There are two thought systems, and each has its own way of thinking. Each has its own logic and reason.

The ego’s system, which is also the physical world ("the world is false perception"), is based on separation. It completely rejects any kind of sharing. It’s reasoning follows a simple rule, which is at the root of consciousness:

This... is separate from that. Therefore, this is not that.

This is how the entire physicality of the world is mapped. An apple is not an orange. You are either at home or at the mall but never both at once. My body is not your body. I am not you.

Most of the world believes in the world, believes that the way that physical objects are separate is "natural and normal", and learns to think along these lines.

We then think of another as "not myself". We think of one object as separate from another object. We think if we give something we have to physically lose it. We think we are in one location and not another.

Our entire "way of thinking" adapts to the illusory world of false perception and thinks along ego lines. Separate this, separate that. Either this, or that. Not both. Nothing is shared. Everything is kept apart.

Its main thought construct is "either this or that". For example, if you put the apple in the left bucket, the apple is not in the right bucket. Either the apple is in the left bucket, or the right bucket.

This seems natural as a way of thinking because it seems to map to how the world is physically arranged. Objects seem to "prove" that this is how things are, so we think in the same way. We reason logically, based on evidence and physical experience, that "the apple can’t be in both buckets at once."

The thought system of God, is COMPLETELY opposite to this. It BREAKS all of the egos laws, both physically and in terms of reasoning. God’s system is NOT broken out based on separation. It isn’t rooted in something being "not" something else. And there are no differences to keep things apart.

When you want to wake up, to develop spiritually or to approach God, your mind has to actually learn to stop thinking like a physical object, and think like spirit. This is not easy because it’s so completely alien to how the world is set up.

For example, Jesus talks about how if you give away an idea, you keep the idea, and now both you and the other have the idea. And now the idea is strengthened. To the ego this is a violation of its laws.

The ego would say, it is not possible for one thing to be in two places at once. And that it is not possible for two people to have the same thing at the same time. It wants sacrifice. It wants lack. It wants finite limited resources. It wants exclusive ownership.

The ego can’t comprehend the idea of sharing. True sharing doesn’t mean compromise, or that each person gets half. True sharing means two individuals have everything at the same time. This is utterly nonsense to how the ego-minded thinker thinks.

The ego would say, It is utterly impossible for one thing to be two things and still be one thing. But God would say, that’s completely natural and entirely possible. God thus creates many children of God who are each other. Effectively, one son of God, an apple, is in both buckets at once. He is in his own bucket, and in the bucket of his brother. But the ego says this is impossible.

Becoming able to think in terms of sharing, or what is very often called "oneness", you have to drop notions of separation. To comprehend how you and your brother are one, and yet still brothers, you can’t think about it in terms of how the ego thinks about it.

The ego will conclude, either there is one son of God, or many sons of God, not both. To suggest both is true simultaneously seems like utter nonsense. But God’s laws break the ego’s laws. And God’s logic and laws of reason pay no attention to the limitations the ego imposes.

Thinking like and with God is nothing like thinking with the ego. The suggestion that you ARE your brother, and the two of you are joined, transcends the ego’s idea of separation. But until you "love your neighbor as yourself", your mind is not truly in a state of love, or recognizing who you are.

Part of you is in your brother. Your mind is also part of their mind. "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This in no way means that, when the two brothers become "one", there are no longer two brothers. The twoness doesn’t go away. Ego says it has to. God says the ego makes no sense. The two are brothers precicely because they are two in number. And just because they are BOTH each other, doesn’t mean they are not also themselves. This makes TOTAL sense in terms of how GOD thinks.

When you think about anything to do with God’s Kingdom, creation, sons, sonship, christ, souls, holy spirit, creations, etc... anything pre-separation.... you CANNOT think of it with the ego’s way of thinking. Because God’s system of thought is NOT spacetime. It is not broken out into separate things that share nothing with each other. It isn’t a system of lack or difference or exclusive compartmentalization.

EVERYONE who thinks about these topics using earth-bound separation-based ego reasoning, comes to FALSE conclusions about what ACIM is saying.

We can’t even really understand how it’s possible that you are one with your brother, or how God has more than one son in reality, or how we share minds, or how joined minds are healed, etc.... if you can’t also get your head around how to think TOTALLY OUTSIDE of the ego’s box.

The Golden rule states that what is true of one is true of another. There is one truth applicable equally to everyone. This is because god’s nature is singular and is shared by everyone. This then means that if something is true of your brother it must also be true of you. But the ego will say no, it’s no possible for you and your brother to be IDENTICAL... you have to be different.

Since the Golden Rule is God’s law, ego’s thought system breaks God’s law. It is an attempt to ignore the rule of equality of truth, which results in "the truth is different for everyone" - the first law of chaos. And chaos - total disorder - arises from there. And the ego calls this disorder - nature. Physical nature. As if it is completely natural. Yet it could not be more unnatural.

So if you want to understand the higher truth that ACIM is trying to teach, the dynamics of holy relationship, the sharing of minds, how miracles work, the relationship you have as brothers, the laws of God that you are under, and all the other things which are OUTSIDE of the ego’s way of thinking... you CANNOT USE the ego’s way of thinking to think about them. If you do, you will come to false conclusions, absolutely guaranteed. Because ego thought REJECTS the fundamental basis for God’s thinking, which is that everything is shared.

Sharing vs separation, is the two thought systems. And they DO NOT think alike. And they do not reason alike. And they do not conclude alike. There are TWO WAYS of thinking. One is false, and one is true. This higher way of thinking is everything written in the course talking about anything above "false perception", ego, body, or physical states.

Everything of true perception, christ, God, Sonship, heaven, healing, miracles etc.... is NOT OF THIS WORLD. And you cannot think about it correctly by thinking in the way that this world thinks about itself. You have to learn a NEW way to think, to reason, to perform logic, and to draw conclusions. And it has to break the laws of what you have always thought makes SENSE. The world does NOT make sense because it is a system of insanity and separation. So it’s "sense" is actually nonsense. And what you think is nonsense about God, is true.

The ego's thought system resulted in this physical universe including the Earth. It is all based on separation and exclusion and difference. The ego's way of THINKING and reasoning logically, is completely consistent, yet based on "separating out" everything and comparing the parts to each other.

To make forms of matter or objects, the ego has separated things out, claimed that one thing is different to another, has given certain illusory properties to one object which another object does not share, and thus establishes that they are not only "different" from each other, but that because of these differences they must be SEPARATE. Not just a little separate, but COMPLETELY separate.

So for example because an apple looks very different and has different taste and structure and color to a banana, the ego reasons that the apple is different to the banana, not sharing the same qualities or characteristics, and therefore they cannot be ONE THING, and therefore must be TWO THINGS.

This is not merely a way of thinking ABOUT the world we made. It actually is the thinking BEHIND the world, the thought system which PRODUCED the world, and every part of physical matter in this universe proceeds according to these same rules.

Every atom is unlike the others, no two objects can share the same location, everything is different and changes, no two things are allowed to be seen as exactly identical, and because all things are different to each other this gives them a fragmented "identity". This is why regarding someone as a human body "identifies" the person AS being that body, because that body clearly does not overlap or share anyone else's body, and looks different and has different form, therefore is not the SAME, and therefore is SEPARATE.

So separation is BUILT IN to this entire universe's fundamental fabric. It's built into all matter. In fact, because differences mean that something applies to one thing and not another, another word for that is MURDER. From it has come the ego's laws of cause and effect which state that one object can affect another object WITHOUT receiving any consequences, which is exactly the same thing as "getting away with murder". This is because the ego's thought system is murderous, and all forms of INEQUALITY and competition or "not being identical" are forms of murder.

Sacrifice is also completely built into this universe. Because the ego has separated everything out into discrete separate parts, which are each different, its reasoning extends from this. And so it SEEMS logical to say, because oranges are orange and this banana is yellow, it can't be an orange. That seems to make perfect logical sense, except it is insane. It is insane because the banana and the orange are being KEPT APART by the separation idea, they are being made to look DIFFERENT to each other on purpose, and they are a PICTURE OF DEATH.

That means that for example if I eat the banana, there is only an orange left. And that means, the banana has now been sacrificed, because there is now a LACK of banana. Lack is fundamentally built into this universe. It's part of the laws of this world, the ego's laws of chaos. In this world, to give "matter" to someone means to LOSE IT, and therefore to decrease what you have. It's not merely your thoughts about the world that produce this kind of conclusion, it's literally BUILT INTO the way that this world's "reality" is set up. Therefore this universe is fundamentally DRIVEN by scarcity and LACK and ATTACK.

Then, whenever we think in terms of how we usually "reason out" something to do with this world, we actually have MAPPED our logical reasoning onto the way this world functions (or is an extension of it). So now it SEEMS to make sense to say, if Paul's body is not the same as Susan's body, then Paul is not Susan. This makes SENSE, but it is INSANE, because Paul and Susan are NOT SEPARATED by their bodies and the Holy Spirit recognizes that they SHARE MINDS and therefore they are IDENTICAL and NOT DIFFERENT and are NOT ENEMIES and therefore there IS NO SEPARATION between them as such.

So the Holy Spirit's thought system is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how the ego thinks, God's world is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how this universe functions and is structured, God's MIND thinks totally opposite to how this world thinks, and all of the logical conclusions that "make sense" to the ego are UTTER NONSENSE in God's eyes.

Yet we use and trust and rely on the ego's way of thinking to "learn the course" and to try to understand what Jesus means and what the nature of Heaven is and whether or not God has created many sons or minds, etc.... all producing FALSE conclusions that make SENSE to the ego. And because we TRUST that the ego's "sense" is actually sanity, or a sane conclusion, we are too quick to ACCEPT that these conclusions are the truth about God's creation, not realizing that we're totally overlooking and distorting His nature USING the ego as our guide to God.

In God's world, everything is essentially IDENTICAL In its nature, nothing is in competition, there aren't any "differences", one thing is not "separated from" another in the traditional ego sense of total isolation, and yet there are many individual beings which the EGO reasons cannot be possible. The ego sees separations where there are none, and sees singularity where there are distinctions. It cannot see how God could have "parts" or "creations" or "sons" without FALSELY concluding that this indicates isolation.

God and the ego do NOT communicate, so for the ego to think it can look at God "sanely" and make correct evaluations, is also insane. But we CAN learn to think like God and to share His mind and see what He sees, learning WHY it is possible for Him to Create the way He does, in violation of what makes sense to the ego.

For many years I have thought that there are kind of 3 states. There is false perception, then true perception, then heaven. And this is kind of true, and some aspects of ACIM support this.

However, what there really is are just two states. Heaven and hell, reality and illusions. Life and death. Knowledge and Perception.When we think about true perception it's easy to think of it as a state in and of itself. But we need to remember we're talking about PERCEIVING. And that means it's much more to do with "looking at" something.

If you ask yourself, what does false perception LOOK AT, it really kind of looks AT itself. Because false perception IS an internalized, isolated, exclusive state, where perception feeds upon itself and is blinded by form. It does not really see anything, and it cannot see reality. It is selfish and self-deceptive. It's like an obsession with itself, a closed perception that does not see.

When you then look at what the course says about true perception, it's much more to do with NOT dwelling on itself. NOT dwelling on the body. Looking BEYOND illusion. Overlooking. Seeing past. And there is a great deal of evidence that it entails an ability to literally SEE reality. To see God, Christ, the Sonship, perfection, etc, which are IN heaven.

The more I look into it the more it makes sense. Perception is about "what you look at" or how you look at it. Yes you have states of mind - for example wrong mindendess (or closed mindedness) produces false perception. While open mindedness or miracle/right mindedness produces true perception. But from these seeming "states" or the states from which perception EMITS, perception itself LOOKS and is a form of vision. So it needs something to look AT. So let's say...

False perception LOOKS AT HELL.

True perception LOOKS AT HEAVEN.

While there seem to be two "states of mind" within dreaming, ie wrong-mindedness and right-mindedness, really when it comes to perception there is either "the inability to see reality' (per the body which cannot really see reality), and the vision of christ which can see christ. "Love looks upon love" etc.

If wrong mindedness CAUSES perceptual blindness and an inability to see PAST the illusions of falseness itself, right mindedness CAUSES vision and an ability to see PAST illusions. The only thing that is BEYOND illusions, is GODS KINGDOM.

This seems to in many cases line up with what the course says and in its wording, as to how "the real world" is a PERCEPTION OF THE KINGDOM. That the innocence can see God. That perception can even see "the real world" (heaven) under the holy spirit's guidance. That you can see the face of christ, who is in heaven. etc.

So again I come back to, false perception being like living in a prison cell inside a room with no windows. And true perception is like living in a glass greenhouse where you can see THROUGH the walls and see the outside environment (heaven). The PERCEPTION OF the real world - the perception OF heaven, using perception TO see, is still an illusion. "The real world still is but a dream"... BUT, it IS a perception ABOUT heaven - reality. And it is so close to true sight that it makes crossing over to reality easy. It's like window-shopping then going inside the store.

I don't really see anything that contradicts this model. In fact I see MORE contradictions in the model that true perception is "cut off from heaven" completely. As though, we're hiding inside a completely dark room the whole time with NO ACCESS whatsoever to reality, and only upon leaving the room AFTER true perception do we experience even a hint of God. This seems to fly in the face of so much of what the course says, about you bringing light to the world, a reflection of heaven on earth, how earth can reflect heaven's light, how the light of heaven can shine into the world, how love of God can shine into the world, etc. Heaven clearly LEAKS INTO the dream realm through its radiance. That's how you be the light of the world.

I am finding that this simpler model of "two states", heaven and hell, or reality and illusions, makes things a lot SIMPLER to deal with. We can just look to "what is true in reality" versus "illusions which are false". Or look to God's laws and the nature of the soul, versus the laws of the world and the nature of the ego. It's a much easier comparison, between opposites.

We can also then see that forgiveness really is about overlooking illusions entirely, looking BEYOND them, and there's nothing beyond them but reality. So forgiveness, ie atonement as acceptance of truth, is really about reaching out to heaven from WITHIN the dream. Sitting in the dream with goggles on, looking out beyond the walls of spacetime, to heaven... which is truly "the real world". A reality.

This also then makes more sense in terms of how the course says that God gave the real world to his son.... if the real world is a state in the middle of two other states, it would imply god created the real world to be a permanent creation, which it cannot be.

The quesiton then becomes much easier to think about. Are you aligning with God, or with ego? With life or with death? With light or darkness? With truth or lies? And as you APPRAOCH total alignment with truth you are still within the realm of perception, up until the end, when you cross over into heaven completely. This is akin to walking towards the transparent walls, then passing through the door into the reality of the kingdom beyond.

It's then not so much to do with trying to aim to enter a state of forgiveness or atonement, but that you want to become ABLE TO SEE REALITY, to see past this world to the Kingdom. This also reveals that "it its impossible to see two worlds" and "beyond this world there is a world I want" ties into wanting the Kingdom, or at least a perception of it, NOT some kind of pretend "in-between" state. An inbetween state has no meaning of its own and is logically unsupported. It means nothing other than to say it LOOKS AT one of two opposites. There is either the Kingdom or not the Kingdom, there is nothing else.

Ego's world is run by the egoic thought system, based on an EITHER-OR mindset of separation.

God's world is run by God's thought system, based on a BOTH-AND mindset of sharing.

EITHER-OR is based on the idea of separation - there is a separation between who has and who has not, who does and who does not, what is and what is not, etc. An object is this, but not that. It's either red or blue. It's either here or there.

BOTH-AND is based on sharing, something is equally true of both me and you, we both have everything, me and you are loved the same by God, etc. There is no separation in that. What exists is in all locations simultaneously, space and time do not place limits on anything.

Because the world of physical matter is entirely an expression of the egoic thought system, space and time and everything within them (bodies, planets, etc) are governed by this idea of EITHER OR. Living in such a world, the seemingly "natural" way to think about anything is to align our thought processes to the "natural world" and think in accord with it.

So now we "learn" to think in an EITHER-OR way. Either I will turn left or right. Either I will eat at 5 or at 6. Either I'm male or female. Either I am asleep or awake. Either I choose option A or option B.

We adopt this as an entire way of thinking about the world, of reasoning about anything, of what to do, where to go, what to choose, always a selective judgement based on either this or that. It seems to "fit" well with the way the physical world is structured and how it behaves. But it is completely unnatural and completely opposite to God's world.

In God's world, seemingly miraculous things are possible. Everywhere. All the time. Everything in God's world breaks all the ego's laws of separation, and therefore the entire basis of EITHER-OR thinking. God does not think, hey, either one son or another will get my attention. He thinks, BOTH of them get my FULL attention. Nor does he think, I will give 50% attention to one and 50% to another. He thinks, I will give 100% love to both at the same time. And this is done WITHOUT loss, without sacrifice or lack, and without compromise.

The true meaning of divine sharing is that everything applies to BOTH me and you equally, simultaneously, and always. If there were such a thing as a divine pizza, I could eat the whole pizza and you could eat the whole pizza. We both get everything. This is not possible in the physical world, but it is possible in spirit.

One of the tricky things about understanding ACIM is that we come at it with the ego thought system. We come at it with EITHER-OR thinking. And that's a serious problem. Because whenever ACIM speaks of ANYTHING to do with God, Heaven, Creation, Sonship, Holy Spirit, Laws of God, beyond spacetime, etc.... any of those topics, the laws of GOD are applying, not the laws of ego.

So then a statement like "I and my father are One", is completely misunderstood. It's a truth WITHIN the scope of God's BOTH AND system of thought. There, I can be one with God while still being an individual. I am both, myself and part of God. The course also states that God has only one son, BUT that the one son is also many sons. It literally states that BOTH statements are true, that there is one, and many. The Sonship comprises many children, who are ALSO one.

But to the ego this seems nonsense, it cannot fathom how there can be ONE AND MANY at the same time. It insists that it is EITHER one, OR many. And then it decides that many sounds like an ego thing, and one sounds "more spiritual", so it hacks out the many from the one and ends up with its version of what Heaven must be like. And it's totally bullshit.

To grasp anything of the divine nature of the Kingdom, on ANY topic "that side" of the separation boundary, anything real and true, anything to do with Sonship or Creation or God, you have to totally put aside the EITHER OR exclusive separatist way of reasoning logically, think WAY out side the box, and adopt a BOTH AND way of reasoning. THEN the things that Jesus says that sound totally contradictory finally make perfect sense, WITHOUT having to change anything or turn stuff into ridiculous metaphors.

"One brother is all brothers." "One mind is all minds."

Does not mean there is EITHER one brother OR many brothers. Nor does it mean there is either ONE mind OR many minds. Literally, the entire statement is true. There are many brothers, and they are all one. There many minds, and they are all one. And as soon as your thought process tries to "axe" the "many" part of those statements in favor of keeping only the seemingly unifying "one" part of the statement, you're off on an ego tangent of error.

We are one, but we are still brothers. We are the one son of God, but we are also PART of a sonship of many sons. I am a child of God, and so are you. I have individuality, and so do you, and yet simultaneously we share everything. I have everything that God is, which should to the ego mean there is nothing left for you, but you also have everything that God is, simultaneously, because we share it all. Sharing does not mean a collapse of individuality either.

The BOTH AND system of thought, which "runs heaven", is a completely miraculous thought system. It defies all ego laws. It breaks space and time. It ignores silly limitations and false conclusions. It allows to be possible that which the world of EITHER OR would find absolutely impossible. It ignores spatial limitations of all kinds. This is why God is omnipresent, meaning existing in all locations simultaneously. It ignores the idea that we must be kept apart in order to be individuals. And it defies every attempt to split it up and compartmentalize it into nice little prison cells.

The entire Kingdom of God and everything in it is miraculous because of this fundamental logical premise of the whole system. "Nothing real can be increased (God cannot create) except by sharing". As God SHARES, this is an AND scenario. God AND his creation. God AND his son. BOTH God and His son exist. His son is in his likeness because they BOTH are of the same Kingdom and nature.

When I give to you, BOTH of us have it, and I do not lose it. This is why sharing INCREASES the supply in heaven, while sharing causes scarcity in the ego world. When God creates you, God gives ALL of himself to you and yet loses nothing and HAS everything still - BOTH you and God now share everything and there has been an INCREASE. This is miraculous, it dissolves the idea of separation and exclusivity, transcending all ego concepts. The entirety of reality depends on it.

The system of God's mind, his thought system, how the Kingdom is run, is entirely based on this idea of simultaneous sharing, union at the same time as creation, multiplicity at the same time as oneness, having everything while also sharing it with others without anyone being excluded in any way. Heaven is not like this world. It's laws are totally different to the separated-out world the ego made to depict isolation and selfishness. There is no selfishness in the Kingdom, only self-fullness.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

You have everything, and we all share it as God's family.

If you did something wrong, if you sinned or committed some crime, damaged something or hurt someone, you won't be able to forgive yourself for it while you believe it actually happened.

Anything that you believe has REALITY, cannot be undone. Reality is a sense of what is ACTUAL, the facts, the irrefutable certain truth.

Reality cannot be questioned or denied. It is blatant and obvious and there is nothing beyond it. It's like the final judgement on something. Whatever is REAL, you will believe is so true it cannot be changed. Reality is rock solid. Reality is permanence.

This applies no matter what it is that you think is real, and no matter where you place reality, or what you categorize as real, and no matter whether in truth it's the real truth or a lie. If you think it has reality, you think it cannot be undone, cannot be reversed, and cannot be denied. You cannot ESCAPE from what you believe is real, and making it real to you is a choice to keep it.

So if you hurt, sin, attack, damage, destroy etc, if you give these things REALITY, you are locking them in. You're saying, they are actual, factual, unavoidably true. And in particular you will point to evidence, consequences, effects and proof, to demonstrate that it really did occur. And so long as this evidence and proof is also given "reality" it will be IRREFUTABLE that you really DID DO what you think you did.

With this belief in the reality of sin, especially backed up by physical real-seeming evidence, you WILL NOT be able to psychologically forgive yourself. It won't matter how much you work on it. It won't matter how you frame it. It won't matter how much you cathart or try to be nice to yourself or justify what you did or blame it on past-life karma or any other way to try to make it disappear. If it's real, you cannot undo it or let it go.

Whatever you decide is real for you, you are giving the power to dictate the truth. Just even the notion that you did something at all, if it is considered real, cannot be undone. You won't be able to let yourself off the hook, because in the back of your mind there'll be this nagging FACT, that you believe... that you REALLY DID IT. That you DID sin. Even if you justify it, that is like a way to run circles around it. Even if you try to explain it away, that's an attempt to pretend you don't believe you did it. If it's real, you did it, because only reality happens. And if you did it, you are responsible for it.

This means that anything you think you did, any sin or crime or attack, CANNOT be forgiven and let go, fully, UNTIL you are willing to question whether or not it was REAL. If it is considered permanently real, you're screwed. There is NO WAY to be exonerated from a sin if it was real. Not even if the other party says they forgive you. Not even if you receive punishment for the crime and "do the time" and suffer extensively to try to "atone" for what you did. Not even if you have punished yourself for decades over it, it's NEVER going to be enough to overcome REALITY.

The only SWITCH, the only variable, which has the power to set you free from all suffering and recognize your INNOCENCE, is the question of whether or not IT IS REAL. And the only way FOR you to be found innocent, truly, and completely forgiven, and able to truly let it go psychologically so that it doesn't keep holding on like a deep rooted belief, is to find what you did WAS UNREAL. Only if it is NOT real can it ever be let go. Because the mind cannot believe in what has no reality.

"Whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you."

You must question therefore the reality of ALL sin, all happenings, all crimes, all attacks, all suffering, all justification for suffering, and even the memory of what you think you did. You must question whether it even HAPPENED IN REALITY. Did it take place inside a real place, where only real things happen? If it did, you are STUCK with it forever. Did it take place in an UNREAL place, where only illusory things happen, and where dreams pretend to be real, and where there is temptation to believe something is possible that isn't? If so, there is hope that you can be FREE from it by recognizing the CONTEXT within which it occurred. And no-one would hold a DREAM against themselves.

If what you did took place IN A DREAM, and not in reality, then NOTHING about it was real. Nothing you did actually happened. Nothing had any consequences against anything real. Nothing real was hurt or threatened. Nothing guilt-inducing occurred. No-one real has been changed or hurt by your actions and choices. And you cannot have really sinned in any way. Only acts which happen IN DREAMS can be forgiven, and only illusions can be truly let go. Reality can never be forgiven or undone because it is permanent.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ***It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred***, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

So to forgive yourself for what you think you did, you absolutely **HAVE TO** come to the conclusion that it was NOT REAL, and did NOT take place in reality, and did not REALLY happen at all. Regardless even whether you remember it happening. And in complete defiance of even any evidence, proof, consequences or tangible reasons that claim "this is here because of what you did." All of this must be found UNREAL. Otherwise there is no way for your mind to psychologically let it go.

In your mind, whatever it decides has reality, it is deciding to HOLD ONTO AND ACCEPT. Whatever it decides is real, is takes to be TRUTH, and it will defend that truth endlessly. Whatever it thinks is real to it, whatever it accepts as factual reality, is anchors onto and gives validity to and empowers and reinforces and protects. There is no way for the mind to ever let go of what it believes is real, while it believes it is real. To make something real is to give it total authority over everything else. It's the final judgement and irrevocable decision as to whether something is valid or not. And what is real has immortality.

So to forgive yourself fully, to go to the ATONEMENT, to truly atone, which is to undo the unreal, you **MUST** - you have no other choice but to - decide that what seemed to happen WAS NOT REAL, did NOT take place in reality, HAS no real consequences, HAS NOT harmed anyone or anything real, and in truth DID NOT TAKE PLACE AT ALL. It has to be recognized as a DREAM, an illusion, whirling around in a fantasy of fiction, pretending to happen, seeming to occur, but a total lie and delusion. ALL sense of reality has to be stripped from it.

ONLY WHEN your mind has agreed that what you thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, which absolutely REQUIRES that you recognize it WAS NOT REAL AT ALL, will your mind give itself permission to LET IT GO. And only when it can fully let go of what is not real, can it FREE ITSELF from imprisonment, from condemnation and from suffering and righteous self punishment. Only when the mind recognizes the TRUTH that what you thought you did YOU DID NOT DO, because THERE IS NO SIN, and SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY, only then can it LOGICALLY conclude that you CANNOT be guilty.

"Only atonement can be said to cure."

This is where true healing occurs. This is where you are CURED FOREVER. This is where the ROOT of evil is ripped out of its bedding. This is where the whole entire "event" is completely expelled from the mind. And this is where you are set free from it in PERMANENT HEALING as you receive a miracle.

Only in true atonement, the recognition that there is no real sin, can you find yourself INNOCENT again. You can only ACCEPT your innocence, ie accept the truth of the atonement, when you can accept that YOU DID NOT SIN IN REALITY. Sin's unreality must be clear, in order to give it no credit or power over you. Otherwise you are simply going to hold onto it and attack yourself with it. You will finally rejoice as you give yourself PERMISSION to let it go, in the recognition that there is really NOTHING REAL to let go of.

You have not sinned. You can never sin. "There is no sin." "Nothing real can be threatened." And "Nothing unreal exists."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you think you brother did has not OCCURRED."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU."

"We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this."

"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."

So you have this part of your mind, which believes in ego ideas of attack, which is the same as sin. The ego in you believes that you CAN attack real things, even though "nothing real can be threatened." It also believes that not only can it attack God, but it HAS attacked God.

It's the part of you that believes, deceives, and is trying to convince yourself, that you are the ego. That you are not as God created you. And therefore that YOU can attack God, and that you have done so.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

If you believe this, you will believe that you've sinned. This is what the "original sin" is all about. It's the authority problem, the notion you can cause your own cause. That you can cause God against His will, and therefore change him and destroy him.

It is utterly impossible that you're able to do this. God cannot ever be attacked because He is permanent and immortal. You cannot have attacked anything real, at any time. You have never sinned. Not only have you never sinned, sin is actually literally impossible.

The ego however believes that sin IS possible and HAS happened. So you have these two perspectives. The truth in you is asserting that you must still be sinless, but the lies in you are fighting against it and trying to insist you have done something awful. Something totally EXTREMELY awful, as to try to murder God. The ego even thinks it has succeeded.

The belief that you HAVE attacked God, produces a death wish. If you've attacked Him and hurt Him, then he would logically be in a position to be completely justified in revenge. And that now means that God is angry and attacking and threatening. This goes hand in hand with believing that you've attacked and threatened him through anger.

"Death wishes ... DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear."

"And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you."

"The ego wants YOU dead"

That being your "new truth", you will then believe that because sin has actually happened, you deserve to be punished. That you are guilty and should die to atone for it. Or that death will allow you to escape from God's wrath. Because now you see God as having vengeance, as having a very good reason to hate you and to want you dead. That your death is God's will.

You will also then see that by believing you attacked God and hurt him, he is not happy with you. That he cannot possibly love you any more. And therefore you find yourself unworthy and unlovable. And even moreso that you cannot go home. That you are expelled from Heaven and are not welcome there, nor do you ever want to go back there.

What this does is it sets you up for the belief in "death as inevitable." Because if you can't go back home to LIFE, then your ONLY choice is to head towards death. It means you can kind of "never live again". And so you crawl away with your tail between your legs, licking your wounds, condemning yourself for what you think you did, and trying to guarantee your own punishment. And to think this is only because you LISTENED to the ego and BELIEVED it's lies about you being sinful.

Thus you become suicidal because now you yourself believe you deserve punishment for sin, that it makes complete sense that you're guilty, that God would never forgive you, and that what you did is irreversible. It's not even that you think others will punish you for this crime, it's that you yourself believe you deserve to be punished, and you yourself begin to actually enact it upon yourself.

This then frightens you because now you are actually against yourself and are entering into self-harm and self-punishment. You are trying to make yourself dead to pay for what you did. So that now means that you've become suicidal. And your only seeming hope to take away from God all power and rights over you, is to head towards death as a doorway out. You reason that if you will die, you will be saved. And now although you fear it, death becomes salvation and is attractive to you as a solution.

This is literally how every single person chooses to CAUSE their own death, and why all death is suicide, and why "no one dies without their own consent." It's all because you don't think you deserve to live. The ego in you believes so strongly that sin exists, you CAN sin, and you HAVE sinned, that a whole cascade of logical conclusions follow on from it, condemning you to death as the ONLY remaining option.

The only way you will get out of this downward spiral into hell and self-destruction, is to move away from the ego's "version" of what is true, and embrace God's version of what is true. That means questioning the belief in sin, that sin is possible or that you're guilty of doing it. This means the undoing of guilt as well, and therefore also fear.

While the ego in you is screaming "I have sinned", the God in you is gently reminding you that "sin is impossible." While the ego is trying to condemn yourself to hell, God is reminding you that you can't attack anything real. While the ego in you believes and is committed to keeping guilt, and to project it, in order to keep the separation going, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you that you're not guilty because you have never sinned. Because sin is impossible. That everything the ego believes and asserts is a lie.

"You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake."

"Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged."

"You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images."

"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."

"The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable."

"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself."

Illusions + reality = sin.

Reality - illusions = innocence.

This world we're in is a place of limitations. Everything is an illusion. Nothing is whole. Everything is partial. And all the forms that things take seem to depict and symbolise, in one way or another, ideas of separation and attack.

But even so, the world is neutral and is just a dream, it doesn't mean anything. Its forms are just mistakes - errors, various symbolic images which seem to depict impossible things, unnatural things, things not of God. Like sickness and death and murder.

None of this is a sin. But it could tempt you to believe it is a sin, IF you follow the sin formula.

The sin formula is a combination of illusions and reality. It's what you get when you take something that is an illusion and you try to GIVE IT the properties of God. If you give it reality, permanence, irreversibility, unchangeability, truth ..... then you now combine various flawed-looking limited things with truth. And that is how you convert a mistake into a sin.

Sin is then a way of looking at a mistake, in a mistaken way. It's a mistake about a mistake. It's' where you don't recognize that an illusion is just an illusion, or that a mistake is just a mistake. Instead it is regarded AS TRUE, as real, as happening, as permanent.

As such a sinful false-perception way of seeing things looks at bodies and physical happenings - which are all illusions - AS IF THEY ARE REAL.

So IF it were true that we are bodies, and IF bodies were real, and IF bodies were "doing something" to each other, it WOULD be a sin. Because now something real is attacking something real. And that WOULD be a horrendous attack upon reality. And it WOULD have real effects which can be observed and proven.

Such a sin WOULD call for punishment, it would be such a logical statement of truth and fact, such as that "you really have killed God" or "you really have killed God's son" ... that it would absolutely totally JUSTIFY all anger and all revenge and all punishment. This is why "the wages of sin is death." Logically it says you DID do this, I did not ask for it, you owe me, I am justified in revenge in order to atone and equalise, and therefore you deserve to die.

But sin - the perception that something IS a sin - is just a mistake ABOUT mistakes. A mistaken view OF illusions. A mistaken combination of things which in and of themselves are NOT true or real, taken to be true and real. An illusion believed, turns it into a sin.

Sin kind of "locks things in", makes them seem unchangeable - this is the idea that sin is irreversible. It would indeed seem that sins are irreversible if you give them God's properties - because God himself is irreversible. His permanence, confused with space and time and its contents, produces a perception of a world of sin.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away." UrT5A5

What this is really saying is that the world of bodies is the world where you could be tempted to believe sins are happening, and typically you need bodies in order to make sins possible. But sin is just a way of INTERPRETING bodies, and once you interpret them as REAL, you introduce a demand for guilt and death.

This is why forgiveness takes away guilt, because it still looks at the same bodies but WITHOUT confusing them for something real or true. It lifts away God's properties and power and permanence, and sees that the bodies are just neutral harmless illusions. And as such they ARE ERRORS, but they are NOT SINS.

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth." UrT20H4

The body is not "sin-ful" as in FULL of sin, because this is an ego attribute - a false perception OF a body - to suggest its erroneous nature is REAL, and therefore that it is inherently a sin. The body is not really a sin. But at the same time, the body is also not said to be sin-less. .. because sinlessness is a state of such purity and innocence that it cannot have illusions in it. The body IS an illusion, so the body is actually NOTHING, so cannot accurately be said to be "a sin" OR "an innocence."

The thing is that we in our egos, in our false perception insanity, tend to COMBINE physical things with the properties of God. The worst of all these beliefs is the belief that the physical world is God's creation, IS God, and is thus real forever. This is the most sin-laden view of the world possible.

By believing the world is reality, is true, is eternal, is of God, all physical things - which are errors, are converted into sins. And now all acts, all behaviours, all events, are regarded as sins. As we believe that bodies are real, we believe that bodies ARE PEOPLE, and now we are believing that the mind is physical and souls can be destroyed.

Believing that the body is real and is the person, IS a belief in sin, and is thus an attack upon the body and the person. It's an egoic way of framing the person as not innocent. And once you believe they ARE a body, you will enter into all manner of nightmares.

There will be the nightmare of fear that their body could be in danger, the nightmare of guilt that you cannot save their body from death, the nightmare of anger that other people or things are doing stuff to their body, the nightmare of hopelessness that you cannot stop their body sickness, it goes on and on.

While we continue to be confused and lost in combining illusions with reality, giving God's properties to things which are not of God, we will continue to suffer and have a bad dream experience. But once we separate out God from the world, reality from illusions, souls/Christ from bodies, we can enter into the happier dream.

The happy dream comprises still the dream of illusions, but without sin projected onto it. Without that sense of - this is actually really a horrible bad thing. Without that attacking judgement of "this world REALLY IS a shit place." Yes it can seem to be a shit place, indeed it cannot be anything other than shit, but thankfully it is not a REAL one.

The happy forgiving dreams of RECOGNITION that an illusion is an illusion, that bodies are dreams, that the world's events are fiction, and that the world IS NOT ACTUALLY doing anything to anything real, liberates the mind and allows us to be in a state closer to sinlessness, closer to innocence. And we can project this onto the world, temporarily, and see it reflected back as the reflection of heaven. A distorted strange dream-world seen with forgiving eyes, a kind of "happy fiction."

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They" UrT4A2

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven." UrW220W11

Sins are forgiven by recognizing they are NOT sins, they are just mistakes. And mistakes simply call for correction, not punishment. When you recognize that someone just made a mistake, you do not hold it against them like it is some kind of permanent reality and truth about them. You let your view of them be CHANGED, so that you see their mistakenness calls only for a gentle loving correction, and not a horrendous accusation.

"And what else should therapy be? Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other." UrP4B4

Christianity makes sense. It makes logical sense. The structure of its metaphysics is consistent, albeit mistaken. But here's a secret... everyone who has an ego believes the Christian doctrine, because it's really a doctrine base on the ego's thought system and the ego made it.

For example, it depends on the idea that this world is real, that you do real things in this world, and that if you do the "wrong" real things then that's a sin.

This basis alone is enough for all of the rest of it to spring forth consistently.

For example, if this world is real and sin is real, then you will start trying to identify what is a sin and what isn't. You'll separate out "good and bad". This immediately produces the notion of good and evil. Some things are considered not sins so they are good, and other things are considered sins so they are evil.

Just the mere of act of existing in a dualistic right/wrong world where real stuff happens and some of is it not right, automatically implies that evil exists. Therefore the doctrine now becomes that you should choose only the good stuff and reject the bad stuff.

This actually isn't really just a Christian perspective. It's really the belief of the EGO, and anyone who has a persona and shadow is participating in the battle of good vs evil. If you believe that some aspects of this world are good and some are not, or that some behaviors are good and some are not, you are believing in a separation between good and evil. It means the good stuff is being spiritualized, is being made special, is given extra value, and is seen as acceptable. The bad stuff is seen as unspiritual, valueless, and unacceptable.

So it's not just Christianity that believes in this dynamic. Anyone with an ego believes in this dynamic, even members of other religions if they believe this world is real and that some of the things in it are more spiritual than others.

This goes on to imply that in order to be spiritual, you must only do the good acceptable things, you must keep your behavior in-line, and you must not "sin". If you do sinful things, you will be guilty of sin and be justified in being punished. It would then only seem "right" to punish the sin and condemn the sinner.

This leads to the idea of God, or the interpretation of God, as someone who judges whether you've been sinful or not, and how he then decides based on that whether you are worthy of heaven/love, or whether you need to be punished in hell. So automatically it creates the belief in heaven and hell as the extremes of sin vs not sin.

Anyone who believes that sins are real, Christian or otherwise, actually does believe in heaven vs hell, and good vs evil. They must, because believing in real sin automatically implies these things. Its a package deal.

So if now God is only going to approve of you if you are "good" and do not do the things which are considered sins, and if God's disapproval is going to land you in hell and punishment, it gives you a pretty good motivation to be "good". So then you focus on that, believing that the more good you become the less evil you become. Makes sense right?

This also then implies that if you DO sin, then you need some kind of special pardon if you're going to be seen as acceptable. Therefore you will need to be forgiven by God or Jesus, and if they decide not to forgive you but to condemn you, then you're on your way to hell. This produces such a huge amount of fear relating to whether you are going to be acceptable or not, whether you can be forgiven, and even the possibility of going to a "real hell" is already a nightmare.

To believe that sin is real automatically leads to believing that hell is real. If sin is evil then obviously sinning produces evil and, you know, there's a "place" where evil then seems to exist, and we call that hell. This belief in real sin produces therefore the belief in "real hell", and just believing that hell is real, alone, is enough to frighten the pants off you. It is not so much that the church itself attempts to use this idea to scare you into conformity and control, although that might've happened to some degree.

The ego doesn't need the church to accomplish this. Anyone who believes sin is real will automatically haunt themselves with this belief that a "real evil" could not only attack and threaten and tempt them, but that they themselves could therefore be vulnerable or susceptible to becoming part of that evil, and wind up in hell, suffering and being damned from love forever. Nasty business. All it takes is an ego.

Also then if God is in a position of having to judge between sinners and the innocent, that now turns God into a judger and and a conditional lover. He will only love IF you behave yourself, and if you don't, He will be the one to send you to hell. The amount of fear produced by reacting to this notion, alone, is horrifying, not to mention that it implies that God is fickle and incapable of unconditional love, and so cannot be trusted.

The idea that you might not be accepted or loved, is deeply upsetting. IF God were like this, which he would HAVE to be if sin and evil are real, you're going to be clinging to the edge of your seat until "judgement day" hoping that you've got some chance in hell of not being sent into the pit.

Again this is not just a Christian viewpoint, to be fair, it is the viewpoint that underlies EVERYONE who has an ego. Almost everyone on the planet has bought into this entire thought system as a complete package. Believe in even just one PART of it and you must automatically believe in the rest of it, because it all ties together perfectly logically and leads to all of the other implications.

If you are a A Course in Miracles student, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist or whatever, or an Atheist, if you believe the physical world is real and that it contains good and bad, YOU DO BELIEVE IN HELL, SIN, A JUDGEMENTAL GOD, SACRIFICE, THREAT OF DAMNATION, SUFFERING AND DEATH. If you think you don't, and you have an ego, you're in denial.

In order for you NOT to believe any of this thought system, or any of the parts of it, there MUST be a decision on your part not to believe at least one PART of it. For example, if you were to believe that sin is not real, this AUTOMATICALLY IMPLIES that the entire rest of the ego thought system, the entire rest of "christianity", is false.

If sin is not real, there is no good and bad or right and wrong, things appearing to happen are just illusions, God is unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental, there is no real evil, there in no hell, and you are One with God in Heaven forever. And that's all an automatic logical conclusion that is part of the package deal you get when you believe that sin is not real.

You could also say, I do not believe the world is real. That too will put a pin in the entire ego thought system based on good vs evil, and will completely undermine every part of it. If the world is not real and God did not create it then there is also no real evil and no sin or death and no hell to speak of, and nothing that seems to happen here can prove that you are sinful or guilty, therefore you are already eternally forgiven.

So it's really down to the thought system, and its logical consistency. The ego's thought system is responsible for creating Christianity, it is responsible for creating all political parties, it is responsible for creating all wars and conflicts, it is responsible for creating all belief in sin and evil and hell, it is responsible for all suffering, all sickness, and all death, regardless of what form the belief system seems to take or how it's structured or what side you're on.

What A Course in Miracles is trying to teach is that the entire ego thought system and ALL of its contents, IS NOT TRUE. And that means, since truth=reality, it is not REAL. This doesn't throw Jesus Christ out the window, in fact, because Jesus wrote ACIM and He is teaching us through it the "correction" of not only Christianity's interpretation of reality, but also the entire ego's, which includes far more. It's trying to show us the way out, the truth and the light, and the correct interpretation of what is happening here.

It's teaching us that the world is not real, sin is not real, sickness is not real, death is not real, it's all an ego illusion. God is unconditionally loving, forgiveness is universal and permanent, and only love is real.

In this world, death is inevitable. This is a scientific and metaphysical fact. Entropy guarantees the end of the universe. It's all going to die.

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

Meanwhile, since it seems that the dying is long and drawn out, this can create the impression that there is some life to be lived. There are even what we call new births, growths, things to see and do, entertainment and short-term goals. Do it all - while you still can. The clock is ticking.

This however doesn't mean that even these new things won't die. All the flowers that ever bloomed are dead now. All the babies that were born are dead in the ground. And there's only a handful left to populate the Earth, seeming to live, standing in line, waiting to die.

All that remains of what we call "alive" is a thin surface, a small collection of those things that temporarily aren't fully dead yet. And it's a vey small amount compared to what has come and gone. Life is a small slither of the dying, and billions of years have already come and gone.

The fact is that the world does not GIVE you a choice in this matter. It is set up to guarantee death. It can appear that there is life temporarily, but it is also certain that it will not last. What appears to be life, such as a seed growing into a plant, producing a flower and then dying off, is all living on borrowed time. The flower was destined to die as soon as it was sown.

All the world's roads lead to death. Sometimes there are roads which don't seem like they're so bad, and are tolerable, and sometimes even seemingly enjoyable. These are diversions and detours. They present an illusion of what seems like it's not dying. They might even look like growth and building and construction and birth. But not one of these things will escape death.

There is not one single city that has been built that hasn't crumbled. There is not one house that hasn't been reduced to a pile of rubble. There is not one body that hasn't been laid in the ground, if there was anything left to bury. There is not one food that hasn't rotten. There is not one place that hasn't deteriorated. And there is not one meaningful civilized movement that hasn't come to an end.

Why is that? Because death is built into the system. Space and time MEAN death. Delay, which is time, is an avoidance of being present, an attack on permanence, and an attempt to overthrow eternity. Time means death and time guarantees death. All the things in spacetime end up dead because time itself forces them to change, to stop being what they are, and to stop existing.

"This is the world of time, where all things end."

There is a seeming regurgitation of death, appearing to turn into new life, such as when trees in a forest are feasting on the corpses of their ancestors. New flowers seem to bloom as so-called "nature" attempts to find a way to perpetuate itself. Only to continually be met with an onslaught of destruction. Yet while the "new" stuff seems to perpetuate an illusion of a life, the rest of it just withers and dies. And even the new stuff will end someday.

This dire situation is simply the state of the world. It is hopeless. Anything you begin will end. Anything you build will crumble. Anything you think you've achieved will come tumbling down. Everything you've tried to create will be destroyed. Not one thing you've ever made will withstand the laws of physics. And time will sweep your whole life under the carpet.

Given that death is inevitable then, logically speaking it really means there is no point in living. After all, what's the point in putting in so much effort to do and achieve and accomplish when it's all just going to be destroyed anyway? At some point the sun is going to go supernova and blow your hopes and dreams to smithereens, and there will be not one trace left of everything you worked for.

Civilization rests on the idea that somehow you will leave a legacy and pass on the relay baton to the next runners who, like you, will also have to pass it on to the future generations because they too will die before the finish line. And so mankind pretends to live as screaming corpses toss the temporary illusion of life to the newcomers and ask them to do the same when their time comes to die. And we call this a sustaining of life against all the odds.

This is what spacetime has in store for you. And because of this, there really is no point doing anything. There can only be seeming short-term rewards, temporary advantages, momentary gains and short-lived enjoyment, all guaranteed to come crashing down and be trampled on by the universe. Have you not realized this yet, that the whole world is set up to try to kill you off? It was MADE as an attack on God and as an attempt to destroy you.

The truth is then that even though there sometimes seems to be a reprieve or temporary ceasefire, ALL the worlds roads and paths and choices eventually lead to death. All its roads do NOT lead to God. They all lead to destruction and despair and suffering. This is the way of the world. If you attempt to deny this you are mentally ill, and out of touch with reality. Death has plans for you that it will never give up.

So the truth is that, really, in the big picture, you do not HAVE a choice in life. You are not really choosing between life and death. You are choosing between death now or death later. You are choosing only to some extent when it will happen, and certainly not IF it will happen. And for the most part, it is going to choose for you. A sudden tragedy, a spontaneous seeming sickness, an accident, an act of nature, whatever it is that comes knocking to give you a really bad day.

You don't have a choice, if this world of spacetime is all that exists. If this is all there is, you are bound to death. If this world is the only reality, you will never escape death and it is your destiny to die. That means you are bound by fate and there is nothing you can do about it. Therefore you are not free. You are prisoner in a prison world, doing time, and waiting to die.

The only way, logically speaking, for you to have an ACTUAL CHOICE, is if there is some kind of way of existing that is not bound by the laws of spacetime. The only way you can have an alternative TO choose from, is if there IS actually a real alternative. There has to be an alternative to spacetime, otherwise you have no choice at all.

And don't be deceived in thinking that you have a lot of choices in life, to decide how you can make your life better, to choose something you prefer over something you don't, to choose which compromise appeals to you more. For everything you gain you will lose something else, and will not come out on top overall. Life will give you little scraps and will then take them away again. It will award you and please you and delight you and then shit in your face.

And you'll think it was unfair and unnatural and just some exception that things went to hell. But then it will happen again. And again and again and again. And you won't seem to be getting the message that this is how the whole system is set up. There is NO ESCAPE from the problems of the world. The world was made so that problems would be endless and no escape is possible. There's plenty more in store for you if you stick around. The world has an unlimited supply of hands to slap your face with.

You might believe that problems are only temporary. You might be delighted with your ability to fix things and problem solve. You might think that you're able to create a little oasis in the desert where you seem to be relatively safe and life is good. But that means you're living in denial. You are not prepared for what could happen, and it will happen, and you will be shocked and upset because you thought it could never happen. And then you will exclaim it is unfair and try to move on and look for the next lull in the storm, ever lurching onwards towards the grave like a half-living zombie.

Unless there is another world beyond space and time, out of reach of death and destruction, you have no hope. Unless there is an actual reality where you can live and have life and experience, out of the reach of death's clutches, there is no hope. Unless there is GOD, heaven, creation, God's Kingdom, you do not have any hope. Unless there's an actual real alternative to this world, you are not going to surmount death or overcome the world or find a way to live forever.

It is quite insane to suggest that being born, living for a while, and then dying, is natural. It is commonplace yes, but that doesn't mean it's natural. All the things of "nature" seem to do it, but that also doesn't mean it's natural. It is completely insane to suggest that there could be a life which is given, but you only have a short time, and then it's going to be ripped away unfairly before you're done. That you could live for only a short period and then stop. It makes no sense at all to think that people could just be destroyed endlessly.

Due to death seeming to be so inevitable, people think they do not have a choice. That there is nothing else to choose. In fact they don't even think they have a choice at all, not really. Even though they pretend to choose things all the time, they are just choosing different roads to death that temporary look appealing. And none of them offer any REAL choice because none of them lead to permanent life. There is no alternative when the only option is death, and that means you have no choice to choose with.

If there were to be another option, you actually would have a valid choice. This would mean two things. Firstly that you can choose something else, and secondly that if you choose it you will have it. It has to be true then that death is actually a decision, and that you somehow have it within your power to choose what you want and to make it happen. Otherwise, if permanent life were an option and you chose it, death could still take it away from you. It has to be that somehow in you there is a power of decision which overthrows what happens and determines your own destiny.

This means ultimately that, even while death disguises the fact that you are free to choose, death itself must be chosen in order to happen. This same power in your mind that can choose eternal life can also choose the illusion of death in space and time. If there really is an alternative, and you can choose it, and by choosing it it becomes yours, you must have the power to NOT choose death, to not consent to it, and to therefore PREVENT it. Even to reverse it, undo it, cancel it, and make it impossible.

The only real alternative therefore to this world of eventual death is a world of permanent life, in which death is impossible, and life is inevitable. Where there is a power capable of keeping death at bay, of guaranteeing immortality, of ensuring invulnerability, of making certain that nothing can be attacked or harmed or destroyed in any way. It must be a world of creation and not destruction, rooted in laws of permanence and protection, of safety and of love, of harmlessness and order.

To entertain that there is a valid alternative to the world requires you to believe in God. To have faith in heaven. To trust and be open to the possibility that such a place actually exists, that you can go there and merge with it and live there forever, out of harm's way. To do this is the only way to step out of the downhill slide towards destruction. You have to believe in a movement towards life, and life is God. Going towards life resurrects you and restores your life, while going away from God takes you into the world and towards death.

If you want to live forever, you will have to turn your back on death and on the world. You will have to overthrow the laws of physics. You will have to violate every seeming natural consequence of the world. You will have to become able to demonstrate through miracles that you are under the laws of God and not the laws of death. You will have to be able to raise the dead, resurrect to life, and restore order. Only by surmounting death and preventing sickness and reversing decay can you prove that you really mean business in your commitment to living.

Accepting sickness is not a commitment to living. Sickness is a form of death. Tolerating suffering is not full living. Putting up with dying is not living. Only the sustained continuation of life endlessly is real life. And if you are not in favor of that, are not actively choosing that, are not causing that to happen, then you are choosing death. It's not a difficult thing to consider. You either choose to live or die, and it's on you. Living doesn't mean living for 80+ years. It means living forever.

Since everything in the world points toward death, even in its forms of life and its new births and so on, you will have to fly in the face of the entirety of spacetime in order to overcome death. You will have to believe in laws that are not of this world, you will have to side with God, and you will have to reject every belief in sickness and death. All forms of suffering will have to by uprooted and every denial that you use to pretend you're going to live has to be questioned.

There IS a real alternative to death, and it's not of this world. Life is of God who is eternally alive. If you want to live you will have to side with God. You will have to choose to resume your natural station of being like God. If you do not choose this, you are choosing to be unlike life, and therefore dead. And that is what you will receive. If you do not want to receive it, you will have to choose immortality. And the only way to choose it is to stop choosing anything the world says must happen.

You're going to have to go against the grain, run contrary to the worlds beliefs, defy the opinions of everyone, stand up for the real truth, stop supporting the number-one religion of death-worship, have faith and trust in God's power to correct all problems, and become a medium through which resurrection can occur. The ONLY way out of this is through miracles. The ONLY way to end death and guarantee life, is through the expression of life and the giving of life. And through miracles you will return to an endless life in God.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped." "The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them."

"All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it still more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no-one asks if a benign Creator could will this."

While in Heaven, before the fall of man, everything that existed was of God. And it still is. Creation is the presence of something real. It exists. It has substance. It lives.

At this point, all things which DO NOT exist, simply did not exist at all. They were not anywhere. They had no substance, no reality, no life. They did not happen. They simply weren't anywhere. Nothingness was nothing. And nowhere was nowhere.

Non-existence simply does not exist. It is not somewhere you can go and exist. It is not a realm or a dimension. It has no presence or location. It is simply, logically, absolutely nowhere at all, is nothing, does nothing, and cannot be.

In the separation, the tiny mad idea suggested that in ADDITION to Heaven, the nothingness actually was SOMETHING. And that Heaven, God and His Son did not exist. It was a complete reversal of the truth.

This was a completely ridiculous idea and we should have laughed at its nonsense. Nothingness cannot possibly exist. It can't BE something. It has no presence. But we believed it could.

This was our mistake. It was a mistake because it is patently impossible and illogical and nonsense. Nothing cannot exist. Which is a similar thing as saying, only what CAN exist DOES. And that is only of God's creation. Anything other than God's creation simply isn't anywhere. There isn't anything else. But we believed there was.

By forming this belief in nothingness being SOMETHINGNESS, we basically were becoming confused. Confusing levels. Confusing the truth with what is false. Confusing possibility with impossibility. Confusing reality with unreality. We wanted to GIVE nothingness all the attributes of God's creation so that we could BELIEVE that it was in fact SOMETHING POSSIBLE, and something that has existence.

This of course was an insane notion and totally wishful thinking, because it still remains impossible. And even in believing that it IS possible this does not cause it to be possible. Nothing can never be something. Non existence cannot suddenly come into existing. Even the idea that non-existence could exist is to confuse existence and non-existence to the point or ludicrous nonsense.... how can non-existence STILL BE non-existent at the same time as claiming it exists? But this is what we insisted was true.

In attempting to MAKE non-existent things EXIST, we dreamed, imagined, wished for, wanted, and tried to MAKE HAPPEN, "a world" on the basis of non-existence. A world where everything opposite to God's creation is manifest. A world where life does not exist. Where love is blotted out by fear. Where death has come to replace life, and time to replace eternity. Where space opposes omnipresence and where evil substitutes for the good.

Even in doing this, in our imagination, essentially, we still were not ACTUALLY doing this, because it is patently impossible to make non-existent things have reality. But we still BELIEVED that we could, that we did, that we have, and that we continue to do so. And so we hallucinated a fictional world which IS NOT THERE, and CANNOT EXIST, as if it were existing.

And so here we are, on planet Earth, jewel of the solar system, a completely make-believe, false, unreal, non-existent world, which in our minds we BELIEVE IN, and want to exist, and try to make happen. Which nevertheless, at no time ACTUALLY exists, and is nothing but imagined - images in the mind, attempting to DREAM OF what it MIGHT be like IF non-existence could exist.

So we haven't even really made non-existence exist. Non-existence CANNOT be made to exist. But we have BELIEVED that it is possible, which is an insane and completely mistaken belief. And we persist stubbornly to DENY the facts, and AVOID the truth, and HIDE FROM reality, in an effort to keep the truth in the dark so that you won't ADMIT that a non-existent world isn't here. And meanwhile we dream of space and time and happenings and sickness and death as if they are possible.

"it (mind) merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

What ultimately happens when we reach atonement, which is the total willingness to admit to the truth and come to our senses, a return to SANITY, and a correct recognition of the facts, is that we come to RECOGNIZE that non-existent things DO NOT EXIST. What we thought existed, or what we thought happened, IS NOT THERE. This literally culminates in the awareness and accurate perception that THERE IS NO WORLD.

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

Quite literally, the world, which is based on the idea of nothingness, IS NOTHING. It cannot be. It is not. It does not. It cannot. It doesn't. It hasn't. It isn't. It won't. The world is merely a fictional fairytale fantasy, trying to believe that impossible things are possible, and trying to PROVE it through fictional stories and images and deceptions, smoke and mirrors, illusions and lies. The world is nothing but confusion.

There quite literally is no world here. Only the Kingdom of God exists. The world is nothingness. The body is nothingness. And true perception recognizes that the world is nothing. This is why christ vision cannot SEE the world, because it MUST VANISH when recognized as NOT EXISTING. The body is not alive or dead. It is not even THERE.

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

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"At no time does the body exist."

"There is no world."

"There is no world apart from what you wish."

"He does not realize that he MAKES this world, for there IS no world outside him."

"Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions."

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

"But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now."

Recognizing there is no world, is like FORGETTING the world. Paying no attention to it. Becoming unable to SEE it. Erasing it from memory. Like it was nothing. Like it never happened. Like not one single thing occurred. And then ONLY the Kingdom of God is accepted as real, existing, present, possible, and happening. And upon accepting that ONLY the truth is true and nothing ELSE is true, you awaken to the recognition of the real truth in God.

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream."

"The world you see must be denied."

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

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

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."

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