORM. The mind that you have now is dreaming NOW, it is projecting an entire universe NOW, it is making images of stuff which "must have taken a very long time to arrive at" NOW, without having to go through ANY of that time.

Therefore, realize this. Whatever is showing up NOW, is an ILLUSION of something which took a very long time to evolve. ANY state of existing in form can be projected INSTANTLY. Any environment, any body state, any experience, any condition, any sickness, any objects, any condition of objects which allegedly have developed wear and decay and weathering can all be projected NOW, afresh, to LOOK LIKE they have been around for a million years. It makes you wonder, if history really exists, doesn't it?

And guess what.... your mind is projecting YOUR BODY in exactly the same way. The way that your body is showing up NOW, HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE PAST. And the key to understanding this is to understand what a decision is.

The ego's illusion is that, at some point in time, you make a decision. You make this momentary decision and something happens. This decision is then "locked into" in the past and cannot be changed. This is the idea of irreversible sin which you can do nothing to undo, and have to just suffer the consequences going forward. The consequences of this decision then seem to carry over into the future, over a long period of time. For example, it may SEEM as if, in time, you hurt your leg, and thereafter, your body had "leg problems", which seemed to sustain over time, and was "because of" this event which happened in the past. THIS IS NOT HOW DECISIONS WORK.

When you decide something, it means that you are typically choosing a new BELIEF. You are, essentially, making a change of "direction". Like turning corner. You establish a belief in your mind, which you have made be your "new truth", and then you KEEP THAT BELIEF. Because that belief is kept in your mind, it is CONSTANTLY REPROJECTING whatever that belief would produce.

So if a situation comes around where you choose and create an illusion of your leg being hurt, and you then put in place a belief that your leg is hurt, that there were "real consequences", you will KEEP THE BELIEF OVER TIME. Your mind will then continually REPROJECT a damaged body over, and over, and over, and over again.

At any given moment, the body has no existence of its own. At any given moment, the mind is projecting a BRAND NEW IMAGE, an out picturing of an inward condition. At any given moment, the body you had "just now" has DISAPPEARED, and it has been REPLACED with an entirely NEW PROJECTION.

An analogy to this is a digital movie. Movies are comprised of "frames", which are still images. Each frame is a snapshot of a given state of images. The projector (mind) SHOWS one image at a time. It shows a picture of a body in a certain state, then the frame ends, and is removed, and then the NEXT FRAME REPROJECTS an entirely *separate image*, nothing whatsoever to do with the previous image, showing a DIFFERENT PICTURE of a body.

Since this happens very very quickly, at every quantum of time, this creates an ILLUSION OF ANIMATION. Also, and this is the really key point... if the mind keeps projecting a very SIMILAR IMAGE across multiple frames or moments, it creates ****AN ILLUSION**** that there is something "consistent" or "continuous" present "over time".

This ILLUSION leads you to believe that there is some object, some form, which exists "through time". And because it seems to exists through time, YOU start to believe that IT HAS A LONG-TERM EXISTENCE OF ITS OWN. That somehow it is a "thing", an "object", a discrete ENTITY, that somehow continues on existing ON ITS OWN. *This is entirely an illusion*!

The course tells us that at NO point in time does the body really exist, being either an anticipation of the future, or a memory of the past. This is the illusion I am talking of. The *appearance* that some "thing" continues over time and therefore, is a consistent "thing" IN TIME, being maintained OVER TIME, that has ITS OWN EXISTENCE. The body does not have its own existence. It is a temporary IMAGE, which is SWITCHED OUT constantly, BY THE MIND, and replaced with a new image, every tiny instant of time.

Now. Realize then, that when you make a decision, forming a belief, you KEEP that belief in place OVER a long period of time. You keep it in the mind. The mind is a projector of the body "image", and the presence of a false belief in the mind will project an image of that false belief. It is not projected ONTO the body. It is projected AS the body. The body is not a discreet thing in its own right. Therefore, the mind DISTORTS its perception and PROJECTS a distorted, malformed, corrupted, disabled, limited, damaged picture. It therefore shows up as a picture of a BROKEN BODY, proving that the mind has not been healed because the mind believes separation is truth.

IF YOU KEEP that belief "over time", your mind will keep continually REPROJECTING body IMAGES (yes plural, over time, billions of them), which will create the ILLUSION that there is a "long term sickness". It will also create the illusion that the "cause" of the sickness was way in the past, at some single moment in time. IT WAS NOT. This is the ego's attempt to pretend that sin is in the distant past, you can never go back to the past to change your momentary decision, and therefore you are stuck with the consequences FOREVER. This is a bullshit lie, because this is not how decisions work and you can CHOOSE AGAIN AT ANY TIME.

The cause of the sickness is the content of the mind *NOW*. The mind NOW has a belief in sickness and NOW it is projecting a sick body. And the mind is perfectly capable of creating ANY ILLUSIONS OR IMAGES necessary in order to make it seem consistent, justified, believable, obeying "ego laws", even showing seeming evidence from "the past", or changes "over time", because the mind - just as when you DREAM at night, is perfectly capable of creating an ENTIRE UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW as an INSTANTANEOUS PROJECTION. Th year 2017 IS NOT the result of all previous years of "evolution", it is being projected NOW, including every sign and "evidence" that it SEEMS like it took billions of years to evolve to this point. That's an ILLUSION. The dream is being dreamed IN THE PRESENT and automatically INVENTS pictures of "there must have been a past" AT THE SAME TIME.

So, in terms of miracles of healing, what needs to happen is that the mind is healed of ITS BELIEF in some lie, some false ego belief. This false ego belief had been MAINTAINING LONG TERM SICKNESS showing up AS a sick body, because the MIND was "sick" for a long time. It had nothing to do with moments in time or one-off decisions. Decisions ARE CONSTANT. You change your mind by changing which ROAD you start walking down, and a you KEEP walking down that road ENDLESSLY until you change your mind and take a different direction. That's how decisions really work.

So if you seem to have "long term sickness", it has absolutely nothing to do with the body itself, it has nothing to do with the past, it has nothing to do with anything that happened outwardly over time, it has nothing to do with the world, it WAS NOT CAUSED BY ANYTHING EXTERNAL, it is ONLY being caused "now" by the beliefs that you are holding onto NOW, REPROJECTING that body image to look "similar to before", because the BELIEF is still similar to before. If the belief has not changed, what is projected is not going to change either. And that creates the illusion that the body is a "thing" in its own right which gets "its own sickness" and "has a mind of its own".

This ILLUSION of long-term sustained bodily conditions is responsible for deluding people into the belief that the sickness exists ON ITS OWN, or that the body ITSELF gets sick, or that something happens TO the body, or that the body is happening TO the mind. It is also entirely the reason why people who believe THE ILLUSION of continuation of the body, also believe that the body's condition WILL CONTINUE TO BE SICK, when the mind wakes up. This is EGO BULLSHIT! It is not true whatsoever. It's entirely an illusion.

There is NO REASON why the body should stay sick if the mind is healed. The ONLY REASON the body is even appearing WHATSOEVER, is because the mind is projecting it. The body is not showing up as a result of you "being born in the world." Your parents did NOT create your body. Your MIND put YOUR BODY into your mother's womb and manifested its form entirely ON ITS OWN, without any "real" processes occurring on the part of the mother. Everything to do with "having babies" is part of the ego's ILLUSION that what you are is born FROM THE WORLD, and not from your mind.

Since your mind is PROJECTING your body image RIGHT NOW, afresh, every moment, a complete new projection, complete with all the "stored beliefs" and "kept self-attack" which the mind is holding onto, causing the body to SEEM to show up again and again and again in roughly the same "form".... there is absolutely NO REASON WHY your mind could not project a COMPLETELY PERFECTLY HEALED BODY RIGHT NOW. This is what miracles are capable of showing!

That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind, proves the mind MUST be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this!

The mind PROJECTS the body. Every instant. Every moment. As an outward picturing of what the mind believes IN THAT MOMENT. The body does not show up FOR ANY OTHER REASON or as an effect of ANY OTHER CAUSE. The body is not caused by the world, or by matter, or by forms, or by anything external. Mind makes the body.

So guess what happens when you change your beliefs in your mind? Guess what happens when you undo your belief in separation from God? Guess what happens when you stop believing in attack? The body will CONTINUE to SHOW UP AS a projection of the content of your mind, but because your content has changed, the body that shows up WILL BE DIFFERENT!

It is entirely possible, therefore, for ANY AND EVERY alleged form of sickness, TO BE HEALED INSTANTLY! Jesus says this himself: "The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no use for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once." Realizing that your mind's projections are occurring IN THE PRESENT, and that the past DOES NOT EXIST and has no influence over the present, should show you (if you get this), that when your mind changes, your body image MUST CHANGE. Your mind WILL project a different image, to reflect the change in beliefs.

The body CANNOT STAY SICK if your mind changes its beliefs. It cannot stay sick because IT HAS NO LIFE OF ITS OWN and it is purely a mental projection. Nothing else can make the sickness stay. Nothing else in the world or in time can cause the sickness to stay. THERE ARE NO CAUSES outside of the mind. The body is a results of YOUR DREAMING IT!

This should tell you that there is absolutely no grounds whatsoever for believing that sickness in the body will "stick around on its own" when you wake up, that somehow you will become "at peace with sickness", that you can be "happy about dying", that "sickness will stay" when the mind is healed, that you need to learn how to be at peace "in spite of sickness", or that it's even the teaching of the course that sickness is real and will CONTINUE ON ITS OWN when the mind is in a state of enlightenment. ABSOLUTE LIES! Makes no sense whatsoever, is absolutely untrue. This is NOT what happens. This is not how the mind works. Believing any of this bullshit demonstrates that your mind HAS NOT BEEN HEALED, because it means you believe in a reversal of cause and effect, your mind is continuing to maintain defenses against truth, and therefore the mind CANNOT BE AWAKE.

The state of the body is a DIRECT REFLECTION of what the mind PUTS OUT THERE, based on ITS BELIEF SYSTEM and the content of its sense of SELF. The body is a depiction of "this is what I think of myself". ALWAYS. It never deviates from that, it has no will or mind or power of its own to choose otherwise, NOTHING can make it change against the mind's will, and there are NO CAUSES external from the mind that can influence it's condition. NONE. Mind is cause, body is effect. Period.

THIS HAS TO MEAN, that when the mind TRULY and genuinely overcomes its obstacles to peace, is TRULY genuinely healed of beliefs in separation, uses of the body for attack, defenses against truth, long-term false beliefs and so on... the body that "shows up" being projected out from the mind's inner condition, MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* show up as in PERFECT UNDISTORTED HEALTH!

I quote:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if 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." - ACIM

Key term here.... "CANNOT BE SICK" when the mind is holy. CANNOT. Will not maintain sickness, has no sickness, literally is IMPOSSIBLE TO BE SICK PHYSICALLY if the mind is healed. I know many people have resistance to this idea and think it's either not important or an incorrect focus or not what atonement is for. But atonement WILL BRING HEALING TO THE BODY because the mind that is holy will only project a holy image, i.e. an image of wholeness - a body which is not lacking or limited or broken in any way. If the body continues to show up as sick, something IS WRONG WITH THE MIND. Or to put it more accurately, the mind will STOP PROJECTING A SICK BODY and will only project a healthy body. Healing doesn't happen TO the body, it happens to the mind and the mind projects the body form to match.

This is law. This is how mind functions. The body is the mind's projection, it's dream. It ALWAYS CORRELATES to the state of the mind. Healed mind MUST only project a healed body, a sick mind MUST only project a sick body. This is also why Jesus teaches that we are meant to DEMONSTRATE THAT WE CANNOT BE HURT BY OUR BROTHER, by only ever showing him a HEALED BODY, proving that whatever he did or even tried to do, HAS NO EFFECT on your body because it has no effect on your mind, and your mind is totally in charge of what kind of image it projects. This therefore proves, if you are holy in mind, showing only a holy body, that your brother IS INNOCENT, through PROOF, because his attack DID NOT CAUSE YOU OR YOUR BODY TO CHANGE!

For miracles, there are no orders of difficulty, there is no hierarchy of illusions, and there is no PAST that has power over the present. Bodily states have nothing to do with time, and nothing to do with history, and nothing to do with the body seeming to be a "discrete thing" that someone can point to over time and say, that's a consistent object in its own right. It is not. It is a freshly projected DREAM, right now, this instant. When the instant is being projected from a mind of holiness - the miracle of the mind will completely dissolve and NOT PROJECT an image of sickness.

When the miracle occurs therefore, which is a movement towards God and an undoing of separation beliefs in the MIND, the body MUST SHOW THE CHANGE in some way. It can't refuse it, it can't block it, it can't prevent the projection of the mind's healed condition. The body has NO POWER over the mind whatsoever. It has to OBEY. And so this means it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE, as Jesus said above, that if there is an instant of a miracle, shifting to a vertical perception and undoing the illusion of separation, which means letting go of a long-term belief, the mind CAN be healed INSTANTLY, and therefore it CAN project an image of the body having been healed *INSTANTLY*. One moment there was terrible sickness and suffering, the next moment it was simply not there. One moment the body seemed practically DEAD as a picture of the mind's belief in death, the next moment it was showing up as "alive", to represent the fact the mind is now ALIVE.

Instantaneous! No delay whatsoever. Miracles in this way produce a skipping of TIME, they completely ignore ego laws, pay no attention to the past, have no regard for illusions of difficulty or severity or importance, and create an interval of time in which there is a shift towards God, into invisibility, which is why they heal THE MIND, which then projects a healed body IMAGE. This can happen absolutely instantly. One instant there was terrible sickness, the next, gone. Healed. Boom!

The illusion of a continuous body with continuous sickness is entirely within the LEVEL of the ego's dream. Miracles and the power of the MIND OVER MATTER, extends from an entirely higher LEVEL where the mind is the CAUSE of everything that shows up AS THE DREAM. Bodies that move, mountains that move, planets that move, is all being DREAMED by the mind. It has no will of its own. It has no effects of its own. There is literally nothing that your HOLINESS cannot do. There is nothing your MIND cannot do. Mind NEVER LOSES its creative power, even IF it is mis-creating images of false bodies on false planets in a false universe. Even IF it is creating an illusion of time, history, the past, a future, or anything other than realizing WE ARE PROJECTING ALL OF THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE THIS INSTANT. It did not come from the past. It is happening in this illusion NOW.

Just as in our dreams at night, which differ only in their form, the waking world, planet earth, and all the people in it, are being projected NOW, in whatever condition they seem to be in, because the mind projecting them has false beliefs NOW, which MIGHT be similar to beliefs it had "just a moment ago", creating an ILLUSION of things being maintained over time. Nothing is being maintained over time but a KEPT BELEIF which has not been let go of. Time is an illusion. There is nothing keeping us asleep and nothing keeping planets in motion other than the mind CHOOSING TO DO SO OVER TIME.

There is no reason whatsoever in all the universe why you cannot be completely healed and whole in physical form and mind, RIGHT NOW. If you were to choose this, it would happen for you, right now. If you are showing sickness, and if you've had sickness for 30 years, it is because you are believing in sickness RIGHT NOW. It's got nothing to do with the past or anything that came before. NOTHING. You create your "reality" by creating your DREAM of what you want to be true RIGHT NOW. History has no power over the present - that's an ego illusion.

At no point in time does the body really EXIST, because it is only ever a projection in the NOW, not in time, and it does not even really exist in the now. A mind which has BELIEFS IN SEPARATION, will project a picture of a self WHO IS SEPARATE. This is what we call "the body". It's not a body. It's the MIND showing up with "body-formed" CONTENT, AS its BELIEF in being a separate individual. Such thoughts take "form". The body APPEARS because the mind is regarding ITSELF (spirit) as limited and separate in some way. It has false beliefs and a false sense of identity. This is what MAKES THE BODY.

To put this even more clearly, how you think of yourself is how you will SHOW UP. If you regard yourself as sinful and guilty, you will show up with a FORM OF SIN AND GUILT. As the course says, "the body is the idea of sin made real then projected outwards"!.... Literally this is what I've been saying in this post. if your mind believes "you" are "made of sin"... YOUR MIND will manifest an "image" of a "sinful self", which will "appear" as what people call "a body". That image is not really who you are. But it's what you think you are. Whatever you think you are, you will show up AS! If you think you are AN ILLUSION, you will show up AS AN ILLUSION. That's what makes the body appear. If you do not believe you are an illusion AT ALL, you will show up as - HAVING NO ILLUSORY BODY AT ALL - pure spirit.

WHEN the mind no longer has *ANY* false ideas about its identity, has no beliefs whatsoever, is aware of God, and does not believe in ANY form of victimhood, reversal of cause and effect, that the world is ANYTHING but your OWN DREAM, and that it is ALL coming from YOUR MIND, THEN.... what happens to the body? IT DISAPPEARS COMPLETELY!

A mind which is being entirely true to spirit, true to the true nature of YOURSELF, will show up as. .... TRANSPARENT! Transparency means total honesty. Total willingness to be aware of and ACCEPT WHAT IS, as it is, which means, no distortions, no illusions, no thoughts to the contrary, no limitations placed on SELF, and therefore the mind PROJECTS ETERNITY, projects LOVE, projects abstract God, projects LIGHT, projects absolute total lack of "forms of error", and therefore, STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. To those in the world, this will appear as though the body DISAPPEARS ENTIRELY. To the mind that is disappearing the body, IT IS NOW AWARE that the body WAS ALWAYS based on false beliefs, and has NO REALITY of its own, and NEVER EXISTED, and HAS NO TRUTH, and is not being KEPT by the PAST or the WORLD or any other cause outside of the mind. Therefore the mind stops supporting it, stops MAKING IT, and it stops showing up at all!

This is how Jesus made his body DISAPPEAR, as given in the "extra notes to Helen" after the course, where he stated that he finally recognized the last illusion - that death was not real, and therefore, had no further need for the body, and therefore, caused it to DISAPPEAR, because all that was TRUE, all that could REMAIN, was pure spirit at one with its mind, fused with God, in absolute eternal truth and atonement. This is how YOU LEAVE THE DREAM. Through truth, not through death, not through sickness, not through suffering, not through the body going through a death process. Through making it VANISH, because the mind HAS NO ILLUSORY CONTENT IN IT, and therefore STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY!

There is no body. There is no world. There is no sickness. There is no death. There is no sin. There is no guilt. There is no fear. There is no separation. There is no time. There is no space. There are no forms. There is no planet earth or physical universe. There is no consistency over time in the world. There are no sicknesses which last on their own. There is no life or power or will or mind in the body or in the world. The world has no effect and is not the cause or the birthplace of anything.

You do not need a body to exist because you are IMMORTAL SPIRIT. You are as God created you, AS SPIRIT, not as an ILLUSORY BODY IMAGE. You are not a projection of a sick mind. You are ONLY IMMORTAL SPIRIT. This is the only truth about you. Everything to do with the body is a lie.

The body will and MUST become "healthy" BEFORE you awaken. It cannot stay sick if the mind is to be healthy. A healthy mind WILL project a healthy body. The body must go through "becoming healthier" "over time" as the mind gradually is healed. Sicknesses must fall away "over time". A sick body is proof that the mind IS FURTHER REMOVED from God than a healthy body. "A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." This is why, before awakening, bodies WILL and MUST become healthier, and therefore health will be enjoyed more, and healthy bodies feature in HAPPIER DREAMS, which precede awakening.

Making the body healthier per-se is not the ULTIMATE goal, because the body ITSELF is a picture of separation and sickness. But before that ultimate goal is reached, the body WILL BE HEALED and sickness WILL be undone and the dead WILL BE RAISED and all forms of "things which cannot be undone" will be undone.

I quote:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Miracles CAN DO ANYTHING, CAN HEAL ANYTHING, CAN REVERSE ANYTHING, even death. If miracles could not undo death, we would be STUCK HERE FOREVER. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do. You are the Son of God! You are not at the effect of the world and you are IMMORTAL.