For a while now I've been experiencing the Holy Spirit working in me quite actively to clear and heal my mind, emotions and body. And I've been unsure how this correlates with A Course in Miracles because I don't hear hardly anyone talking about having interactions with Holy Spirit that involve any kind of manifest 'activities'.

Indeed many people still think Holy Spirit is just some kind of metaphor or inaccessible state of mind. Much of the ACIM community has a very cerebral, nervous, intellectual relationship with Holy Spirit, if at all. So I've been reluctant to share about it thinking myself to be doing something 'weird'. But maybe I am pioneering.

For me, this seemed to begin quite naturally as the next step in my exploration of trusting Him. I think that some day when I lay down to sleep I just had this idea to ask Holy Spirit to help me in some way, or to heal whatever I was feeling, and it was part of me opening up to exploring whether He would take some steps on my behalf.

Previously I think that I believed and acted as though my forgiveness process was something that I would do on my own and that any 'progress' or 'results' from it were due to my own willingness to see differently. But this then shifted, because after a certain point, after enough surrender and willingness and development of trust, I started to get this sense that Holy Spirit was meant to do more than just be an onlooker or advisor.

The first few times this happened I felt what I would probably describe as an 'energy' or a sensation of energy moving, through what seemed to be my body. It was sometimes accompanied by little jerks or motions in my hands or feet. Sometimes some subtle contractions of muscles. But over time, this has greatly increased.

I started then to learn to simply 'invite Him in' or to ask Him to come into me or to join with me. I didn't know if this was 'proper' or allowed or normal or anything but I was willing to explore it. I would invite Him in. He would quite often then say to me, "relax" or "surrender". And it seemed in a way that this was either a 'condition' or a prerequisite for supporting this thing happening. So I'd do some surrendering and relax my body physically. And then stuff would start to happen.

I will sincerely invite Him into me and then I will relax and allow and I will start to feel 'energy' move, whatever that is. Manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes this takes a pattern where it starts at my feet then works its way up my legs. As it goes, these limbs become more tensed as though sort of 'electrified'. Holy Spirit's energy is like electricity in a way, or how you might imagine someone if they were being electrocuted... but in a non-harmful non-painful way. Often my legs all the way up into my hips and pelvis will 'energize' and tense, seeming to form a certain specific 'posture' which, once established, immediately begins to 'drain' energy out of my upper torso, particularly any negative emotions or upset energies. These just flow down and out through my root chakra or feet like someone is flushing the toilet.

Then after a while this electricity will come up through my upper torso and into my arms and chest there can be at times some quite vigorous shaking, tensing and pulsing of stomache muscles, and various energetic changes taking place. When it works its way up to my shoulders and head area, I quite often now will experience what I can only describe as a very rapid intense oscillation/vibration of my head, which will suddenly shake at a very fast rate, as though something is being dislodged and removed upward. After this process is basically done I will be 'buzzing' somewhat and yet usually feeling quite peaceful and relieved, especially if upset emotions were healed in the process.

Now, not only does this happen for me on almost a daily basis now, but also it is becoming much easier for me to 'access' this electrical energy - in other words, to work with Holy Spirit 'supernaturally' in me, by just my mere willingness to allow Him to do something. And I'm finding that this is making it possible to apply this to any particular seeming condition that's going on in my body. For example I might have stuffy sinuses from eating some icecream, and if I'm willing I will sort of give a brief 'nod' to Holy Spirit, and he will instantly start to shake something and energize something and extract all of the symptoms. Or lets say I am under slept and I turn to Holy Spirit and he 'zaps' me, lol, I do my little shaky thing, and then I'm not longer experiencing that tiredness.

Also this is manifesting in the healing of others now, where I have an increasingly spontaneous willingness to lay my hand on a person and allow Holy Spirit to be immediately engaged through me to heal something. This has been developed somewhat through my openness to explore supernatural healing and commanding away sickness and so on. By developing some trust in that area, I am now growing in 'strength' and confidence in that if I simply do my part and join with Holy Spirit, miracles can happen, without any preparation whatsoever. God doesn't need preparation. God is ready to heal right now!

In particular, I've also been inviting Jesus into me, and I ask him to come in and heal certain feelings I feel in my torso. And immediately he comes in and makes corrections, which I may experience as tightening of muscles or pulses in the stomache area or contractions and other shaking, and then somehow these negative feelings will have simply disappeared without me really noticing how or when, and I will feel happy and start to laugh. And so I've been exploring that more too. What is the next step?

Well, I've also more actively started to invite GOD to come into me, to be in me, to dwell in me, to shine through me, to love through me. God is the one whose presence regularly moves me to tears. Realizing that God is HERE right now, and that it's really me that believes in separation or unawareness of God's PRESENCE. So as I open up to accepting and being aware of and open to God's presence here, I have to open to God being inside of me also, in my 'body' and mind. And so I invited God to be in me.

Then instead of referring to Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit, I referred to Him as 'Spirit of God', to make that kind of 'connection' between the two, which maybe I wasn't making before. So I invited 'spirit of God' to come into me, while also affirming "I receive God's healing". And let me tell you, the amount of activity that Holy Spirit them did in me was probably the most intense I've ever experienced. All up my spine I felt this intense presence and electrical energy radiating out of both sides of my spine all the way up and down several inches, accompanied but much more intense body-part shaking and energy dislodging. You have to really try to just trust and allow and relax while He's shaking the crap out of your body, literally. And afterwards, I felt healed and renewed and peaceful.

And I can tell you one other thing that I am noticing, is that... because of these 'sessions' of healing, I think... I'm noticing more often now moments where I just feel... calm, present, and there aren't any thoughts happening. It's quite unusual and unlike any other 'mode' of functioning that I am used to. Like, as if I am ALWAYS thinking, and then... there isn't any thinking happening, and I'm like... what is this? It's a feeling like there is this 'love' present, and it's just very calming and relaxing. And I've remarked to myself, that this is like the 'first time' that I am 'being', aware, without having any thoughts about anything. Also last night I was doing this and also experimenting with 'not controlling anything' and I heard myself exclaim, "this is the first time I am actually finally RESTING." To be aware, relaxed, and to have no sense of having to do do do do do anything, and just BEING there. Ahhhhh. Felt like real rest and relief. Relief from the ego mind. For the first time ever!

So what's on my mind now is... the interesting transition from ... doing forgiveness mentally, taking steps in changing perception....following some procedure (which still helps)... versus.... starting to be transformed SUPER-NATURALLY, by Holy Spirit directly. I used to not really ask Holy Spirit to 'do' the healing in me, thinking that I just needed to change my perception and accept my innocence etc, and that Holy Spirit was just sort of looking on from above and guiding me with word phrases and so on.

But then I came to realize, particularly spurred by some other people who ask Holy Spirit to actually do something, that Holy Spirit is not only meant to do something but to actually supernaturally HEAL me. And not just a little bit. I completely saw one passage of ACIM in a different light when it says "Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I will LET HIM" - and "I choose to LET HIM, by allowing Him to choose for God for me". This for me has become, to let Him choose for God, to decide my innocence, AND THEN TO COME INTO ME AND PERFORM HEALING MIRACLES - which quite *literally* remove the consequences of my wrong decision - literally the healing and removal of upset emotions, the correction of body sickness, all of it! And this all entirely hinges around "If I will LET HIM." He isn't the one who lacks an ability to heal EVERYTHING... we are the ones who won't conceive of, allow or open up to letting Him wield his unlimited POWER in our lives.

I have a little willingness, then he does some super amazing - I have no idea what He really does - THING - and then I am better off. Yes I continue to do forgiveness in a more formal sort of sequence of perceptual corrections, but I am opening up more now to, what Holy Spirit just told me... "direct transfer", of experiential truth - the healing power of love - the presence of the One Mind - to accept and receive God's healing directly and to then extend it, rather than this whole ACIM thing of some kind of monotonous, intellectual, do-it-yourself 'study' of a book or manipulation of thoughts or thinking that YOU do the healing and correction. YOU do not heal. God is the healer. God has appointed Holy Spirit to HEAL YOU, FOR YOU. So this requires you to let go of even the process of your own forgiveness, to LET HIM actively work in you and through you. Otherwise you are just staying separate and missing out on a HUGE amount of support and divine help in your process of awakening. You don't have to do this all yourself, and in fact you HAVE to relinquish doing it yourself in order to open up to accepting and allowing God's love!

I'm sharing this because I feel more confident over time that regardless of what I am experiencing, it is real enough to me and transformative enough to me, that I think other people are supposed to know more about this. There isn't enough of an awareness of the Power of Holy Spirit in the ACIM community, especially not in terms of performing miracles and other super-natural manifestations. Some branches of religion are much more familiar with this than most of us are. But I said to Holy Spirit, I don't know how I could possibly 'teach this' to anyone, because it's not like it's based on some kind of metaphysics or logic or whatever. I have no idea what Holy Spirit actually does or how He does it. It's much more of an experience that I sort of stumbled into.

Then Holy Spirit simply said, and this is His instruction to YOU:

"Invite me in."

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"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."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

Do you know who you really are? What you really are is an immortal, eternal, changeless, endless, permanent, absolute being. As an immortal being, you can never change, never become anything, never turn into anything and never die. Nothing can ever happen to change you, and you cannot change yourself.

In order to KNOW who you are, you will have to be willing to fully embrace and acknowledge that you are an immortal being. If you are immortal, it is impossible that anyone has attacked you, has power over you, has hurt you, offended or upset you, or that the world has the power to do anything to you.

When you suggest that the world or its inhabitants have caused you in some way, causing you to change in some way, you are insinuating that you DO NOT know yourself. If you knew you were immortal you could not believe these things. If you enter into believing these things, you are losing touch with who you are and no longer know who you are.

It cannot be that you know yourself while someone else has the power to modify what you are. If someone can change you in ANY way, influence you in ANY way, you are unknown and are lost and confused about who and what you are. If you are absolutely certain of who and what you are, nothing and no-one can in ANY way change you or define you or modify you or cause you or hurt you or influence you. You must be unmoved and undisturbed by the world.

This means that anyone who believes in any way that they are affected by the world, does not know who they are. Anyone who believes they can suffer, be sick, die, be unhappy, be upset or offended, caused to change against their will in any way, does NOT know who they are.

You cannot remain in the knowledge that you are immortal while believing that you are vulnerable and susceptible. That you can be affected and attacked. You cannot maintain that you are invulnerable and permanently alive if you are asserting that you have been assailed by someone, damaged by something, destroyed in some way.

These are beliefs in mortality, which is a belief that you are dead and not alive. You can't know yourself to be immortal if you are confused about whether you have eternal life or not. Any suggestion we have that someone has done something to us is an attack upon our own immortality. Just as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" and "I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression."

The question of forgiveness then, as to whether I am forgiving or not, or how much, boils down to the degree to which I am CERTAIN about WHO I AM. If I KNOW myself with perfect certainty, then I am automatically forgiving. I will not accuse anyone of doing anything to me, because this is literally an attempt to assert that I am mortal. I will not produce a sickness because this also is an attempt to prove I can be hurt.

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

By acknowledging your immortality you are automatically going to detach yourself from all the supposed causes in the world, you will take back all your power that you've given away, you'll see yourself as an immovable object in the river, and completely DOMINANT of everything you see. This is how you have power over death and power to overcome the world. NOTHING can prevail against a son of God who knows who he is, and his power is unlimited and absolute and unopposed.

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to deal with fear or guilt, upsets of any kind, any kind of stress or suffering, any sense of shame or unworthiness, any apparent sickness or loss or malfunction, or even death, you MUST have forgotten who you really are. You must be out of touch with knowing that you are immortal, and you are trying to prove that you are susceptible, vulnerable, damageable, hurtable, attackable, weakened, capable of being destroyed and able to be CHANGED by something.

The immortal can never be changed by anything or anyone. If I claim that such and such a person upset me, I am literally claiming that I am changeable, malleable, affect-able, underminable, weak, victimizable, and destructible. It is a belief in mortality. When I am being unforgiving, I am asserting and choosing death. When I am suffering in any way, I am forgetting that I am still as God created me. When I am blaming people for stuff, I am doing myself a disservice.

Your task then is to remember who you are, be certain of who you are, be extremely in touch with who you are, be absolutely clear about the fact that you are an immortal permanent being that can never be changed by anyone or anything, and KNOW your self. To know yourself you have to remember your SOUL, the you that God created to live forever. And through this knowing you are in perfect forgiveness, because nothing can happen to those who have eternal life.

"That is why blame must be UNDONE, NOT re-allocated. Lay it to yourself, and you cannot KNOW yourself, for ONLY THE EGO BLAMES AT ALL. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as strong an ego defense as blaming others. YOU CANNOT ENTER GOD's PRESENCE IF YOU ATTACK HIS SON."

"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God."

"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead"

"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU."

"Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. "

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

"Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick."

"Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. "

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

God is the state in which there is perfect healing all the time, not that there is 'something to heal' due to there being sickness, but that there is `pro-active healing` which PREVENTS there from being sickness, all the time. So God is in a state of health and grace forever.

God is also the source and creator of who I am as His Son. So, I extend from God. And everything I have must therefore have been given me BY God. Jesus says that the only difference between Him and us now is that he does not have anything OTHER than what God gave Him... meaning that the rest of us cling to what we think is 'other' stuff that we got from somewhere 'else', because we made it up separate from God. And none of it has any power.

Love inspires miracles and miracles are all based on love, and therefore they are expressions of love, and therefore they are expressions of GOD. They start in God. God is perpetually in a state of CHOOSING health by pro-actively always creating health. And by health I mean, a healed state in which sickness is impossible because there is only love. All true healing must then either flow from God or involve us entering INTO God to share in what God is.

So it comes down to a matter of what seems to be, two vantage points. 1) Healing flows FROM God TO where we are, and 2) We go TO God in order to share IN healing.

Most of what we seem to attempt to do in our awakening process is to go TO God in the knowledge that as we get closer to God we open up TO the healing state that is in God, so that we can share in health. However, God also is coming to us :-) God is extending constantly, and wants total health at all times, and shares total health at all times. He has no desire to 'make sick' or to 'keep sick'. And, given the chance, he would immediately flow His health to us and share it with us, healing us of all sickness.

When some portion of ego 'meets' God, God transmutes it into love and healing, or rather, health, is restored. It seems however that we live in a world where there is all kinds of sickness happening which appears not to have been 'corrected' by God yet, as if somehow it has some kind of power over God or that God for some reason does not attempt to 'heal' it or correct it. And this can lead to confusion as to exactly how it's possible that God is total health but the world is full of sickness.

Part of the issue is that we each have written 'agreements' i.e. 'scripts' before each lifetime, which were essentially sequences of events that we would 'allow' and which we would be at least a little willing to use as learning devices, to bring us ultimately closer to God, WILLINGLY, rather than necessarily being 'forced' into love. And because we did not want healing, having rejected God in the separation, it seems we now have to go through the plans that we lay out to learn our lessons and become more 'receptive' to God's love. And that can take time, and it can also seem to mean we 'have to suffer'.

However, God has no intention of making you suffer or of it having to take a long time to heal. God's Spirit works NOW. God is spontaneous and immediate and has absolutely no reason for delays of any kind, being of absolute confidence and certainty. He would heal the world in an instant. He does, however, honor the wishes of each of us to dream and pretend, up to a point. However, let's be clear, that our scripts and our excuses as to why we will not accept healing, is OUR issue, and not God's. God is not the one who keeps resisting healing or the provision of it. God wants to heal ALL THE TIME.

Because of this, I do believe it is possible that God is perfectly open to 'bypassing' your script, if an appropriate request is made. I asked Archangel Raphael about this and was surprised when he said "there is a process", and that a "petition" must be made to God. Because, how everything is sort of 'set up', we have all these agreements over many lifetimes to go through various processes to gradually awaken. God doesn't really care how long that takes, having infinite patience and knowing we're not really separate. But God is also still very immediate and instantaneous. AND, God only wants to LOVE US all of the time.

So since God is in constant love with us, and wants for us ONLY to return to Him as soon as possible so that WE can experience love and not suffering, as an act of compassion, God is perfectly capable of bypassing the script and enacting 'gifts' or 'blessings' or 'miracles' which are capable of healing someone or bringing them closer to Him 'in spite of' the ego contracts. It is possible for Holy Spirit, who has the power of God (!), to enact miracles of healing and restoration of health on all levels, at any time and to any extent. As we awaken and open to love we become co-facilitators of this and miracles become more common and natural. However, Holy Spirit is not held back by us and does not depend on us to be able to heal.

It is possible to pray for someone and to request healing for them. And this prayer basically entails you going to God in some fashion, with whatever amount of openness you currently have, and first of all emphasizing the nature of God, which is to be grateful for what already is. Grateful that God loves us, grateful that God already loves the other person, and grateful that healing and health are natural and are ALREADY TRUE. "Thank you God" is very appropriate, up-front.

We thank God profusely for having already accomplished our full and total healing, which may not be apparent in TIME but has already been accomplished in eternity. And then we might take action to EXTEND God's love (which we then are feeling) to others. We might simply ASK God/Jesus to heal someone, acknowledging and being thankful that it is DONE ALREADY (you could call this having faith), and you could even command this healing occur now.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are then perfectly capable of healing ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, and that means, correcting you FOR you, or correcting another person FOR them, without them necessarily knowing HOW to correct themselves or being capable of enlightening themselves. It is an 'intervention', a blessing and a gift. It is an extension of love. If healing is possible, it has to mean that it can occur IN SPITE OF the ego and TO UNDO THE EGO, meaning we are not really required to necessarily become miracle-minded in order to receive a miracle... IF someone else is willing to request the miracle for us. We can even request it ourselves and receive more than we asked for.

God loves us very much. We do not need to suffer. And unconditional love has NO CONDITIONS that prevent its extension.

Focusing on this simple formula some more...

"If he senses even the faintest hint of irritation in himself as he responds to anyone, let him instantly realize that he has made an interpretation which is not true. Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be."

1) Jesus seems to be saying that we should watch ourselves for any signs of upset, irritation, annoyance, anger, grief, unhappiness, etc any of the ego emotions or reactions, any kind of un-peace or lack of happiness and love.

2) This means having a very high standard for what we should normally strive for - totally peaceful, happy, joyful, loving, strong, certain, all the time. Free from suffering, free from sickness, free from death. That if we are not totally immortal and powerful and whole right now, we notice something must have gone wrong.

3) Jesus is then suggesting that this entirely boils down to an INTERPRETATION. What he's really talking about here is perception and meaning. Perception is an INTERPRETATION of what's there. A translation. We give everything all the meaning it has by INTERPRETING it. We interpret it one way ie with ego, we move into hell and false perceptions and insanity/sin. We interpret it another way with Holy Spirit and we move into the real world and true perception ie forgiveness.

4) He then goes on to say that instead of trying to sort of fix this yourself, once you recognize that you "must have made a wrong decision because you're not at peace", you now turn to the Holy Spirit and "he will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I let him. I choose to let him....". So now we're asking okay Holy Spirit, please SHOW ME how YOU see this and help me to see this through your eyes/eyes of Christ.

5) So now you open to receive his healing and to join with him, to merge with his mind, to be open to his awareness and his light, allowing him to correct and heal you. This means being willing to receive correction ie to be given healing, to be shown a different approach or interpretation of the world and the body and everything. To adopt HIS approach to it, as your own, as part of you resuming the will of God.

Essentially this means that while we have perception and a body, we are spending ALL our time INTERPRETING, and thus translating, and thus GIVING everything whatever meaning we want it to have. And that means we need to change HOW we have interpreted something, if we're finding that the intepretation is producing some kind of dis-ease or suffering in any way.

We MUST have interpreted it negatively with the ego if it led to a negative reaction, so now we become willing to reinterpret it a different way with the Holy Spirit, so that we can see it from a more forgiving and HAPPY vantage point. And we just keep doing this over and over and over until all our interpretations are THE SAME ONE INTERPRETATION of the Holy Spirit, which does not fluctuate or waver or change with conditions. An interpretation which reflects unconditional constant love and peace.

"You but mistake interpretation for the truth. And you are wrong. But a mistake is not a sin, nor has reality been taken from its throne by your mistakes. God reigns forever, and His laws alone prevail upon you and upon the world. His Love remains the only thing there is. Fear is illusion, for you are like Him."

"Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true."

"A common purpose is the ONLY means whereby perception can be stabilized, and ONE interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this shared purpose is one meaning shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been GIVEN everything, and you are GLAD to see it everywhere."

"It is but your INTERPRETATIONS which are lacking in stability. And they are NOT in line with what you really are."

"Correction of a lasting nature, - and only this is true correction, - cannot be made until the teacher of God has ceased to confuse interpretation with fact, or illusion with truth."

"Your interpretations of your brother's need is your interpretation of YOURS."

"By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that HIS criteria are equally applicable to YOU."

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

"If anger comes from an interpretation and not a fact, it is never justified. Once this is even dimly grasped, the Way is open. Now it is possible to take the next step. The interpretation can be changed at last."

"Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death."

"Yet you cannot BE aware without interpretation, and what you perceive IS your interpretation."

"The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function."

"Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your will to attack. Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, who perceives no attack on anything."

"What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first."

"Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit SHOW HIM TO YOU, and teach you both his love and NEED for love."

"Joining with Him in seeing, is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge."

"The Holy Spirit's interpretation of fear DOES dispel it, for the AWARENESS of truth cannot BE denied."

"Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning."

The road to enlightenment really boils down to a matter of recognition. There's more than 100 references to "recognition" in ACIM.

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

Here Jesus is saying that we are ALREADY LIGHT, alreadty holy and whole. We just keep DENYING that it is already true of us, like someone who doesn't want to admit what's true. We are covering our eyes and trying NOT to see reality.

What does recognition mean? It means you accurately and correctly discern and acknowledge what something actually IS, without any distortion or denial or illusions or attempts to change it.

This obviously means being AWARE of what it is, and so yields awareness, or awakening. To be awake to what something IS is to recognize its reality. To not recognize reality is to be unaware of what is real, which places the mind in a state of sleep or unconsciousness, in which it dreams a world of lies.

The interesting thing is that, within you right now, there is a holy, perfect, happy, peaceful, divine, innocent self. It's ALREADY THERE. And it is already true. God has in fact already established the fact of what you ACTUALLY ARE.

The only problem we have, is that our minds are currently in a state where we don't clearly acknowledge this about ourselves, we don't recognize it is in us already, and we don't seem to want it. We have REJECTED OURSELVES, and don't want to be who we are.

"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

Part of the problem of not wanting it is simply because we don't recognize it. When you DON'T recognize something, you think it is something else. And now you've entered into illusions and confusion and insanity. It means you are out of touch with reality.

Accepting reality means coming into "contact" with it, rather than being separated off from it or distanced from it. Being in contact with reality is sanity and recognition of what is already true. Such a state of mind is mirarcle mindedness.

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it."

Atonement is the same. We are asked to accept the atonement. The atonement is an expression of the truth. We are simply asked to accept what is true, in terms of the truth as God established it. To accept what God has GIVEN you. Which is also to reclaim your inheritance.

"Innocence is not of your making. It is GIVEN you, the instant you would HAVE it."

"The remedy is NOT of your making, any more than YOU are." "God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

We aren't even really asked to do anything special or elaborate. We're basically just asked to "know thyself". To be true to what we actually are. To recognize its truth, to acknowledge it as true, and to accept it.

This means that while we're NOT doing that, we must be in some kind of strange mental state where we're AVOIDING the truth, we want something ELSE to be true, and we've put our faith in things which are false. We've given reality TO illusions and lies, instead of letting reality be reality.

It surely can't be hard to simply turn within and acknowledge actual facts. A truth which can be experienced. To let go of all desires to have the truth be something it is not, and to merely accept what is true. To let yourself be as God created you. To stop trying to turn yourself and others into something they're not.

Enlightenment then isn't even really an activity, it's more like just a total surrendering and allowing what ACTUALLY IS to be what it is. Which also means allowing God to be God, and you to be you, and your brother to be your brother.

It's like, just giving up and stopping all the ego games of wanting things to be different to how they are in reality, and being willing to ADMIT that only the truth is true. To lay down all the defense and denials and ways that we try to INSIST that something else is true and real.

It was our insisting on not being okay with heaven, that produced this false world. It was our denial of God that produced our egotism and suffering. It was our wanting to be something we could never be, that placed us in bodies and space and time. And it was our attempt to oppose life that induced our own seeming death.

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it." The road home couldn't really be more simple. We just give up fighting against reality and become fully willing to accept and receive an "off the shelf" solution from God, take His truth to be our own, align with His will for us, and just return to living in your NATURAL state.

"To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are."

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, who perceives no attack on anything."

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

Everyone has free will. Which means that all experiences are chosen. And nothing happens to anyone without their consent or choice. If this weren't true, it would be possible that someone's free will could be taken away from them, violated, broken, or completely have no effect. This isn't possible because the free will was given by GOD, and is irrevocably permanent. Everyone has free will at all times.

"The world (heaven), in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man (souls) by God, AND the proper creation by man (souls) in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man (souls) by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

When a person seems incapable of exercising decision making on their own, such as with a baby or a child, a person who you are having to be guardian for due to their disabilities, some group of people that you're supposed to protect, the elderly who have lost their power of thought and seem unable to look after themselves etc, these all create scenarios where someone else seems to have to take "responsibility" for them.

It's interesting first of all that there even is such a scenario where someone could seem to be in a position to be unable to choose for themselves. This alone is the result of ego interfering with freedom. And just because e.g. newborn babies are heavily dependent on their parents for survival and for decision making, this doesn't mean it's natural. To place oneself in a position of having to depend on anyone else to make decisions, for any reason, is an aspect of self denial. Which is what leads to incarnation in the first place. In effect this makes the bodies of babies, a physical "face of innocence", denying responsibility for attacking God.

Beyond that, once you're in a situation where it seems you have "no choice" but to take responsibility for choosing for someone else, there is now a very slippery slope. If you truly are "held accountable" for someone else's well-being, and if anything whatsoever remotely happens to that person, it is now implied that this is "your fault". Whether it be that you are a parent who "has to" look after a young child, or an adult looking after an elderly parent, or an older sibling looking after a younger sibling, the same is true.

If in any way another person seems to lack the power of decision or free will, and you have to "take over responsibility", this is tantamount to forcing you into a state of guilt. Anything that do, anything that happens to them, now effectively happens "to you", because you have now extended the scope of what you are responsible for. Even to the extent that it makes you feel like they are "part of you", and what happens to them even starts to affect you against your will. When they suffer, you suffer, because of this belief that you are bound to them - that you being responsible for them makes them an extension of your self.

It's very difficult to avoid this "double responsibility" in this world. If parents would just ditch babies, the babies would not survive. If we would just let those with dementia or alzheimers or disabilities fend for themselves, they would not last long. The question then is, is it possible psychologically to still maintain a role of "looking after" another person, or seeming to be responsible for them, WITHOUT believing that you are taking over their free will, and without using their suffering as a way to induce guilt in yourself?

It is very difficult to not feel guilty for the suffering of others. If you feel responsible for them it induces guilt and fear. If you feel compelled to protect them from suffering, and something happens, you can potentially go into self blame. If they go through a difficult time, you can possibly feel like it's your fault even if it isn't. And any way in which they suffer, makes you suffer.

If what's happening in your mind is a lack of letting go, a sense of "owning the person" (very prevalent in parenting), efforts to control and coerce, or any other way in which the person's free will is violated, then this will lay the groundwork for your own suffering. Regardless of whether you are acting physically on the level of form to provide for, support, guide, "keep alive" or otherwise be "responsible for" someone else's life, you have to find a way to keep sight of free will. Otherwise you will lose yourself in it and accuse yourself of "irresponsibility", as a result of being overly responsible.

I was guided recently, that "She is God's responsibility, not yours". This was because I kept being overly responsible for the wellbeing of another person. This compels a need to constantly fix and control things. It results in a kind of fear-driven desperation to want things to be different. To try to get someone to make different choices, to avoid certain outcomes. But as soon as we're getting into territory of encroaching on free will, we're going to lose our own peace of mind.

It boils down to the simple fact that you can't retain a sense of freedom if you take over the freedom of others. You become excessively responsible for things you are not responsible for, when you see yourself as "the cause of" what others are experiencing. You move into states of guilt and fear and worry whenever you believe that someone is "not supposed to" or "supposed to" be in a certain state they are not electing to be in. And you cannot retain any sense of peace while you try to coerce anyone in any way.

It's a difficult thing to deal with. You have to continue possibly being physically and emotionally supportive of a person, but without getting lost in it. Without losing sight of your own free will and that of another. It can even seem frightening to entertain the idea of allowing someone to make poor decisions or to degrade or to head towards death. Mainly because this incites reactions of guilt at not preventing it, due to believing it's your fault, based on believing their free will is something for YOU to control.

Always it's about the confusion of who you are, who they are, who is responsible for what freedom, and who is doing what to whom. You have to let people go in order to truly helpful. Otherwise any help is really a combination of help and manipulation. And that can only lead to a special relationship.

Yesterday I lay hands on my wife's cramping feet, I commanded the cramps to go, Holy Spirit flowed and the cramps left. There wasn't a whole lot of fanfare. It just happened and it was done.

Miracle.

I noticed afterwards that it had worked seemingly easier than in past attempts. Something about me had changed.

Previously, as I attempted miracles, I still had a strong belief in sickness being real. I saw its removal as "difficult", and felt that I was going up against a formidable opponent.

It reminded me of how when I first started to pray to God, that I would be in much more of a begging mode, much more a victim, and quite powerless. I'd be in tears and pleading and begging but it wouldn't bring about much of a result. This is because I was not orienting myself properly as an extender of God's miracles, but was trying have something done to me. That's victim consciousness, and God will not attack.

ACIM also tells us about the authority problem, which is our attempt to "be God" in separation from God, to overthrow God and to replace Him with a false self. The more that we try to do this, the more we give "power" to the ego, but paradoxically this is also giving AWAY our true power - the power of God. The stronger the ego seems to become, the weaker we become. Taking authority away from God takes real authority away from ourselves.

Similarly, the extent to which we believe that illusions are reality, such as that sickness is real, problems are real, or that we have powerful enemies, reveals just how weakened we are. If we believe that illusions have power over us, that they are the truth (and the truth cannot be changed), then this "disables" us from being effective miracle workers.

I had previously attempted to go up against what I perceived to be a real enemy, a real sickness, a real difficulty, and it was this fundamental belief that produced the wrong kind of perception - a perception which blocks miracles. If I'm perceiving that, let's say, 70% of the truth is in illusions, then I only believe in God's power 30% and see myself as incapable of overcoming the problem. I can rant and scream at it all I want but it won't budge.

I will also keep looking at the problem to see 'if' the miracle worked, I will check it, I will be in a mode of diagnosis (ego), and I will have a lot of doubt. Here I am using perception to receive signals from outside of me to tell me IF something happened, instead of knowing from WITHIN that it MUST happen. With a perception riddled with fear - which means that you believe illusions are real - you are not wielding very much authority over them.

In the past few weeks I've been going through quite a breakthrough in terms of recognizing that ALL sickness is unreal, that the entire physical world is an illusion, and really withdrawing a lot of belief from it. It has reframed everything for me and is putting things in their proper perspective. It was very difficult seeming to decide to not believe in sickness anymore, flying in the face of what the whole world believes.

Following this, however, I noticed as I attempted a miracle that I had a much more miracle-minded attitude. I was not about to take no for an answer, was not checking to see if something happened, I did not pause to decide whether to do it, I told the problem to go and I meant it, and a greater sense of authority expressed itself through me.

As such, when you change your mind and believe more strongly that God's truth is the truth, and that illusions really are NOTHING, you take on and share more of the REAL authority of God once more. You have power OVER illusions because you are much less deceived by them. This makes you more miracle minded because now you are more aligned with Holy Spirit's mindset, are more empowered by the truth, are much less deterred by the illusions of orders of difficulty, and you simply believe far less that the problem/sickness has more power than you do.

Ultimately this will mean that you gain such authority in Christ, such alignment with God, and such certainty that illusions are NOTHING to you, that you literally can brush them away like they meant nothing at all. That is the kind of power that Jesus demonstrated. That's what happens when you have aligned yourself with God's truth and no longer perceive incorrectly that illusions are actually even a formidable opponent. Recognizing them as nothing, not taking them seriously, not believing they are real and not GIVING THEM any power, strips them of all possible defenses and prevents them from preventing the miracle.

As we reclaim our birthright in sharing the True Authority of God, relinquishing our attempt to have ego authority - which is really weakness and powerlessness - and surrendering to the truth, provides us with automatic access to the miracle-minded awareness of God/Holy Spirit, and thereby facilitates miracles. Instead of difficult miracles seeming to become harder, they instead become easier the less you believe the problem is real. Nothing can stand in the way of the Son of God.

You have authority over all illusions because of what you are and because of what the truth is. That authority is POWER, and that power can effortlessly disappear all sickness, death and suffering. It can disappear the body, the world, and the universe. The power of God knows no limits.