You might think that you have some kind of 'right' to have whatever belief you want to have. But ultimately the only option you have is to either accept 'what is' or be opposed to it.

Most beliefs oppose the truth in one way or another. Some much moreso. The ego is in complete opposition to the truth, at its deepest levels.

So it's not really a matter of who is right or wrong, but moreso just a matter of how 'opposing' a person is being. How much they are trying to reject truth and reality.

If you can't accept reality, or what is, or real truth, or love, or God, then you are in opposition, no matter what form it takes.

The ONLY way that you can be happy and at peace, then, is to learn to ACCEPT THE TRUTH of what is, rather than oppose it.

You cannot be opposed to the truth and be at peace. You cannot be opposed to the truth and feel happy and fulfilled. You cannot be opposed to the truth and feel loved. Because the truth IS love.

THIS IS IMPORTANT!

"Some miracles may seem to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first principle of the course; there is no order of difficulty in miracles. In reality you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love." - ACIM

Miracle principle 1: "There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal." - ACIM

In the ego's dream, there is an ILLUSION of a hierarchy of difficulty. That is, forms appear to take on different properties and meanings or different levels of severity. It may seem "easy" to cut an apple, but "hard" to fix a broken leg. It may seem "easy" to walk down a street, but "hard" to teleport yourself to your destination.

The appearance of a given form, and all forms are illusions, dictates what it SEEMS its qualities are, or how much of a challenge it presents, or how difficult it would be to change it.

You will find that in the ego thought system, when something "more serious" happens, you also have a bigger reaction. This is practically automatic, psychologically. For example if someone tells you you have a booger hanging out of your nose, your reaction might be slight embarrassment. But if someone tells you you are terminally ill and will die in a week, your reaction will be horror and terror. Buy does it HAVE to be? Unchecked, the ego will react to the degree it perceives a threat, and you'll find that big problems cause big reactions, only because we're convinced by their appearance or order of difficulty.

These reactions that you have, are directly in proportion to the appearance or illusion of what this "external cause" is capable of doing to you. If the thing seems like a tiny threat, you consider it insignificant and have insignificant reactions. If it seems "life threatening", you consider it to have some kind of profound power, that it's really serious and dangerous, and you subsequently exhibit really strong symptoms or reactions within yourself, or in your body.

BUT ALL OF THESE ARE ILLUSIONS. All of these levels of meaning and significance and severity are illusions. There IS nothing special or important or difficult or harder to change about someone's broken leg, than to get them to wipe their nose. If someone shows up with a broken leg we'd have bigger automatic reactions. We think it's more serious, that it contains more "power" to make bad things happen, and therefore is much more of an opponent, is harder to change, harder to heal, harder to fix. It's not.

We are tasked with learning to change our perception to such a degree that we do not BELIEVE these illusions. When the Course tells us that we've given everything the meaning it has for us, this goes even to the extent of how we perceive and believe that some things in the world are more serious than others or warrant a bigger response. Getting rid of a hurricane is NO MORE DIFFICULT than getting rid of a booger, IF you can recognize clearly - and RECOGNITION is the key here - that the profound ILLUSION of the intense severity of a hurricane IS NOT REAL, IS NOT TRUE, and HAS NO POWER more than a booger on someone's face.

The ego deliberately made illusions of death and destruction, in contrast to illusions of "relative calm", to tempt us to believe that some illusions are worse than others, some should be avoided, some should be kept, and some are preferred. Jesus warns us not to mistake an illusion of peace (absence of "hard levels of difficulty"), for real peace. Similarly we need to learn to completely overlook ie NOT BUY INTO, any suggestion by any FORM - physical bodies, environmental objects etc - that what it is is dictated by HOW IT APPEARS. It is not that. All of those appearances are FALSE!

If we want to become miracle workers, it DOES REQUIRE us to learn NOT to believe in the hierarchy of illusions. And that means, if someone comes along with cancer, we RECOGNIZE that IT IS NOT REAL CANCER, it has nothing true about it, it is not difficult, it is not a "bigger threat", it does not cause more fear, it has literally NOTHING to it any more significant than a puff of air. If we can't see and recognize it this way, we will fall for the illusion of the reversal of cause and effect, disempower ourselves, react with the ego, and FAIL to work a miracle of healing.

We need to so completely collapse our own belief in the STORY of how cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, broken limbs, strokes, organ failure, brain damage etc, are all ILLUSIONS with ABSOLUTELY NO TRUTH TO THEM WHATSOEVER. Not one single aspect of any of these things is true, and every way that they TRY TO TEMPT US TO BELIEVE THEY ARE, is the ego's attempt to tempt us to believe the Son of God is a body which can die. Basically in a word - bullshit.

Miracles CAN heal the sick and raise the dead, literally. They CAN move mountains, literally. They CAN part the sea, literally. And they CAN heal absolutely all forms of sickness, all illusions of separation, and all ways in which problems show up. And this is because to be MIRACLE MINDED you MUST RECOGNIZE illusions for what they are and not be fooled by them, otherwise you WILL believe in a hierarchy of illusions, you will believe in orders of difficulty, and you will therefore incapacitate yourself and be unable to change those forms because you yourself believe they have a special power to RESIST the miracle.

No-ones sickness, no matter how advanced, or how much the person believes in it, or how much they have chosen it, or how much they want to keep it to protect them from the truth, or how much they want to die, NOTHING has power over miracles. There is NO order of difficulty. Not some, not a little, NONE. All illusions are the same illusion. Believed in, tempted by, convinced by, is a state of not being miracle minded. Once you CAN recognize illusions properly and not be FOOLED by them, you WILL be able to change them at will, in an INSTANT, and **EASILY!** Jesus himself said in the course how EASILY these thing can be changed.

Make no mistake, the entire world and all forms and objects and bodies are ILLUSIONS within a MIND which is dreaming them, and it's not just about fixing your own personal perception OF those things or about those things. You need to learn to recognize those things for what they are and not believe in them whatsoever. If you think you are awake and you're still incapable of healing the sick or raising the dead, you probably are not awake all the way. You are still subject to the laws of chaos. And the dream is still telling you where to get off.

Miracles are miracles for a reason. They completely defy ALL of the laws of the ego's world, completely IGNORE all appearances of the severity of problems, and TRANSCEND form entirely. "Miracles are shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal" - meaning they are a movement by mind AWAY from the illusion of form and therefore has power OVER form to change form and "heal" form. Even if that healing is temporary, and even if we are not bodies, and even if the entire world is just a symptom of sickness, we CAN and SHOULD and WILL develop a miracle-working ability IF we are to truly awaken from this world. To not do so is to be convinced by illusions and remain in the cycle of birth and death. This is also why the Bible says, "signs and wonders follow those who believe."

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS."

When your mind is sane, you know you are causal. You have no level confusion. The body comes OUT from you.

When your mind is insane, you project causality outside of yourself, which causes you to see yourself as an effect.

The levels are now reversed and perception is backwards.

Seeing yourself as an effect is the idea that you are being CAUSED from outside yourself, and that must mean you believe you are at the effect of those causes.

Seeing yourself as "affected" is an external attack (really self attack) and shows up as ALL forms of sickness in the body, including death. The mind that sees itself under siege cannot help but PICTURE itself as attacked, and this picturing shows up AS THE BODY.

When externalized causes are believed to define what you are, you begin to DEMONSTRATE that you are at the effect of others. And you now start to PROJECT an image of a body that is under attack.

This demonstration is an accusation and an attempt to condemn your brother as the "cause" of sin. If he is a sinner, and you are not, you might be innocent, but you ARE now AFFECTED.

This means you now believe you are BEING attacked by your brother, and you PROVE this by manifesting illness in your body. Then you claim, "brother at your hand I die." "Sick bodies are accusers"!

When this reversal of levels, this belief in magic, this projection of sin, and this displacement of causality, which is ALL THE SAME THING, is corrected, your mind becomes sane again.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Now that you see yourself as CAUSE and NOT at the effect of anything, you now position yourself as incapable of suffering, incapable of BEING AFFECTED, and incapable of being attacked. This invulnerability shines away the sickness which was held in place by insane level confusion, and THE BODY NOW HEALS.

The mind is responsible for every condition of the body. At all times. When mind has level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as illness. When the mind does not have level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as physical health.

This is the central teaching of the course, that you cannot be at the effect of others and when you recognize this you will ONLY CAUSE LIFE.

This is a course in life, healing and miracles. It is not a course in being sick or dead.

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

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

"Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

Whatever you are experiencing, comes from whatever mindset you have. Either you're in the ego mindset and thus experiencing a physical world of bodies, or you're in the Holy Spirit's mindset and on the spiritual level.

Thoughts/attitudes/beliefs/truth on the Holy Spirits level is completely incompatible with the ego's level. Never the two shall meet. So the ego is really confined inside its bubble of private insanity.

Within the ego's bubble, it starts to believe it can ACCESS and thus experience, what it is like in the Holy Spirit's world. It actually wants to do this because it wants to become more powerful, to have more domination and control, and to wield what would seem to be the kind of 'special' powers that Holy Spirit apparently has access to.

Except the ego has a problem. It cannot leave its mindset. It can't *actually* get into the Holy Spirit's mind. So it pretends that it can. And as always, it uses separation to do this (the same old story, separate in the name of joining).

The ego takes its own mindset and separates it even further, dividing it into 'good' and 'bad' parts. All still within the ego thought system. So now it labels some parts of itself/the world as good and some parts as bad. It sort of creates the illusion that it can 'borrow' some goodness from the bad stuff and attribute it to the good stuff, to make the good stuff seem extra special and sparkly and important and valuable. And of course that means taking some of the 'bad' that you'd find in this stuff and attributing it to the 'bad stuff' so that it seems extra bad - a repository for nasty dark judgements and hate and so on.

This creates the persona - the spiritualizing portion of the ego mind which tries to focus only on the 'good' interpretion of the world, and simultaneously creates the 'shadow', which is whats left of all the stuff that is 'not good'. For something to seem good, something else HAS to seem bad. To have special love there has to be special hate. To idol worship there has to be 'the enemy' who clearly do not get what's so special about the idol. And to have all the 'spiritual behavior' you must relegate 'unspiritual behavior' to the shadow. You try to hide everything bad IN the shadow, AS the shadow, and you then try to get RID OF the shadow. Tuck it away, hide it, destroy it. And then guess what happens?

The shadow part of the ego mind, the bad stuff, now takes the symbolic form of all of the enemies, attackers, victimizers, causes of sickness and so on. The 'goodies two shoes' part is the facade of special love and special appearances which 'saves face' and makes it seem like you are MORE spiritual ie more SPECIAL than you are. ie, if you sweep all of the sins under the carpet it LOOKS LIKE you're more innocent than you are. The ego's use of the persona is what gives extra weight to the idea that your persona is valuable, important, special, wanted, loveable (in an ego way), desirable, innocent (ego innocence) etc. And so the 'good ego mind' and the 'bad ego mind' are now AT WAR. Reinforcing the good reinforces the bad because it's like a seesaw - you take less load off the good end to make it seem 'lighter', the bad end gets badder and 'heavier/darker'.

So this ego attempt to divide itself and be at war with itself, which creates the persona and the shadow in conflict with each other (e.g. person who everyone always thought was 'good' gets unfairly attacked or sick etc), allows the ego to lend special meaning to some parts of its mindset - a glow of specialness - sacredness - holiness - spirituality. Not genuine holiness or genuine spirituality, but a fake APPEARANCE of it. A facade. This can take the form of huge sacrifices or changes in behavior, level confusion, trying to be good, trying to not be bad, trying to ATTAIN very lofty levels of 'spiritual advancement and capabilities' that make it look like you're very advanced and special.

Since the ego cannot leave its own mindset and cannot actually become spiritual, it just fakes it. It pretends it is spiritual. And it fools itself. And this is what YOU do. This is what I do. This is where we TRY to attain experiences and mindsets which are OUTSIDE of what THIS mindset (our current ego mindset) can achieve. Our ego mind tries to 'be spiritual', while KEEPING the ego mindset. This is because the ego wants to live in two minds. It wants to take the ego self TO the Holy Spirit and to KEEP it and to at the same time TAKE ON the Holy Spirit's power. Obviously this cannot be achieved because the Holy Spirit's mind completely dispels the duality that the ego is based on, and completely undoes it. But that doesn't stop our ego from trying!

So whenever you are KEEPING the ego mindset and are trying to INCLUDE spiritual mindsets in some way, you are spiritualizing.

Whenever you try to express, quote, espouse, affirm or act is if you are being or accessing spiritual truths which are WAY higher than the ego's mindset, and you cannot actually ACCESS and experience the level of mind where those truths can be EXPERIENCED, then you are spiritualizing.

So let's see... course quotes and concepts... for example the idea of oneness. You could say to someone like, "it doesnt matter because we are all one". Bullshit. This isn't an EXPERIENCE of the truth of that statement. You can only experience that at a level ABOVE the holy spirit in the mind of HEAVEN. That's the only place where this truth is experiential. Remember, truth is what you can experience. If you cannot experience it, you're kidding yourself every time you make statements about it AS IF you are living it.

Or how about even saying, "I am immortal spirit"... well.. not as an ego you're not. Who is saying you are immortal spirit? It's the ego. You can only BE immortal spirit when you have completely let go of the entire ego mindset. So this information is just... information from another world, from another dimension, another state of mind. Thus it has no PRACTICAL USE for you here, on the ego level, because you cannot EXPERIENCE it here. So it remains lofty. It remains a concept. And then if you spend time just regurgitating the concept, stating it, quoting it, because it 'sounds spiritual', then you are spiritualizing.

You're taking very high truths from very high levels of mind, which require AT LEAST a total atunement to Holy Spirit's mindset AND a total relinquishment of the ego's way of experiencing, and are trying to bring them INTO the ego's mindset. This is spiritualizing. Adding spiritual value to a valueless system. Borrowing spiritual truth from a level of mind that is beyond where you are at. That's faking it. That's spiritualizing your ego. And what happens then is that the best you can do is quote these things and say them and affirm them as if doing so is EXPERIENCING them when in fact you cannot experience them yet, and so they remain MENTAL, and that makes them INTELLECTUAL. Thus you end up intellectualizing the course's truths, you intellectualize higher levels of reality and you pretend that doing so means you are experiencing them here and now. You're not. The ego is deceiving you and trying to be special. And this makes these truths BECOME nothing more than specialness. And then you end up sounding like a bliss ninny, lol

Anyway. I'm sort of expressing this as it's coming to me.

You need to be realistic about the level that you're on, what mind you are IN, the scope of that mind, what is OUTSIDE that mind, what you can actually EXPERIENCE right now, and stop hitting yourself over the head with these lofty spiritualizing ego-inflating truths which you can't even experience yet. You need to focus only on the truths which you can PRACTICALLY APPLY, ie BE EXPERIENCED, to help you to transition your EXPERIENCE from what you are experiencing now in the ego mind to what Holy Spirit will allow you to experience in his mind. If it does not involve your experience, and if it is not practical and you can't actually USE it to change your experience, it is intellectual ego noise trying to spiritualize itself.

I know that I have done this over any over again, believing that if I could just say the correct thing or think the correct thought or understand the correct concept or say it in a special way, that meant that I am BEING IT. I believed that my intellect had the capability of experiencing the truth. Hah. It doesn't. The intellect is only activated when you are not able to LIVE the truth, but are trying to incorporate it into your experience, so you can inject it into your THOUGHTS, which are fantasies, and you can pretend you are living it, but really you are not. If it's stuck in your mind and isn't in your heart or in your feeling or in your actual direct experience of 'reality', then it's not really your truth right now. And if you accumulate a lot of that 'information', no matter how spiritual it is or how lofty the metaphysics, if you are not EXPERIENCING it, then you are spiritualizing your ego. This is what I have done over and over again.

All you are capable of is letting go of the ego mind and the way of experiencing that that mind gives you, and transitioning your experience of reality to the holy spirit's mind where you can experience HIS level of truth fully. Where you can LIVE IT. A course in miracles is all about LIVING the truth and PRACTICING it and PRACTICALLY EXPERIENCING it. The rest is just ego noise.

There may be a few I missed but this is most of the references to SOULS in A Course in Miracles. Souls are God's Children, they are permanent creations of light, and there are MANY of them.

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."

"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."

"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other."

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

"By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God."

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return."

"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever."

"The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."

"The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

"Most of the abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. The Soul knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal functions."

"Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels."

"The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."

"Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the Soul, is merely confused thinking."

"The mind returns itself to its proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in the Soul's service, where perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind which wills to do this."

"The mind DID divide itself when it willed to create its own levels AND the ability to perceive them. But it could NOT entirely separate itself from the Soul, because it is FROM the Soul that it derives its whole power to create."

"Even in miscreating, will is affirming its source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because it IS part of the Soul, which God created, and which is therefore eternal."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

"God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Strong wills can do this NOW. And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."

"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."

"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS. You are not saved FROM anything, but you ARE saved FOR glory"

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love. And since what He created IS part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His own altar."

"The peace of YOUR Soul lies in its limitlessness."

"Limit the peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him."

"We have repeatedly emphasized the fact that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul, and with time and eternity. "

"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."

"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks. It can thus perform the function of RE-INTERPRETING what the ego makes, not by destruction, but by understanding."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy."

"In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul."

"Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, - with love, protection, and great charity."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless."

"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all."

"While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

"The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterward, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it."

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored."

"Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him."

"To be fatigued is to be DIS-spirited, but to be inspired is to be IN the spirit. To be egocentric IS to be dispirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul. The truly inspired are enlightened, and cannot abide in darkness."

"He can speak from his Soul or from his ego, precisely as he chooses. If he speaks from his Soul, he has chosen to "be still and know that am God."

"Your real worth IS your divine authorship, and your Soul is its acknowledgement. I cannot guide your egos EXCEPT as you associate them with your Souls."

"Chesterton wrote an excellent description of Cervantes and his perception of his "unheroic hero," a view of man which the ego tolerates all too frequently, but the Soul NEVER countenances."

"The ego may will them because the ego IS both lean and foolish. But the Soul CANNOT embark on them because it is forever UNwilling to depart from its Foundation. The journey to the cross should be the LAST foolish journey for every mind."

"The soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating."

"Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities."

"The clear-cut implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and BY God, and therefore God-like."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS."

"Remember that the Soul knows no difference between being and having. The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless, and giving is all."

"Having everything, the Soul HOLDS everything by GIVING it, thus creating as the Father created."

"Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE."

"In every case you have thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass."

"It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right."

"In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to ESTABLISH what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of Creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator."

"denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."

To deny something, implies that you actually believe it EXISTS, but that you do not WANT to acknowledge its existence. This isn't the same as the thing not being there at all. It doesn't take any denial to establish that something is really NOT there. Denial REQUIRES the belief that it IS THERE, and is unwanted.

Therefore, when you are in denial, you actually are AFFIRMING that the thing you are denying, is true. You are saying, I believe that it does exist, but I don't want to openly admit it. This means that denial in fact DEPENDS ON the very thing it is denying. And you cannot be in denial of something that doesn't actually exist.

Fear, ego, death, illusions, it's all the same thing as denial of reality. When you are in fear, it seems like you're saying you are afraid of reality or truth. But, in order to make this claim, you have to be asserting that reality IS real and true, and true reality cannot be feared. Reality is loving and kind. The fear of love and kindness ACKNOWLEDGES its presence, just as denial acknowledges what it hides from.

So when you are afraid, a part of you CANNOT BE afraid. Part of you HAS to believe in love, in order to fear it. Part of you HAS to believe in safety, in order to suggest that your safety is BEING DENIED to you. It's not that safety is GONE, only that you are rejecting it's presence. You could not possibly be afraid of something that actually does not exist at all. You can only be afraid of something you believe IS THERE. And so the "fear of love" is in fact an AFFIRMATION that love exists, which in turn undermines the fear. This is because fear and denial are self-contradictory states.

Jesus says that if you can look at fear/denial and recognize that the fear actually AFFIRMS its own absence, when this is recognized it actually undermines the belief in the fear. The fear is not regarded as "only fear", but is now recognized as fear + a belief in its opposite. Within the fear there is love mixed in. And therefore the truth that it HIDES is acknowledged as STILL PRESENT. If you can focus on this and realize that fear PROVES love's presence, and can hone in on that fact, then you have to realize that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be purely afraid, or to obliterate the very love that you are afraid of. And all fear is the fear of love, being love's supposed absence.

To acknowledge that fear implies love's existence, means you cannot fully believe in the fear, and so the fear cannot be wholly true. EVEN the fear tells you that love is real. EVEN denial tells you that what you are denying exists. And so it not possible EVEN in fear to truly obliterate love from your mind. You can mix in some fear with the love but you cannot replace the love."The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable."

This also means the ego does not ever see ONLY BAD. There is no such thing as ABSOLUTE evil. There is only relative evil/ego. And all forms of ego are LIMITED in their egotism. You can't be fully egoic, because egotism is the idea of not-wholeness. By recognizing that even the egos lies imply the truth is still true, you have a way out. You can use this to realize that the fear cannot be wholly true, and therefore must be false, because even fear tells you that God is real. To fear God is to affirm his existence. So even in fear you are to some degree expressing your love for God.

By recognizing that fear/denial isn't ACTUALLY able to remove or hide or completely eradicate what you are in fear/denial OF, you can see that it DOES NOT WORK. And it therefore is useless. Denial affirms the very reality is tries to block. Fear affirms the very love it asserts against. If fear CANNOT seem to exist WITHOUT affirming the very thing you're supposed to be afraid of, then fear cannot accomplish what you set out for it to do. And so you might as well discard it and embrace the love instead.

This constant affirmation of God even in states of denial, is the inherent and un-removable attraction to God. The attraction to God is present at ALL levels and orders of reality, even in dreaming, to at least some degree. Even the ego-believing part of mind is dependent upon God and drawn to him.

"By interpreting fear correctly, as a POSITIVE AFFIRMATION OF THE UNDERLYING BELIEF IT MASKS, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which do not work AT ALL are AUTOMATICALLY discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to CLEAR-CUT, UNEQUIVOCAL PRE-DOMINANCE, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The mask which YOU have drawn across the face of Love has disappeared."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time."

"If you would look upon Love, which IS the world's reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense AGAINST it, the underlying appeal FOR it?"

In ACIM Jesus says the ego made the body as a way to focus away from the mind and to make the mind seem to be 'private'. The body is like a wall around the mind which creates the illusion and perception that the mind does not communicate. In other words, the mind seems to be shut off from all other equally-separate minds, and there is no sharing on any level of awareness.

The result of this is that the body is now exalted as a means of communication, in which the ego wants bodies to become physically intimate to 'represent' communication happening. Even the spoken word is then considered communication, but really it is a complete substitute for real, direct communication, and typically is a communication failure.

True Communication isn't telepathy as such, the idea of telepathy means separate people with separate minds sending messages. The truth is that our minds are NOT separate, and the belief in a separation between minds is the cause of all sickness, all mental illness, and death. And this is why the body dies - because the mind has been kept from true communication and locked in a prison. Or to put it another way, the body HAS to die if the mind remains unaware of its true function, because the body IS the idea of death.

Jesus talks about how the ego will do anything it can to ignore the mind, and will even let the mind have activity and thoughts because it thinks of it as serving the body and allowing the body to tell the mind what to do. Then the body uses the mind only so that the body can get what it wants, such as property, clothing, sex, food, physical contact, etc. You can see this reflected in the scientific/medical model which says that the 'brain' is the cause of consciousness or is the 'source' of thinking, which is completely the opposite of the truth.

This heavy focus on the physical, as well as this reversal of who is in charge - i.e. that the body is in charge of the mind, is a "confusion of the levels", which Jesus also explains as the cause of all sickness. "All sickness comes from confusing the levels" ... and that miracles correct this 'order' and place the levels in their proper order - i.e., restoring the mind as CAUSE and the body as EFFECT.

The body did not exist at all until the ego made it as a way to enslave the mind, to make you unaware that you even have a mind, to shut out awareness, to cut you off from everyone else, to make you isolated and lonely, and to disempower you. This was the PURPOSE of the body. This is the body's entire reason for existing. It is not some lovely creature that God created and that we should bow down and worship. It is an ego device for separation and for splitting the One Shared Mind into many many small imprisoned minds.

I had an experience of God a few years ago and in this experience my mind became very expanded, and I became very very aware. I thought I was fully awake when I woke up in the morning but it was absolutely nothing in comparison to how awake and aware I was in this experience. I became quite close to leaving my body because I was becoming very aware of God and the attraction to Him was so strong, that I wanted to leave absolutely everything behind and go to Him. It was like a scared child running to their parent after some nightmarish thing just happened and finally realizing that they can run to safety.

However, this didn't last very long and my expanded awareness and unification of mind started to come back into my body. I was extremely ungrounded for some time and gradually my awareness collapsed back down and reinserted itself into my body. This took a few weeks. As it progressed, I felt and perceived that it was like undergoing some kind of brain damage - as though coming into the body was taking on a tremendous dumbing down, suppressing, 'disabling', stunting of my consciousness, such that I could only liken it to having some kind of terrible brain damage that was blocking out and shutting out the beautiful awareness I'd experienced.

Towards the end of this process of 'returning' to the ego, which was very upsetting because once you taste God you don't want to leave... my awareness gradually entered into my physical senses more fully and this was like putting on a dark costume where, once you get inside it enough, the door behind you closes, your sense of connection to God gets almost completely shut off, your awareness of anything bigger is totally shut down, and you are sort of 'locked in'. Then, it seems that the only thing you can be aware of is what the body's senses show you - there is information coming into the eyes, tastes, smells, sounds etc, but very little awareness, no connection, no expansion, no real communication, and no God.

It's sort of like some creepy thing like, entering "The Matrix", or getting plugged into a virtual reality suit where, once you go into it, all of real reality gets shut out and you can ONLY fixate on what the 'encounter-suit' shows you. This is because the body forces you to focus on form, on what's outside of you, and what's separate from you. It totally shuts out your connection to the whole and makes you feel like some kind of tiny little, strapped-in prisoner, who can barely move or perceive anything, with blinders on, forced to stare at a make-believe world and not allowed to look at any thing else. This was really upsetting to go through 're-entry' but it showed me clearly just how much the body blocks awareness and shuts down the mind.

We can ascend our awareness to a heavenly place, I mean, when I was having my experience I was still in my body, just about, but such an expanded state of being really urges for total release from the body, it's so expansive that the body cannot contain it. At some point, as I see it, when we really thoroughly wake up not just to the Higher Self (sonship) but also beyond to Christ and to Heaven, it would become extremely, extremely difficult to maintain a body at all, and more than likely the mind would have to completely leave bodies entirely and then only return in the form of a kind of apparition or temporary image, which the mind is not at all imprisoned by.

So you see, the body is not an idol. It is not God's greatest creation. It is not something to worship. it is not what people are. It's not what you are. It is a very heavy, very isolating, very imprisoning suit of armor, deliberately made as a device for blocking awareness and diminishing the mind. It is the manifestation of an attempt to be separate from God. It is an illusion of minds no longer being joined. And when minds become joined and the mind becomes miraculous, the body has to heal, up to a point, but then the mind will stop creating a body.

How can a mind that knows of absolute oneness have any use for the body at all? Yes Holy Spirit can use it for TRUE communication, which means the MIND communicated with other minds directly - or rather, "shares". But the body itself is nothing but a temporary tool in a temporary dream, which we do not NEED in order to exist and therefore is not an inherent part of life. When Jesus was done with His body he saw no further truth in it and it DISAPPEARED. But he remained, because He is immortal spirit. And so are you.

P.S. "virtual reality" devices are now a metaphor for this... you strap on an artificial body, all of your visual senses are completely imprisoned and shut out from perceiving the 'real room', you go inside a fantasy world that doesn't exist, and you see only what this artificial body wants you to see. Your mind and awareness of the room outside is completely shut off, and you are immersed in a dream that you think is real. All the while real characters go about their business in the same room knowing, from the outside, that you are asleep inside a fake body looking at a fake world. So it is with the human body. And the body will eventually have to be 'taken off' from the mind to allow awareness to be fully aware of what is real.

Let's make it clear now, that the Holy Spirit has SUPERNATURAL POWERS.

Through the Holy Spirit, any act of healing or correction is possible on any level, including what we call the physical body level.

There are many things in ACIM which many people don't believe can be literal because it seems to be so radical and unbelievable to the ego, way outside your comfort zone, and just too 'unreal' to seem real.

But the Holy Spirit is not a metaphor. He is not just some Course lingo for some fiction aspect of an imaginary trinity that doesn't really exist in Oneness.

Also, by the way, Jesus had supernatural powers because of the Holy Spirit.

Turning water into wine, is not a metaphor. Healing the blind and sick and deaf is not a metaphor. Raising the dead is not a metaphor. Turning a stick into a snake and back is not a metaphor. The resurrection from the cross is not a metaphor. Multiplying some fish and bread to feed 5000 people is not a metaphor.

These are not just conveniently dismissed and put into a nice tidy box just to fit into our nice protected little ego frameworks of how much truth is acceptable.

ACIM says "I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

Now. Get this. When you surrender, a lot, with a genuine willingness to admit to the truth and to let go, this opens the door for the Holy Spirit to come in. He can then join with you, and He then also has access to your mind, your feelings, your energy, and your body, and also to various aspects of events and situations in your life.

If you think the Holy Spirit is inactive, passive, just an observer, or just a lifeless metaphor - some fictional concept that makes it easier to grasp metaphysics, think again.

The Holy Spirit is God's ANSWER to the separation. The answer to the ENTIRE separation. Not just an answer like some piece of information. He is an experiential answer, the actual correction OF the problem. He has the power to undo the entire universe. He has the power to correct all problems. He has the power to reverse all sickness and suffering and signs of disease on any level. He has the capability to perform MIRACLES.

Now, when you surrender a lot and relax and INVITE HIM IN, and are genuinely open to allowing Him to work in you, He can and WILL come into you. "Holy Spirit, come", is a very simple invitation. And if you are genuinely open to this, He will enter your mind/emotions/body and start to do healing on you. He can remove stuff for you. He can cancel out negative feelings. He can heal physical sickness. He can correct the body in any way needed. And this has nothing to do with the pros, cons, rights or wrongs or whether it is okay or not to heal the body. Fuck that. He just does it, ok? Get over yourself.

Now. Willingness plays into this, therefore, because if you are not willing to surrender your ego activities, you are not allowing Him to decide for God for you. And another way to put that is, if you are in control and won't let go, He can't help you. But if you DO let go, then He has access and can help you. And you will find as you develop a relationship with Him, that he can quite literally heal you, correct you, and restore you, not just on a level of thoughts or mind, but on all levels - mental, emotional, physical. It is ultimately irrelevant whether these levels a actually REAL or not, and we know that these things are still illusions, but nevertheless He can, does, and WILL bring about healing on any level if you are willing.

Again, this is only possible because He is NOT a metaphor. He is not just some concept to make it easy to explain the Course. He is not a principle. He is an intelligence, a power, a spiritual presence. He is an aspect of God, for Heaven's sake, having been created by God as the answer to ALL illusions. And there is nothing He cannot do to correct or change them for any reason. If there were anything He could not do to alter illusions, the Son of God would be trapped in hell forever with no way to go Home. And fortunately for us that's not the case.

Holy Spirit is here not just as a friend and comforter but as your healer, guide, mentor, and liberator. You don't have to just struggle through this on your own trying to have the proper thoughts or the right perceptions. You need to surrender and get into some serious teamwork. Let Him help you. Let Him do the work of directly correcting you... supernaturally... not just like, oh well, you know that's not the right answer, 3 points off.... try again. It's more like.... you will experience a supernatural electrical power flowing through you that literally purges you of all of the "consequences of your wrong decision". Mental, emotional, physical, it doesn't matter.

Miracles, my friends. Miracles.

"A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe."

If you are not in the Atonement and have not FULLY FORGIVEN, you will KEEP symptoms in your body which demonstrate and PROVE that you do not fully believe in your innocence. Those symptoms demonstrate to everyone that you do not REALLY, REALLY believe it. Because if you really really believed it, through the power of your belief in God's power, those symptoms MUST disappear.

There MUST be a complete and total healing, in order to prove to yourself AND others that atonement has occurred. You yourself will not believe that you have fully atoned, i.e. forgiven, if you are still struggling with symptoms afterwards. This means, if you have fully forgiven, YOUR BODY MUST DEMONSTRATE DIVINE HEALTH!!!

Miracles are therefore NECESSARY in order to make the forgiveness real on all levels and to convince you and everyone else that only innocence is truth!!

If you are forgiving and are not having miracles to demonstrate your innocence in the body as well, then you have not finished forgiving. If you are walking around with "effects" of attack on your body, you are proving to yourself and everyone else that you have not forgiven.

This might sound like a tall order, difficult to accomplish, or too extremely harsh. It also sounds unbelievable to the ego and quite ridiculous. It even seems "wrong", in that the body isn't real so why should it be healed? But the words are CLEAR. Jesus isn't lying to us. He is very adamant!

We are to demonstrate miracles to prove forgiveness is real, by demonstrating divine health in the body as PROOF that we REALLY BELIEVE that we are innocent and unharmed and undamaged.

You want some radical shit, this is it!

When Jesus speaks of 'sickness' in ACIM, he doesn't just refer to what we think of as sickness.

You see, to Him, sickness occurs because of some very very fundamental things happening. e.g. "seeking outside yourself" produces sickness". e.g. "confusing the levels" (of consciousness) produces sickness. e.g. believing that causes are outside of you or that the body has its own will, produces sickness.

So really, when there is ANY seeking outside yourself, ANY reversal of cause and effect, ANY level confusion whatsoever, whatever results from that is given the label "sickness".

Sickness includes all physical sicknesses, diseases and death. But it also includes all mental illness, all fear, all upset emotions, all projections, all false beliefs, or mistaken sense of identity, all unawareness or unconsciousness, all behaviors inspired by the separate ego mind, etc... absolutely every activity or attitude of the separated self is sickness. Even the existence of the body itself is fundamentally a form of sickness, because the ego made it to enforce separation. Believing that you are not one with other people is sickness. Any form of separation is sickness.

So when Jesus refers to sickness in ACIM, he's referring to AAAAAAALLL of the forms and facets of 'a sick mind' in all the ways it manifests or distorts on every level in every way. Similarly, all of this entire motherload of 'states of being' that are not pure and holy, are sickness. And sickness also = fear, because "healing is essentially the release from fear". So sickness and fear are the same thing, and all distortions in the mind, and all ego in any way shape or form is sickness.

So when Jesus says you can perform miracles to 'heal the sick and raise the dead', he also really does mean the correction or undoing of the entire ego thought system, the entire ego 'world' of manifested interferences and distortions and unholiness.