I've seen how when I want to make something go away, I make myself sick.

We attempt to psychologically reject and push something away when we find it threatening, dangerous or undesirable, all of which is a perceptual error. This however immediately implements some form of sickness. Sickness is INDUCED by the attempt to separate from your BROTHER!

"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."

When we perceive a threat or danger, or someone is fear-mongering, or there is "bad news", or some obnoxious person is hanging around, or whatever... if we perceive it as having power to attack and we want it to stop, instead of making it stop or dis-believing in it, we put up defenses. We try to reject and separate ourselves from it. That's a bad move. It attacks our body. "If I defend myself I am attacked."

I gave myself a panic attack yesterday at a medical office when the staff started becoming serious about heart problems that aren't real. Try as I might I couldn't help but try to reject and resist, and thus induced sickness and almost fainted. Later during forgiveness I saw how I'd done that to myself, trying to make it go away, as the result of *perceiving* that there was a real threat or danger.

Previously also I recall a very talkative coworker kept hanging around at my desk trying to chat, and wouldn't go away. And then got into chatting with others nearby. And instead of standing up to tell them to leave I just tolerated and tried to be patient, but wanted them to go away. And this induced a sudden immediate headache. Trying to separate from your brother induces sickness.

I also once gave myself an ear infection in a matter of hours as a result of trying to make Holy Spirit go away, having perceived his lack of "boundaries" as a threat. I suffered for a few days before being able to re-approach him without fear and thus recognize what I'd done to myself, and upon recognizing I did not NEED the defense, all symptoms disappeared within a matter of hours.

Whenever we USE SEPARATION as a tool, which is an ego tool, to try to "deal with" perceived situations, our attempt to put up a defense and withdraw into ourselves cuts us off from life, blocks extension, fosters separation, produces sickness, and eventually death ("sickness is but a little death"). Our attempt to DENY GOD or our brothers (whom God is in) is the only cause of bodily death. This is why all death is suicide - we give our consent through our denial of God's will. IT IS NOT GOD's WILL THAT ANYONE DIE. A dream of death is not left THROUGh death, but through life - truth.

Sickness cannot happen at all when you do not have a belief in separation in any way. When your mind extends to your brothers mind sharing love, it undoes all sense of separation and your minds join. In this joining there is no split and no division and no attack, and nothing for sickness to latch onto. It therefore MUST heal, and as such death is surmounted. This is a miracle, it is resurrection.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

Notice it says NOW IS THE *BODY* HEALED.

"You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." This is literal. Sickness becomes impossible when your mind is whole and healed.

Atonement makes sickness IMPOSSIBLE. This DOES MEAN BODY SICKNESS as well as mental illness.

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."

So sickness IS A FORM OF GUILT, and if there is no guilt, there can be no sickness or death. Period.

I often fall for the trap of trying to be right. After of a period of time of trying to be right over and over again, I noticed that this rightness was basically a position of defensiveness, trying to defend (and therefore attack) against some kind of perceived 'wrongness' outside of me.

The trouble is that the wrongness is not really outside of me, it's a part of my mind, but the rest of my mindbelieves it is separate from it - disassociated from it. So really when I'm being right, I'm going into my persona and am rejecting my shadow, projecting it onto someone else and trying to position my persona-identified self as more correct, more truthful, more real.

This is a position of war, because always these situations of being right involve conflict - seemingly with someone else, but really with some part of myself. So long as someone else seems to be the opposite of my position, it becomes very easy to see my wrong-focused shadow projected onto them. It's a convenient way to get rid of my own wrongness and guilt.

So even if I seem very annoyed about someone being wrong, and I'm going to lengths to correct them or prove myself right, I secretly want them to be wrong so that I can put all of this sense of wrongfulness onto them, finding myself seemingly more innocent as a result. I get to look like the innocent victim who is just defending the truth, and they get to look like the evil monster who is hell-bent on destroying it.

This is all happening inside our own mind when we start to dig in our heels and be right. And the thing is, in this world there are many many situations in which, according to normal rules and laws and seeming "facts" (really illusions of truth), we can fall for this and believe that someone is "really wrong". We think there is a truth to the illusion that they are wrong, and react to it with righteousness in trying to separate ourselves from this perceived untruth. But separation itself is untruth.

We have to learn then to allow others to seem to be wrong, if they seem to be, recognizing it's not that they really are wrong, but only an illusion that they are, and that if we just react to that with ego we will just move into the persona and project our shadow guilt onto them. We need to let them be wrong, if they seem to be, and choose not to rise up in this mode of holier-than-thou, or the one who is good and righteous and correct. One person being wrong and one person being right is just an inner war, in which there is no peace.

Learning not to go into this mode of projection and wrong-making when, given the situation, it seems that you *actually* are correct, is a very subtle trap. It's easy to recognize you are being right when the other person is actually right and you're actually mistaken, on whatever ego grounds. But when the other person *seem* to be wrong, given the facts and so on, this makes it much harder to drop the 'role' of being the 'right one', or falling for the temptation of believing that something "really wrong" is happening outside of you.

Even when we are technically right, correct, or know a greater truth, we have to learn to surrender and not use it as a way to judge or to make others wrong for not seeing it. It's quite a subtle trap, and I fall for it all the time, lol. What ends up happening is I am defending the ego in me, thinking that I am defending some kind of truth, and only make myself be in conflict.

I can choose peace instead of this. I'd rather be happy than right.

Let's review this prayer from ACIM in a new light.

"1. I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.

2. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

3. I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

4. I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

5. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

so...

1) I first admit I'm upset because I projected guilt, so I'm victimized and I'm suffering and afraid and not at peace. I signed a stupid contract with someone so that they would take my guilt and, in exchange, I would be persecuted.

2) I have to recognize I made a decision (contract) with the person myself and projected my own guilt myself. Thus I must admit that this person be seen as innocent and they were just helping me to hide my guilt.

3) I want to decide otherwise because I want to not be a victim any more and I am willing to be responsible for my guilt. So I take my guilt back from the person. I want out of the contract and I want real healing.

4) I do not have to feel guilty. I can go to Holy Spirit and offer up my guilt and be willing to be OPEN to accepting His verdict. If He says so, I am innocent, and I must accept that if He says so - this is what it means to allow Him to decide FOR ME whether I'm innocent or not. So I don't HAVE to be guilty and I don't have to (and should not attempt to) decide for myself. And also...

"Holy spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I will let Him."

- Holy Spirit will UNDO ALL CONSEQUENCES. That means He is capable of removing all guilt, all sin, all suffering, all fear, all sickness, all hate and anger, all shame, all darkness in any form whatsoever. Anything that I made as a result of choosing sin and guilt He CAN undo FOR ME. I don't have to even do anything.

- "If I will let Him", means, I have to have as much willingness as possible to be OPEN to the possibility that I am innocent, to fully ACCEPT Holy Spirit's judgement (that I am innocent), to LET GO OF all guilt and every consequence that came from choosing sin, and then to LET HIM go to work IN ME to undo all of these manifestations and forms of consequence. And that includes all sickness and side effects, IF I will let Him.

5. I can trigger off this willingness by allowing Holy Spirit to decide for me... i.e. I can go before Him and say, here's my guilt etc, please decide for me whether I am really guilty or not. And that means I have to be very open minded and neutral in offering this, knowing that I am not being unfairly judged, and to be willing to ACCEPT whatever Holy Spirit's verdict is. This is like a last, final offering to Him. If He says I am guilty, I must hang my head in shame and head off into the wilderness by myself. If he says I am innocent, I MUST agree to let go of all of the guilt and all of the consequences that my sinful decision made for me.

I am letting Holy Spirit decide for God for me, which now really means, I want God/HS to choose the meaning of what I am and the truth about me and whether or not I am innocent or guilty. I will let Him decide my fate. And He WILL decide FOR me, in my favor, that I am innocent.

If I can be willing to really accept this Atonement, to accept His decision, THEN... willingness permitting, I CAN ask Him to forgive and heal me and He CAN come into me and heal me. He CAN correct all of the consequences, literally. He can fix every fuckup that resulted from this mess. And he can raise the dead (me) back to life.

Personally I have been learning to experience this more - this last part, allowing Holy Spirit to come into me and actually "do stuff". This is quite wacky sometimes. If you've seen videos of some supernatural-oriented Christian churches where they bring forth Holy Spirit and people start shaking and they get all hot or cold or tingly or body parts start to heal or they grow a new eyeball or whatever.... (it happens!) .... That kind of shit can happen for you. This is what the Course is saying. "Holy Spirit will undo ALL THE CONSEQUENCES If I will let Him." I need to learn to be very willing to let Him, so that I can be helped by his divine POWER, which is a healing agent, which can correct me on all levels including emotional and physical.

This isn't just a Course in nice gentle little evaporating of thought. This is a course in fricking MIRACLES!

In the past, my wife became disabled and was unable to fend for herself. She became dependent upon me. I had to take over responsibility for her life, her wellbeing, her decisions, her food and cleanliness, her health. I had to keep her alive.

Now, in that scenario there was a lot of pressure. Having developed dementia and brain damages she would sometimes act out, lashing out at people, hitting people, swearing at people. She didn't mean to, she couldn't control it.

Because I took on responsibility for her life, I felt it was up to me to keep her going, to manage her behaviour, to feed clothe wash and support her, to administer medications, to take her to dialysis treatments 3 times a week for years, to get through hospital visits, to defend her against inept doctors and nurses, and to generally try to stop her from dying.

All of this began to produce some ego-creep in me, in which I started to feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and afraid. I felt afraid that if I didn't do the right thing she would die. If I didn't do the right thing, her health would decline. If I didn't do the right thing, there would be judgement and attack, possibly even legal action.

There was shame and embarrassment and guilt when she would act out. There was fear, that if she acted out towards the very same medical people that were providing "life support", she would get herself kicked out and would die. There was fear that she might not make it through the night, that her breathing was poor, that she might do something to make herself worse off. And feelings of guilt crept in that I wasn't doing it well enough.

You could say, as some would, that this was to be expected. Given all the pressure, all the responsibility, all the support and time and management and effort I had to give just to keep her going, to put out fires, to stop things from getting worse, anyone would feel upset and lost, afraid and guilty, ashamed and embarrassed.

But that's not what A Course in Miracles would say. It would say that there is a secret of salvation - that we are doing this all to ourselves. It would say that if I felt guilt or shame, I must've chosen to feel it. It would say that if I was afraid, I must've decided to buy into fear. It would say that if I was resisting death, that was a choice on my part. It would say if I was embarrassed about how she broke the rules today, that was something I was taking personally by myself.

So I had to look at this, because it was all part of me becoming a victim in this scenario, of seeing myself as constantly on the defensive, under attack, fighting against the institutions. I had started to blame myself, that it was my fault. The sense of responsibility was shifting into a sense of personal guilt, that if anything went wrong somehow it reflected on me. That if she acted out or made things worse for herself, it meant I was more ashamed somehow.

Obviously this is not something that was anything to do with me really, was not my fault or my doing. But of course when you have a lot of social and peer pressure and medical pressure and even legal pressure to say, you have to look after her right otherwise the punishment will come, that can be very tempting. I did buy into it to some degree, and I take take it on as a personal thing. And this resulted in my attacking myself.

So in order to apply the secret of salvation, I have to look at that and see, I was NOT being caused by other people, I was not responsible for what she did even if in physical terms I was, I was not guilty for anything that went wrong, I was not shameful for her lashing out at people, and I was not to be blamed for failures and losses and dramas and various other forms of things I couldn't control.

The secret says, that if you are upset, you are doing it to yourself. So that means, I made myself guilty. It means I shamed myself, it wasn't other people doing it. It means I made myself afraid by believing in the body and in death and in threats. It means I chose to be embarrassed, to feel incapable, to feel loss. I did that to myself.

You might also say, it's quite a tall order to expect someone going through such a difficult thing to have to rise up to a state of perfection. To not react at all, to have no investment, to not take things personally, to not feel threatened. Indeed it is quite a tall order. But it's the ego that really makes things feel like hell, it's the lack of responsibility and power that makes you see yourself as victimised and under attack. It's not our natural state to be positioned as a victim like that.

So I take my power back. The power that I gave to these people, the power that I gave to the situation, the power that I gave to her. I take back the power that I disowned by playing a role of caregiver and saviour and protector. I take back the power that said it was my fault, my job, my responsibility, my role and identity, to have to be responsible for another person's life and wellbeing. I take back my power to recognize I chose to see myself as under pressure and attack, threatened by death and its cohorts, and these things have NO power over me.

It is ONLY by taking back your power that you can be not a victim, can let go of the various victim roles like being guilty or ashamed, embarrassed or lost, afraid and powerless. For me it was a profound lesson which actually, overall, did increase my power and my awareness and my sense of responsibility. It wasn't a loss or a failure, it's just that the lesson was so strong that it also knocked me down a few pegs in some areas and became overwhelming.

I am not a victim of the world. I am not a victim of doctors and nurses. I am not a victim of the law. I a not a victim of official rules or requirements or paperwork or legal proceedings. I am not a victim of what another person needs or how they act or what they choose to do to others. I am not responsible for causing my wife's suffering or sickness or behaviours. I am not guilty, and I am not ashamed. I am the holy son of God, guiltless and sinless, pure and innocent.

We must think of ourselves as immortal beings, still as God crated us, still perfect and pure and holy and good. We cannot sin, and have never sinned. We are not guilty, and cannot become guilty. We have never been attacked by anyone or anything in the world. We cannot suffer unless we try to make ourselves suffer. I was not suffering because of the situation, or my wife, or the medical staffs, or family members, or anyone else. I cannot suffer unless I choose to do so, and I had chosen to do so. And now I choose again.

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

I complain that food manufacturers constantly package food in containers which are way larger than the contents, and when you go to open it up you find it's half empty and feel deceived. It IS a dishonest practice. At first it was the 'oh potatoe chips need extra air space to cushion them against breakage' but then it was... well, here's 20 other foods that don't have this risk but still come with a large airspace. The packaging mis-represents what you actually will get. Ok, that's just a deceptive shitty lie.

Ok. That's my complaint. Now, let's look at what has happened because of this complaint.

I've started out by seeing myself as being victimized. I ask, who am *I* in this scenario. There's the food manufacturer over there and there's the product sitting in front of me and I'm seeing this scenario where I'm looking at ME in a particular way. I think I'm looking at the food container and complaining, but that's actually a few steps down the road. What happened before my angry reaction was me seeing myself 'in' the scenario as a victim. ie..

1) If the food item has more empty space than needed, I have decided that this means there is dishonesty. It's dishonesty on the level of form and implies deceit.

2) If there is deceit in the food item, and because I say it means they are being deceiving, and because I have an interest in this food item, I am now a part of the story and it is ME that is being deceived. It's personal!

3) Now that it's 'affecting me' (because of the way I CHOSE to position myself as the victim in the story), I am now justified in anger and annoyance. Now I can blame them. Now I can say it's their fault that I am angry, because what they did happened before what I did. But this covers up the fact that what I did (made it real, gave it meaning it doesn't have, treated it as non-neutral), happened before anything else.

4) If I am seeing guilt in the food container then who is experiencing guilt? I might be trying to get THEM to experience guilt but it's a part of my reality, so *I* am experiencing guilt, albeit displaced. That means there's guilt in my mind, and I believe in my own guilt. That means I believe I've sinned, and I'm trying to pin it on the food container and the people who made it wrongly.

So as I find the huge airspace in a bag of chips annoying, or the gross vomit-like quality of tv dinners to be nothing like the beautiful arrangement on the box cover, or the totally unnecessary container size housing rather less product just to get me to think that I am getting more than I am, I have this opportunity to realize.... this is ONLY there to trigger my own self-attack and to remind me that I am CHOOSING to see myself as a victim, and I'm only choosing that because *I* BELIEVE* I am deceptive and dishonest and guilty. Hmmm.

So... then it boils down to this. I can't hold THEM guilty without holding myself guilty, because this guilt is mine. Hmm. Ok, I forgive them BECAUSE they did not do anything, I DID IT. And I forgive me because I did not really DO anything, nothing has happened. And I am forgiven already because none of this happened in the first place, it's just a dream that isn't real. And I am actually whole and one with GOD right now being HAPPY rather than right. Yay. We are ALL innocent and equal and One and none of us are guilty at all.

Ok now to eat some chips.

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

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

Within me there is an ego aspect which is very selfish. This aspect rears its head if I see myself as having to do something I don't want to do, being caused to do something because of someone else, or that my condition or situation is a result of something outside my control.

My mind goes into a victim mode where I see myself as being at the effect of external powers. I start to become justified in anger. I start to complain and make noise about how I'm having to do all this stuff "because of" something or someone else. How it's all their fault.

And as I listen to myself in those states I see a tremendous selfishness. Everything I say is laden with "you're doing this to me" and "if it wasn't because of you" and "its your fault" and "you're not meeting my needs" and "my needs aren't met" and so on.. all revolving around this self absorption.

It even can take on a guise of trying to be helpful or "care" in such a manner as to see myself as doing stuff for someone else for "their benefit" and me not getting any benefit from it, and then accusing them of inflicting this upon me, and that I'm suffering because of my efforts to be helpful. It's a strange twisted ego response.

This was flaring up for me recently and i was quite shocked as just how victimy and selfish I sounded as I ranted on about things I was having to do that seemed outside my control or which could not be avoided. Everything that came out of my mouth was all about me me me and my needs and my wants and my effects which seemed to have been caused by something that's not me. lol

This is what the ego is. It's this idea of selfishness. Many people think that ego means individuality, it doesn't. It means an individual WHO IS SELFISH. And that selfishness is just one mental condition of that individual, which can be healed and restored to an individual who is NOT selfish. Selfishness means attempting not to SHARE anything or give anything. Sharing is the natural condition of the sons of God who cooperate with each other perfectly fine when they're not being selfish.

The end of selfishness is not the end of your self. It's merely the end of seeing your self as a victim. It's the end of hoarding, ownership, possession, isolation, imprisonment, exclusivity and specialness. When those things go, the "selfish person" goes, but the person that you are, underneath, does not go anywhere. It becomes uncovered for the loving being that it is.

You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.

There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.

Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.

Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.

What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.

Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.

Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.

So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.

I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.

We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.

And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.

I am told frequently, "let go". And I frequently have no idea what this means.

But I seem to be learning that it means I am more 'involved' in things that I should be. I am engaged with the ego, with the story, with the drama. I've gotten into it and now I am trying to control it.

I need to let go of it, step back, stop interfering, stop being caught up in it. That means being willing to drop it and to stop trying to prevent things from happening, or to force things to happen a certain way.

I feel this in my body and in my mind/emotions. It's as though, when I am not letting go, my mind has projected out like a giant 'sucker' and its latched onto someone or a story, energetically, and now it's fixated on it like I'm connected to it. And whatever happens to it is happening to me. This is because my mind has become involved and caught up in it.

So letting go then means, withdrawing my mind-sucker and just coming back to myself, coming back to just being me, just little me, simple me, detached, just being myself and not carrying burdens or trying to fix people or trying to prevent things from happening.

It's like emptying myself and dropping baggage and not being the one to carry all the weight of the world. It's freeing. I just get to like, sit on the sidelines, and observe, and not get involved. I can just be calm, then, just letting the world do its thing and not worrying about it. Being passerby

If I'm afraid or anxious, and I want to do something about it, I will probably start asking myself "why am I afraid?"

My ego believes that asking this question will help me to find the cause of it, and that I might then be able to fix the problem.

But what's going to happen is, I'll start searching for causes. If I seem to find a possible cause, it's going to tell me "the fear is caused by..." But no matter what it says, it is not really the truth.

Every cause of fear that we think is the cause of it, is not the cause. Fear is not caused by something happening to us. But it seems to arise at the same time as perceiving there's something happening to us, or threatening to happen.

If this.... then that's going to happen. If I do this.... that might happen. But it's still me perceiving and imagining the situation and creating the fear.

I'll think the fear is caused by the 'thing' that threatens me, but the thing that threatens me is not really the cause of fear. So long as I perceive that there is a threat, there WILL be fear. I can't keep the perception of the threat and get rid of the fear. I have to change my perception.

The reason I am afraid is because I am choosing to be afraid. I am choosing fear by choosing to see myself victimized and threatened. I THEN perceive the threat and experience the fear, but neither is the cause of each other.

I am afraid because I am using fear to deny God. I am afraid because I believe fear is a trustworthy guide that tells me the truth. I'm afraid because I want to invent a reason not to be happy and awake. I'm afraid because it allows me to have an ego.

It would seem fear is stopping me from doing what I want, but really fear is an excuse, a made-up reason why not. Without making it real, or believing in the threat being true, I couldn't be afraid, and then there'd be no reason not to.

Fear is part of the device for separation.

I still feel compelled to find out "why" I am afraid, but I sense that the "reason" will be an illusion, and that there will be deeper dynamics than just that I am afraid. Ultimately it cannot be true that I am afraid, it can only be an illusion.

As Jesus says, we only become afraid when we think that illusions are real, and that God is not on our side. I must be incorrectly perceiving an illusion as real truth, or wanting it to be truth, otherwise there'd be no grounds for fear. If nothing has really gone wrong and nothing real can be threatened, there is no basis for fear.

I need to forgive myself for my self-made fear and undo the need for it.