A Course in miracles does not mention the phrase "unconscious guilt". However, Jesus does teach about it. In fact, the whole course is about removing the BLOCKS TO AWARENESS. A blocked awareness is indicative of UNCONSCIOUSNESS - not being consciously aware of love.

Here for example he refers to "veiling in shadows", things which must be "raised to understanding" (brought back into conscious awareness), in order to make the choice for heaven consciously:

"Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help, and all mistakes in judgement which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

Anything which is a hidden hate, a secret sin, something concealed, any form of denial, all illusions, all forms of sin guilt fear sickness and death, are forms of unconsciousness.

The entire idea of "awakening" is of returning to full conscious awareness, out of a state of semi-consciousness or, in the case of death, unconsciousness. It is also the same thing as the idea of "forgetting".

Here are for example paragraphs from 5 separate chapters talking about unconsciousness...

"These mad beliefs can gain UNCONSCIOUS hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection."

"Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be UNCONSCIOUS but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them."

"Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is UNCONSCIOUS of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something NOT himself."

"He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose upon Him, to re-establish your own will in your consciousness. You have imprisoned it in your UNCONSCIOUS, where it remains available, but cannot help you."

"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."

So you can see our unconscious states are quite well discussed in the course and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

There is one test by which you can find out if you have "unconscious stuff". First of all, realize that even if you have some amount of conscious awareness, it does not mean that you do not have an unconscious. When something is unconscious, you LITERALLY are NOT AWARE of it. There can be huge sections of your mind which have been walled off and kept hidden in the dark, which you do not even know are there.

It is the assumption of just about everyone that because you have conscious awareness, you are aware of EVERY part of your mind. This is usually far from the case. The test to determine whether you have an unconscious mind is simple:

If you perceive there is a cause affecting you which has not come from yourself, you have an unconscious mind.

This must be true because the only way you could perceive that something is happening against your will, is by being unaware of the way that you do everything to yourself. The secret to salvation is realizing you do everything to yourself. Therefore, if you are not directly confronted with AWARENESS of the way in which you are CAUSING everything you are experiencing, no matter what form it takes or how it is projected, YOU DO have a part of your mind which is unconscious. And yes, that means pretty much most of us.

It is valuable to realize you have unconsciousness, because you DO need to bring those parts of your mind back into conscious awareness in order for your mind to be FULLY AWARE OF LOVE’S PRESENCE, and to be able to consciously choose heaven. You cannot enter heaven while part of your mind is unconscious.

Typically, most people walking around this planet, believe that they are FULLY aware. When they wake up in the morning, they believe they have woken up fully. They believe that everything they are aware of comprises the sum total of all things that exist. And therefore, whenever they are trying to make sense out of what caused something to happen, they will reference everything they are aware of, trying to make sense out of how this could happen. And since they believe they are fully aware (but are not), they HAVE to find an explanation for what causes thing, usually by blaming it on someone else.

If you are blaming others or the world for causing ANYTHING, it is proof that you do not recognize that YOU are the cause, you did not SEE yourself cause it, and you seem to have asked for something without realizing it. So recognize this, if you are a victim in any way, you are unconscious.

That means there is a whole bunch of information, facts, truth, and content, which has been BLOCKED from your conscious awareness. These are nothing less than blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. These blocks, these barriers of denial which make the mind unconscious, is precicely what we are REQUIRED to UNDO, in order to restore our awareness of God.

But if you are walking the world thinking, you know everything there is to know, and are aware of everything there is to be aware of, and yet stuff is happening to you seemingly against your will, in any way, then YOU ARE IN DENIAL. And that means, you have a portion of mind which is currently NOT CONSCIOUS, which you are not aware you even have. It is tucked away, out of sight, and you don’t even SUSPECT that you have it.

It is vital to uncover these portions of mind and to heal their content. Too many people think that "forgiving" only means taking back projections. This is beause they have no idea that they have unconscious stuff in their mind. They think that they only need to deal with what they are consciously aware of, ie what someone seems to be doing, and to take back that projection.

That’s a fine stepping stone, but if it does not lead to a) removing the denial that made guilt go unconscious (fear), b) removing the denial which made sin go unconscious (guilt), c) removing the denial that made God go unconscious (sin), by bringing all of those into conscious awareness and undoing them, and accepting Atonement, then this is NOT complete forgiveness. It’s scratching the surface, and many people are NOT forgiving fully.

These hidden dark secrets are hidden behind shadows and illusions and layers of denial. Fear for example is made entirely to make guilt unconscious. Fear defends against guilt and protects the guilt. It causes you to fixate on what the fear is being caused by, anywhere other than within, so that you will not look within to see where the fear is really coming from.

All fear has its source in your unconscious belief that you are GUILTY. It has absolutely no other cause. But while you remain unconscious/unaware of that guilt, you will keep trying to make sense of why you are afraid by blaming the cause on something outside of you. And since that is never the cause, it will not provide you with a solution.

Fear has to be recognized as a decoy, an illusion that is nothing more than an effect, not a cause. It is the effect of guilt. Fear is not causing anything because it is only guilt that can cause it. When you can recognize fear as an effect of guilt, the implication as to what caused it automatically will start to give you some breadcrumbs which will bring that guilt back into conscious awareness. Then you can work on undoing the guilt.

Guilt also is a problem because, guilt is not the problem. Guilt actually is another decoy like fear, designed to block and keep sin unconscious. It’s sole purpose is to pretend you did not sin and did not want to sin. It disowns the sin and disassociates from it, projecting blame for it on something or something outside of you. So long as you are feeling sorrowful and guilty and allegedly unworthy of forgiveness, this will block the dishonest fact that YOU DID WANT TO SIN, and that you yourself believe in it. Guilt keeps sin real and prevents you from looking at it. It keeps it out of conscious awareness.

Guilt has to be then recognized as just an effect of sin, and not a cause of anything. It’s bullshit lies of "didn’t mean to do it" has to be seen through. Guilt is fake. It is there solely to stop you from bringing your unconscious belief in sin into awareness. When you can see that guilt is just an effect, and all guilt is caused by a belief in sin, that will help you to bring the sin into conscious awareness. It will resurface as soon as you make the connection of causality that sin caused guilt, therefore behind guilt there is sin lurking there.

Once the belief is sin is in your awareness, it is not going to be pretty. Always look at this stuff with Holy Spirit, because there is some really dark murderous death-wish kind of beliefs tucked way in the unconscious mind. But these beliefs like all the rest are fake. You have to realize then that sin actually is yet another block to awareness. It keeps something out of conscious awareness. Can you guess what it is?

God.

The belief in sin makes God unconscious. Not only is it a belief that God is dead and IS unconscious hisemself, it also shuts awareness of God out of the mind. It can only do this through denial and unwillingness to accept the truth. It is just another block to let go. You must recognize sin is not a cause of anything. Sin is just an effect of a mistaken idea of separation. It has not caused anything, and therefore has not happened. Undoing this will REVEAL GOD to you, consciously.

So you see, we have a LOT of shit that’s just sitting there in the unconscious areas of mind, and yet not exactly inert or inactive. Unconscious self-hate will project outwards and cause all manner of SHIT stuff to "happen to you", and it will seem to come out of nowhere, because you will not see that you asked for it. And so you will think you are just an innocent victim.

This is the big problem. Believing you are "innocent" just because you are not AWARE of the fact that you attacked yourself, is the entire foundation for projecting blame outside of yourself for everything you experience. You won’t be able to ACCEPT that you have done this to yourself, until you can consciously own up to it and actually SEE that you have in fact been the one who did it. To recognize that YOU PUT THERE all of the suffering you are experiencing, including all of your sickness. Until you can own it, you cannot let it go.

Just because you THINK you are innocent right now, on the basis of not being fully aware of your whole mind, is FAKE INNOCENCE. And it is this fake innocence which leads many people to not even suspect that they have unconscious shit to undo. It also leads many to believe they DID NOT CAUSE the shit that happens, which actually is an act of profound irresponsibility. It is this irresponsibility, the disownership of self, that produces all suffering.

Remember that the secret to salvation is that you have done this ALL to yourself. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect. You are to learn you are the CAUSE of everything in the world, not the effect of it. And you can only do that by becoming AWARE consciously that you in fact DO cause things. That means removing the blocks to AWARENESS, which are simply forms of denial which have made you partly UNCONSCIOUS. And extreme denial produces all denial of life, which leads to sickness and death as total unconsciousness.

If you want life, you must become willing to bring this unconscious stuff back into awareness for healing and release. And that’s going to have to mean, taking full responsibility for everything you are experiencing. Otherwise, guaranteed, you will suffer at your own hand without even realizing it. No-one dies without their own consent!!!

"Maybe I am causing this" "I must be responsible for this" "I am doing this to myself" "I am the cause of this" "I must have some unconscious stuff to heal if I seem to be suffering against my will" "There must be something I am not aware of where I am attacking myself" "I need to undo my belief that I sinned by bringing it back into awareness and letting it go."

Remember, "heaven is a choice I must make" - a conscious choice. You cannot have stuff lurking in unconsciousness, otherwise you are in denial, and the beliefs you are denying will make you unwilling to accept the atonement. A healed mind is a wholly conscious mind.

One of the core ideas of the Course which is perhaps the MOST resisted, is that there is no world. It is not a popular idea. People don't like talking about it. Whenever I post it about it the comments section goes quiet most of the time. It's like... there are some things that Jesus says in the Course quite clearly but our egos do not want to acknowledge it. We'd rather take the bits of the Course we think are acceptable and just reject the other bits as some kind of freaky fringe stuff that was just there by mistake or something. We gloss over it.

But Jesus is very clear.

God would not have created this world because it is a symbol of punishment, it is run by rules of suffering and it leads to death. It is a cruel world filled with disaster and sickness and pain and fear, and there is simply NO WAY that a loving God could create this. If God did not create this, that means we're finding ourselves inside what we value as a 'pretty cool word' when in fact it's just a great big illusion that we made up ourselves. It's not even real. It doesn't even exist. Can we accept that? Or do we want to remain in denial and pick and choose the bits of truth that we can allow?

The Course also speaks of how we are not a body, and Jesus speaks therein of how the body is so worthless and so illusory that it can completely disappear when you fully awaken. Not just that you wake up 'in' it and carry on having it, but that it can literally disappear from the dream. He also speaks of how he dematerialized his own body and how we can do the same. Is this too radical for us to accept? Is it such a tall order and such a strange, mystical, seemingly impossible fear so far outside our comfort zone that we would rather turn a blind eye to it? Oh... that's not for me, that's not something that can be possible for me. Resistance.

There is no world. There is no body. God did not create this world.

Can we accept this, fully? Can we accept the implications? Or do we want a watered down truth that lets us simmer in hell a bit longer?

"Anger is never justified." - ACIM

Anger is not natural. It is very common, but not natural or healthy. Anger isn't really a valid feeling. It's actually a device for projecting something. Usually we use it to project guilt or some other hurt. It's a way of hurling stuff out of the mind and trying to pin it on someone or something else. It's a form of irresponsibility.

Anger is also caused by something other than itself, so it's not like some kind of core feeling or inherent central nature. It's a reaction to something else, twice removed from the problem, and only comes about when denial is also being used.

If you have a pain or hurt or guilt or whatever and you try to deny it, you're trying to dissociate yourself from it, disown it, and want to get it out of your awareness/mind. You do that by projecting it and trying to associate it with someone or something else. And the main skapegoating device used to accomplish this is anger.

Behind anger there is always something else going on. Deeper than the anger there is some kind of hurt or pain or fear. It's very easy for fears and hurts and guilts to transform into what appears to be anger, but this ins't their true form. Anger is always a way of hiding something else.

Not because you actually have anger, but because denying deeper feelings leads to an attempt to project those pains or put them out of your mind, which hurls them outward in a kind of broadcast. If you deny being afraid, you will feel angry instead. If you deny feeling guilty you'll become angry. If you deny that you feel hurt or at a loss or deprived in some way it can turn into anger. But the anger always comes after a perceived attack.

The anger is not a primary core feeling, it's a secondary layer on top of it designed to cover feelings up. You first see yourself as hurt or attacked, you then justify that because you didn't seem to ask for it (weren't aware of how you chose it) you are justified in being angry, and then you use that justification to hurl the blame outward.

Ego likes to use anger because it splits the mind and increases separation and insanity. While you are in denial and projecting pain outwardly your mind is dissociating and splitting and trying to pretend that the pain is not inside itself. But ideas do not leave the mind that conceive of them, so it stays in the mind in a disguised form, hidden behind a layer of denial.

Essentially anger doesn't work. It's an attempt to get rid of something deeper while keeping it. It doesn't make the pain go away. It doesn't heal anything. All it does is disguise and hide and make it seem like it doesn't belong to you. It's just a projected form of denial that says "this is not mine."

Anger is always unjustified because it's always based on a lie. But while the lie is kept in place, it seems as though the only problem solving solution is to project the pain. This won't work, but the mind will believe it's working, but that it needs to intensify the projection in order to get more pain out.

By becoming even more angry your mind reasons that it will be saved, or that by pinning the blame for the wound on something else you can be alleviated of the pain. This leads to a closed kind of scenario in which it seems all you can do is rage more to try to induce more relief, and the more you rage the better off you'll be. But this doesn't actually work because the mind is just splitting and becoming more and more insane. Ans besides, rage is not peace and attack will never induce healing.

Anger never ever works. It is a faulty coping mechanism. It's an attempt not to solve the real problem and to keep it hidden. Behind the anger if you look you'll always find something deeper like some kind of feeling of hurt or loss or guilt or fear. Something that came before it. And all you're doing is using the anger to try to make it go away. Anger is like an absence of feeling, ultimately an absence of love.

Feelings of hurt and attack and pain are always based on faulty perceptions that something outside of you has done something against your will, and that you are suffering as a result. This can NEVER be true because you are an immortal being that is permanently perfect and can never be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

So it always starts off with your mind going into a self attack, insinuating that you are not invulnerable, disowning the power of decision and pretending you are not the one causing your own experience, projecting out that responsibility onto others and the world, accusing them of sin, resulting in a perception that they're attacking you and you didn't ask for it, leading to hurt and pain which your mind itself puts into you to correspond to the projection, which pictures you as a victim, which justifies being angry, so then you project out anger in retaliation against the feedback loop of your own projected belief. It's pretty convoluted and crazy and a bottomless pit of hell.

You have to get further into your mind and find out the real deeper causes of things, the root issue behind all problems. It's never to do with what the world has done to you and always to do with your choice to perceive yourself unfairly treated, hurt, attacked, vulnerable etc... some kind of victim role that isn't true of your immortal nature. In that sense you are always and only the one who attacks yourself, undermining yourself first and then blaming it on the world. "Only the self-accused condemn."

This is why anger is totally unfounded and completely irrelevant in all scenarios and situations. You simply have no reason to be upset if you are immortal being that can never be hurt, made guilty, caused to be afraid or hurt for any reason. If you are not happy or at peace you have made a wrong decision and have chosen to see yourself as deprived. And no amount of blaming that on anyone or anything will make it go away. But you can always choose again.

In A Course in Miracles there are at least TWO levels on which Jesus speaks, because there are TWO stages in awakening.

There is the level that you relate to as an individual self, waking up to your higher self.

Then there is the level of the entire sonship waking up to the Christ self.

The individual self projects illusions ONTO the dream world which the Christ self is dreaming.

That means, the individual self undoes itself by taking back its projections onto or about others, and forgiving itself. This leads to awakening as the Higher Self. One son in the sonship. People wakening to this level generally do not express many miracles and will still die in a body. Examples: Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Mooji, various Hindu yogis etc

But then there is more. Christ is beyond this. Christ is the dreamer of the physical world and is the maker of it. And Christ has full power over all of it. At this level the body is completely dissolved and disappears, which Jesus demonstrated.

These two levels have led to a rift in the ACIM community. Those who relate only to the individual awakening try to shove everything Jesus teaches into that box and make it fit. This results in the complete disempowering of supernatural miracles and a redefinition of them as just corrections in perception. That's not what Jesus means by miracles at all.

Miracles are at the level of the Christ mind overriding the dream that the Christ mind is dreaming. And that means, overriding all of the physical laws that the Christ mind is sustaining as the way this world operates. Such miracles are beyond the nature of the physical world (dream), they are SUPER-NATURAL. Everything Jesus says about miracles relates to the mind of Christ, not to the mind of the sonship.

These two levels in awakening (sonship vs christ) are the entire reason why there is a community rift, why some people believe that the Course is only asking us to change our misperceptions about a pre-existing world, to accept peace in the presence of sickness, to become peaceful or have true perception "about" the world. And the Course DOES want us to do this - it's the first stage in awakening. BUT THERE IS MORE.

Stage 2 entails waking up as Christ and demonstrating supernatural miracles all over the place, knowing that you made sickness and death and can abolish both. This is also the level on which Jesus teaches "there is no world" - this is the level where this is LITERAL, because the physical world is a dream.

Those who attempt to smash all of Jesus's teachings from all levels onto ONE level, result in a tremendous amount of confusion and delusion and limitation and closed-mindedness about what the Course is teaching and what it means. This produces a "sanitized" course, void of real miracles, void of anything supernatural, and void of the power to change anything or to stop or reverse death.

Certain statements Jesus makes are directed at the second phase of awakening to Christ, and make no sense at the first stage. Assuming there is only one stage or only one awakening is a huge mistake.

This is something I was very confused by for a loooooong time because so many people are also confused by this and just assume the Course has a single truth pertaining to a single level of experience. Jesus is speaking of at least 3 levels - the false ego self projecting ONTO the world, the Higher Self which is awake IN the world, and the Christ self which has awakened FROM the world.

Knowing when Jesus is talking about a specific CONTEXT or a level of AWARENESS or IDENTITY, is very important in properly discerning what He means, what He is referring to, and how it makes sense in the bigger picture. Most ACIM students are lost in believing that the Course has 1 level, that you should just change your mind about the world and find some way to be at peace with it, and then stay in the world and die and be hurt like all the rest of the world. That's WAAAY falling short of what ACIM is teaching and is a bastardization of the Course (by the ego, no doubt).

For example:

"The world you see does not exist." "There is no world"

This is at the level of CHRIST. It is LITERAL at this level. The physical universe does not exist and it has no power over you and you can change it in any way you see fit because it is your dream. You have that power.

If you interpret this at the level of an individual Son in the sonship, as an individual self, in a body, you will interpret this to mean that the "world" is your interpretation of the world, about the world, projected onto the world, and that you need to correct that "perception" in order to wake up. Well, NO! This is wrong. You need to correct perception but this only leads to the undoing of perception, NOT the undoing of the making of the world. This belief is a level confusion.

Another example:

"Seek not to change the world but seek to change your mind about the world"

At the level of CHRIST, this means your mind has power over the world and CAN change the world any way that it sees fit for any reason, because the Christ mind is the one that is dreaming it and LITERALLY can perform "physical miracles".

At the level of the personal mind, this is MIS-UNDERSTOOD (because it's being applied at the wrong LEVEL and it thus level confusion) to mean that you should only change your mis-perceptions of the world, self and others, in order to come to awakening to truth, and that's it... no power over the world, no power over physical matter, no ability to stop the dream or change it, really a form of resigning oneself to a state of "accepting the world as it is", which is a state of POWERLESSNESS AND VICTIMHOOD. It is a TRAP!

Recognizing the levels is very important to avoid these mistakes, but because these mistakes are made prolifically, MANY MANY MANY course students are very confused about what Jesus teaches and what the Course is teaching.

You first believe you are lacking love and that love is not inside you. So now you are in need.

So you accept this is true and the sense of lack compels you to seek for what's missing.

You look everywhere except where you already decided you didn't find it... within.

Off you go, looking for love elsewhere, outside you, in others.

You believe others have what you lack so you want to get it from them.

You try to get it from them, and even steal it from them, because you're jealous that they have it and not you.

So you rip it from them and claim it. Except, something bugs you.

You can't shake the feeling that even though you have it, you don't have it, or enough of it.

This is because underneath, you still have in place the believe that love is not in you. It's still asserting this truth.

So now you can't even fully receive what you've taken from others because you yourself reject the idea that love is in you - you won't allow it to enter you.

This all leads up to the final confrontation which is quite interesting.

If you were to let down your guard and stop defending the belief that love is not in you, so that you can actually finally receive the love that you got from elsewhere, what would happen?

Would you finally fully 'get' what you stole? OR, would you suddenly realize that you already have what you thought you didn't have, and that you didn't even need to get it from elsewhere anyway?

Just as you think you got the grand prize, oh. .. wait.... I already had it all along, I don't need that.

You got the goods.

This is why getting stuff from the world is never deeply satisfying. It doesn't undo the block to the awareness of love's presence that is already in you. And if you were to remove that block, you wouldn't need what you got from the world. So it always falls short, and you're always left wanting, and so you keep seeking more and more and more.

Perfectionism. Addiction. Compulsion. Idol worship. Hero worship. False Gods. Special relationships.

Seek and do not find.

No need to seek any more when you've got God.

There are two kinds of power, God's power and ego power.

Ego power means that you have to rise up against enemies and fight them strongly. This manifests as intensity, anger, attack. You think that if you can 'over-power' the 'other', then you will gain power and win.

But this demonstration of power is actually not power at all. It is a show of weakness, because you can't believe in separation and have strength. Strength comes from wholeness, not opposition. Strength comes from inclusiveness, not exclusion.

When you are attempting to be powerful over something in this ego way, you're really saying that you believe very strongly that the enemy has some kind of power over you, and therefore you need to muster a huge amount of supposed might against them in order to not be disempowered. But this only means you still continue to believe they have power over you, which is a perspective of weakness. This isn't really power at all.

God's power is wholeness, in that when you are being what you are, you are infinitely powerful. There is no limit to what you can do or what you can choose to create. And nothing can affect you, and you have no enemies.

See, the essential difference is, that in God's power you don't need the power in order to rise up against anyone because the power comes from wholeness and not from separation. It comes because it's natural and shared, and is therefore strong. It automatically protects you from inventing enemies, and therefore there are no enemies that this power needs to 'go up against'. You are powerful SO THAT you have no opposition.

It is actually a choice to have a lack of power, that creates a perception of enemies. It is a choice to see yourself as a victim, that leads to you believing that someone other than you has a power to affect you in ways that you can't prevent. And ultimately if you believe they have tremendous power over you, they will destroy you. But really it is you destroying yourself, because you're the one giving your power away.

So yes, you choose and feed your enemies. You give them their ammunition. You set them against you.

If you want to feel empowered it's not going to come from fighting against things that you think are unacceptable or not right. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS PUTTING THEM OUT THERE! It's from shifting into an awareness that nothing can harm you because you have no opposition and are not attacking others with a judgement of wrongness. Stop making enemies for yourself.

Here is some instruction on how to miraculously heal others, from Jesus. Here he talks about how YOUR MIND can be used in such a way, whereby if you do not agree with or support the belief of another that they are guilty/sinful or sick, you shine your loving light into their mind and SHARE that love with them, making it impossible for their own mind to continue believing in the sickness, causing the EFFECTS of sickness to disappear and thus for healing to take place, even physically.

He says that when you join minds like this - ie, share love, it erases the separation and ALL illness comes from the separation belief. Therefore MIRACLE HEALING is accomplished by, in a sense, MERGING MINDS with your brother, and that can only be done through LOVE because love is the fundamental state OF sharing and wholeness. So as you LOVE your brother - effectively, loving their mind, mind-to-mind, this ERASES the separation between you and thus HEALS THEM.

Note that Jesus also says DO NOT ALLOW YOUR BROTHER TO BE SICK. That sounds like a pretty firm injunction to go HEAL OTHER PEOPLE, as a natural and constant feature of of being a loving person, dispelling sickness everywhere you go!

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN.

Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams."

If someone else is having a problem, and you feel concerned, there is something mistaken going on in your mind.

There is actually an ego reaction, based on the hierarchy of illusions, which says that based on the perceived severity of the situation, you should be having a certain amount of reaction.

Just even perceiving that someone ELSE is having a problem, seems to be enough of a belief in a "cause" happening outside of you, even if it not perceived as happening TO you, to produce a sense of "effects" showing up in your mind.

If it's you believing that someone else's body is under attack, this would seem not to be about you at all. But it is, because your mind is having the belief in attack. And even if it's someone "not me" seeming to be attacked, just the acceptance that it is occurring is enough to cause your mind to generate fear thoughts.

So then the question arises, is it possible when presented with situations in which other people are suffering, to be completely unmoved by it. Is it possible to not have a reaction, to not go into fear, or into diagnosis mode, or attempting to react to what seems very real.

And then this further leads to, is it OKAY to not react? Is it okay to remain calm and peaceful and seemingly "disconnected" from what is supposed to be a "normal reaction"? Is it okay to be happy when someone is upset, calm when someone is stressing out, peaceful when someone is in pain, etc. That basically, your inner state and emotion and mental condition becomes NOT DEPENDENT ON the external world.

Somehow this means transcending the hierarchy of illusions, orders of severity/difficulty, belief in seriousness, problems seeming to be real, other people's problems seeming to be real, and sinking into a kind of detached "insulation" or self-contained independently chosen state of being, that isn't always the EFFECT OF or a REACTION TO what's happening in the world. The idea of being in a state which the WORLD did not cause, is quite radically new.

Can I become not involved. Can I remain untangled from the illusions. In the face of dramas, can I not buy into them. Can I remain happy and peaceful at all times, which seems very very alien to the state of being constantly tossed around on the ocean waves like a rollercoaster of stressful reactions. Can I become independent of the world's causalities, immune to them, invulnerable to them, such that I am literally no longer AFFECTED by anything. And such that whatever state I experience *I* have chosen, and the world has not caused to happen in me.

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

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

Sometimes what "the secret of salvation" reveals is not pretty. It very simply means you do everything to yourself. On purpose. Deliberately.

That reveals some sometimes shocking and hard to accept truths.

Such as that, if I am not at peace *I* must have chosen not to be at peace. If I am sick, I must have made myself sick. If I am unhappy, I have deliberately chosen to be unhappy. If I am experiencing something that I don’t think I want to experience, it’s because I CHOSE TO and WANT TO.

These are hard to admit to when you’re in the thick of denial. You’d rather keep believing there is a reason outside your control that caused your suffering.

What Jesus is trying to get us to see, and this is very simple, is that as the dreamer of the dream, and as the ruler of the universe, we MUST be the one who makes everything happen. We PUT IT THERE. We decide what will and will not happen.

This calls for extremely responsibility. It is the total end of all victimhood. And it also means, total freedom. This is why it leads to salvation.

You can be free from ALL suffering, including all states of sickness and death, by simply CHOOSING not to create those states. You can reverse all situations and heal all problems. "The power of decision is my own."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No-one dies without their own consent." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This is the ONE LESSON that the Holy Spirit teaches. When you have learned this one thing and live it fully, you are done.

There is no room in this for being a victim, OR being victimized against your will. It is YOUR DREAM, so if victimization happens, YOU MUST HAVE MADE IT HAPPEN.

Unless this is true, there is no way out of hell. Unless this is true, someone or something else has the power to end your peace and prevent your awakening. You do not want to ever undermine this truth, or you are giving away the only way to return to God.

Always remind yourself in any situation, I must be doing this myself. I must be choosing this. I must want this. No-one else is doing this to me. If I am not happy, I chose not to be. If I am hurt, I hurt myself. This applies NO MATTER THE FORM of the attack or who seems to be the attacker. Even if it doesn’t look like you did it, you did. And this of course is very radical.

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

*I* MUST have made a WRONG DECISION because I am not at peace.

*I* MADE THE DECISION MYSELF.

Nothing happens without your consent, not even death. You are either choosing life or death. All death is suicide.